Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

That is what I call a second bite of the cherry on Report. However, I was in fact about to clarify, for the benefit of the House, that indeed the noble Lord was wrong, and that the first gateway areas of law will therefore be debt, discrimination, and special educational needs. As the House is aware, the Government have been working with a range of groups, including equality organisations, to discuss the many adaptations and adjustments already in use through the existing community legal advice helpline. As a result of this work, we are comfortable that meaningful access to legal aid services for the majority of callers in the areas of law that are to be covered by the mandatory gateway is very much achievable. The mandatory gateway will, therefore, be relatively narrowly drawn, and we will proceed sensibly and prudently. This is precisely about ensuring that services remain accessible. We believe that these are the right areas to begin with, because the community legal advice helpline already offers specialist telephone advice on debt, special educational needs and some discrimination cases. We trust that this provides sufficient knowledge on which to base our volume estimates and have a good sense about the realism of ensuring accessible services. Now that we have made further movement on the issue—a matter that I know the noble Baroness feels strongly about—I hope that she may be able to meet us halfway, particularly given the safeguards that we are also putting in place, which will apply across the three remaining areas. The Government are not only committed to a review of the whole implementation, including operation, of the gateway in the three areas of law, but will ensure that face-to-face advice continues to be available where it is genuinely necessary. All callers will need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they should be offered advice only over the telephone. Those making the assessment will be required to have an awareness of the difficulties faced by callers, who may have various conditions such as learning impairments, hearing impairments, and mental health conditions. Where they assess callers as not being suitable, even with a reasonable adjustment, to receive telephone legal aid advice, callers will be referred to face-to-face providers. The key consideration will be whether the individual client is able to give instructions over the telephone and act on the advice given over the telephone. As I have previously stated, specialist telephone advice providers are currently required to meet higher quality standards than their face-to-face counterparts. I understand that the LSC is reviewing the quality standards of all contracts in order to ensure that they remain appropriate and fit for purpose once this Bill is implemented. However, while the precise detail is still being developed, I can assure the House that the tender process, overall quality requirements and contract management approach for the specialist telephone advice providers will mean that they will continue to meet a higher service standard than that expected of equivalent face-to-face advice providers, and that this will include a specific requirement for appropriate training both in relation to understanding individual needs and the assessment process itself. Noble Lords should therefore rest assured that access will be protected under these plans. A number of specific points were made. My noble friend Lord Roberts argued that the face-to-face guarantee for under-18s should be extended to age 25. Again, I must say to him that those aged 18 to 25 must be the most telephone-friendly generation in our history, and I do not think that we would extend it to 25. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, made the point that helpline operators are not legally qualified. No, but they are fully trained to identify key words or issues from the client's description, and then—and this is important—pass the client on to the appropriate legally trained adviser. She also asked how we will assess whether a person is in need of special attention. As I have said, all callers will be assessed on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they should be offered advice over the telephone or assessed for direct face-to-face advice. It is also possible for callers to have an authorised third party to make the initial call for them. Therefore, one should look past the broad brush swept by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and the suggestion that this is a fundamental bar to access to legal aid. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that earlier this year I went to the Law Society awards ceremony for the best law officers of the year. I was extremely impressed by how many of the prize winners gave distance advice either by telephone or via the internet. It is the age in which we live. In this explanation, I hope that noble Lords will understand that this is a narrow scope attempt at using a telephone gateway. Built into it, in training the people undertaking it, is the discretion to refer to other specialists and the right of those specialists to offer face-to-face advice if an inquiry warrants it. Noble Lords can see that that is a far road from that painted by some of the speeches today. We have also made a significant move in response to the representations made to us. Based on the facts and the arguments, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment and that, if not, noble Lords will support me in the Division Lobby this afternoon.