Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, when I first looked at the Bill, I was pleased to see how much vulnerable adults and children are protected by the provisions of Schedule 1. One has only to look at the paragraph headings to see the protection that is given: for example, ““Care, supervision and protection of children””, ““Special educational needs””, ““Abuse of a child or vulnerable adult””, ““Working with children and vulnerable adults””. All these groups will remain within the scope of legal aid. Further headings comprise: ““Mental health and mental capacity””, ““Facilities for disabled persons””, ““Inherent jurisdiction of High Court in relation to children and vulnerable adults””, ““Unlawful removal of children from the United Kingdom””, ““Family homes and domestic violence””, ““Victims of domestic violence and family matters””, ““Mediation in family disputes””, ““Protection of children and family matters””, ““Children who are parties to family proceedings”” and ““EU and international agreements concerning children””. Over and over again the emphasis is placed on keeping the needs of children and vulnerable adults within the scope of legal aid. I look forward to hearing from my noble friend what proportion those headings represent of all the cases involving children. Those children's and vulnerable adults' issues will continue to be within the scope of legal aid. There is one aspect of Amendment 3 with which I entirely agree—I spoke about this in Committee and on Report—which is that legal aid should be maintained for a review or appeal on social welfare issues and for, "““civil legal services relating to an appeal to the Supreme Court””." That is so for children, but my position is that it is important that legal aid for appellate processes should be available to all adults and children. I listened with a great deal of sympathy to the exposition of Amendment 4 by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, but he should bear in mind that conditional fee agreements with one-way costing, which is the new way in which conditional fee agreements are to be entered into, will be available for people who are not covered by legal aid, and the new changes will be much more acceptable. For example, there will be protection against the defendant's costs for a losing claimant—a losing child or adult. They will not have to pay those costs. We have discussed those issues at length. The noble Lord should also bear in mind that the Government have announced that if you are legally aided and you obtain damages in a personal injury case, 25 per cent of those damages will be taken for the supplementary legal aid scheme to fund other people who are deserving of legal aid. Therefore, entitlement to legal aid will not mean that a person gets their damages in full. It is probably better in many of these cases to have a conditional fee agreement as it has been refashioned than it is to receive legal aid. I am sure that that is the way in which the legal profession will go.