Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, in debates like this, I am always a little worried that noble Lords not in the Chamber when the Division Bells ring will come along and say, ““What is this about?””. They may be told, ““Oh, we are voting on legal aid for children””. Let us be clear, these amendments and this debate are not about whether we provide legal aid for children and vulnerable people; nor is it about not being willing to help those least able to help themselves; and nor is it about denying help to the most vulnerable in our society. As my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford pointed out, the core principle of our reforms is to ensure that civil legal services will continue to be available in the highest priority cases; for example, where a person's life or liberty is at stake or where children may be taken into care. The application of this principle has led us to protect the vast majority of funding and cases involving children. They include child protection cases, civil cases concerning the abuse of a child, special educational needs cases and cases involving children who are made parties to private family proceedings. Noble Lords will also recall that we have moved to make funding available for clinical negligence cases concerning brain-damaged infants. It is simply not true therefore to suggest that there will be no funding or very substantially reduced funding for the cases involving children and young people. In addition, as indicated earlier, we have moved the amendment ratchet to ““regulator”” which will enable us to test whether some of the more dramatic warnings that have been issued about our reforms can be looked at. We are committed to undertake a post-implementation review of the specific policies set out in Bill. We believe that these safeguards are sufficient to ensure that children do not fall through the net. Our approach will mean that 97 per cent of current spend on cases involving child claimants will continue, and that is the overwhelming majority of current support. Spending reductions are never welcome, but I hope these figures put it beyond doubt that we have made a genuine endeavour to ensure that children are protected, even as we push on with the wider objective of our reforms, which is to focus scarce resources on the most serious cases, to contribute to savings and to reform the system. I do challenge the assumption that the remaining 3 per cent will automatically require specialist legal advice rather than non-legal advice which can avoid involving a child in traumatic court processes. But, of course, the wider safeguards apparent in our reforms apply. First, if legal representation really is appropriate in an individual case, then exceptional funding will be available where required under the ECHR or EU law. Perhaps I may take up a point made by my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lady Benjamin. They both took exception to the word ““exceptional””. The word is merely the label used to describe the test under Clause 10 and is not intended to have any special legal meaning. It simply signifies that these cases fall outside the normal scope of civil legal aid. There is no expectation that children or any other applicants would be required to fill in excluded case application forms. These will be completed by a solicitor, as they are now under the existing scheme, and our intention is that payments may be made towards the costs incurred in making a successful application. We propose that the application process for excluding certificated work will be broadly similar to the existing process for in-scope cases. A number of noble Lords have made the point by saying, ““It's all very difficult and complicated””, but unless you are going to make a blanket payment, you draw lines and make conditions. There is a certain element of bureaucracy, if that is the right word, but I do not believe that this is a new and complicated programme. It can be used easily and, as I have said, the word ““exceptional”” is used simply to designate those matters which are out of scope. Secondly, we have been focusing on delivering additional resources for citizens advice bureaux and similar, which provide the general, practical advice that can often prove better than the drawn-out, adversarial experience of legal action. As noble Lords know, the Chancellor announced last week that we will be making a further £20 million—and this time it is £20 million of new money—available for each of the next two financial years. This comes on top of the £100 million voluntary sector transition fund.