Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Yes, I am pleased to be able to confirm to the hon. Lady that that is the case. We think that we have struck the right balance, although some will disagree. However, such disagreement misses the fact that there are two important safeguards to our system, which will provide genuine victims with a route into legal aid even if they do not have the headline forms of evidence. First, when a court has to consider whether domestic violence is a factor in a private family case, it may consider any relevant evidence, including police call-outs or evidence from domestic violence support services, or other types of evidence that have not even been suggested by the Opposition. This is also relevant in regard to the time limits. When a case involves older incidents of domestic violence and a court considers that the matter is still relevant and makes a finding of fact, legal aid funding could still be triggered. There is also the more generic safeguard of the exceptional funding regime. We continue to believe that the evidential requirements should not be on the face of the Bill. The level of detail required means that those requirements will be much better left to regulations, subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, rather than to primary legislation. Given how far we have moved on this topic, and the safeguards that I have outlined today, I invite the House to disagree with Lords amendments 2B and 196B.