It is good to see you in the Chair, Mr Bailey.
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), not only on securing the debate but on his thoroughly comprehensive and powerful introduction to the topic. In fact, I also thank all hon. Members for their incredibly insightful contributions.
Since I was elected, barely more than three years ago, I think this is the fourth, fifth or even sixth time that we have been in Westminster Hall to debate legal aid or wider access-to-justice issues, and yet so little seems to have changed. We are still waiting for the review of LASPO to be completed—never mind implemented—although an end appears to be just about in sight, which would be welcome indeed. Persistence in pushing for reform is therefore essential. As other hon. Members have said, the issues are fundamental ones. Legal aid is crucial to access to justice and the rule of law. As many hon. Members have expressed today, LASPO represents a misguided and dangerous undermining of those fundamental principles, putting access to justice beyond the reach of many through changes to the scope and eligibility criteria for legal aid.
As the Chair of the Justice Committee has said, that is not an academic matter. Numerous hon. Members have provided all sorts of practical examples of the impact of those changes on their constituents, whether those cases concern clinical negligence, miscarriages of justice, family matters, domestic abuse, social security, housing, debt or immigration. Hon. Members have referred repeatedly to the creation of advice deserts. That has all been at a time when, as the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) rightly pointed out, demand for some of those services could not be higher. Demand is soaring in cases of social security law and immigration law, at a time when the ability to access good legal advice is plummeting.
At the outset, the hon. Member for Hammersmith referred to what seems to have become the Government catchphrase in debates such as this, and it goes to the heart of what LASPO represents. The phrase jars with me, I have to say. Over and over again, the Government say that legal aid is available to “those who need it most”. That jars with me because the goal of any legal aid system should be that legal aid is available to all those who need it, full stop. By acknowledging that legal aid is available only to those who need it most, the Government in essence seem to be saying that LASPO was a legitimate exercise in the rationing of legal aid, accepting that many who need it will nevertheless not get it. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has said, if people do not get legal aid, that means that many of them simply do not get justice.
All Members have highlighted that LASPO’s flaws have been exposed repeatedly, including by the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee, the Law Society, the Law Commission and many others. The Justice Committee concluded that the Act had failed to achieve three of its four stated goals. The one successful goal was that of cutting the budget, but that was at the cost of harming access to justice for some litigants.
On that note, it would be interesting to know what LASPO represented for other budgets, including its impact on service provision for homelessness, social work and health. Those services pick up the pieces when people struggle to vindicate their rights under housing law, employment law or social security law. What we do know is the impact that LASPO has had on the courts, as party litigants struggle to make their way through complex litigation. The hon. Members for Hammersmith and for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) set that out extremely starkly.
My party supports a comprehensive legal aid system—one that is open-ended, uncapped and demand-led; in other words, one that is much closer to what was in existence in England and Wales before LASPO, and to what still exists in Scotland and, as I understand it, in the Netherlands. The main point that I want to make is that such a system, or a move in the direction of it, as Members have called for today, does not have to be prohibitively expensive. In fact, despite its significantly broader scope and financial eligibility rules—about 70% of people in Scotland would qualify for civil legal aid—the system north of the border still costs slightly less per head of population than that in operation down here, at £25.02, as opposed to £25.54. Why is that?
This week the Library provided me with an interesting set of figures that suggest that although legal aid is provided in many more cases in Scotland, it is done at far less cost. In 2016-17, for example, there were 4,000 grants of assistance per 100,000 inhabitants in Scotland, which is some 75% more than the 2,300 grants per 100,000 inhabitants in England and Wales, but spending in each of those legal aid cases was two thirds higher in England and Wales, at about £1,000, compared with £600 in Scotland.
Those figures seem to be consistent with what far more knowledgeable Members have said today about the value of intervention, even on a small scale at an early stage. One Justice Committee report pointed out:
“The Ministry’s efforts to target legal aid at those who most need it have suffered from the weakness that they have often been aimed at the point after a crisis has already developed, such as in housing repossession cases, rather than being preventive.”
The more comprehensive system in Scotland has meant spending small amounts of money at a better time, so the overall spend in each individual case has been kept lower. Several hon. Members made a similar point about early advice.
Those Library figures are also consistent with the argument that there are other ways to keep the legal aid bill under control. Most of our previous debates about legal aid have highlighted the work of Professor Alan Paterson OBE, an international expert in legal aid. He pointed out as long ago as 2010, when spending per capita in England and Wales was £38, compared with £29 in Scotland, that much of that difference was down to the success of reform of court procedures in Scotland, both civil and criminal, leading to reduced legal aid spending.
The recent independent review of legal aid in Scotland highlighted other ways in which the legal aid budget could be reduced. Indeed, it has been reduced there since 2011. Falling recorded crime means fewer court cases and less criminal legal aid, as does greater use of diversion from the courts through fines. More sensible use of civil courts and jurisdictions has contributed to a drop in civil legal aid spending.
In short, legal aid is a vital part of ensuring access to justice and the rule of law. It should never have been made a victim of austerity, and it was a totally false economy to make it one. LASPO should be ripped up—it was a bad piece of legislation and has proved a total failure. Tinkering around the edges is no longer enough. A comprehensive system is required for England and Wales, and it is required urgently.
3.54 pm