My Lords, I am very grateful for the contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede. I will pick up a few points in response. On the Treasury being behind it, I say that this is not a Treasury-driven measure, in the sense that the sole focus is not the public purse. But we have to recognise that the Treasury is ultimately behind the legal aid system: it is funded by the public purse, and we have to make sure that we get value for money.
One of the things that we are doing here is trying to answer this question—we all feel this instinctively, perhaps, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, said, there are lots of people in the market, so to speak, who say, “Spend some money now; you’ll save more money later on”. But we want to have some robust evidence to see to what extent that is actually the case—and also to see to which particular groups it applies more and to which it applies less. We have a very diverse population, and one of the things that we will be able to do in the pilot is look at people with different backgrounds and needs and see the extent to which the early legal advice actually helps. Although I am well aware of the research by the various NGOs that the noble Lord mentioned, that is not empirical evidence. We do not have the robust, quantitative evidence that we will get from the pilot.
I will pick up the points made the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, who asked a few questions around time limits and associated points. First, on the appropriateness of the fee, I explained the 25% uplift. To obtain the figure for the underlying fee, we used the existing non-London hourly rates for housing and family matters; that generated the baseline fee for the work. We added the 25% uplift to increase the extra costs. We are confident that that will mean that we get proper take-up from providers.
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As to why the allocation is three hours and not, for example, two and a half hours or four hours, I will make two points. First, at the moment, little information is available about the average time that providers would spend with somebody requiring advice of this nature. As part of the pilot, we will ask providers to record the time that they spend. We will also ask them whether they spend that time during one appointment or over a series of appointments, because some people might come and say, “This is my problem”, and the provider might say, “Ah, I can help you on that, but I need to see a particular document that you haven’t brought with you. So please make another appointment and come back”. So they might have an initial half-hour, for example, and then another two and a half hours later. The pilot will enable us to gather that evidence. To make this administratively simple, the way we are doing this is that, even if the provider spends only two and a half hours, there is a flat fee for three hours with the 25% uplift. There may be a bit of rough with the smooth, so to speak, in that we have sought to make it simple because we want providers to engage and we want proper take-up.
On the other point made by the noble Lord—I say respectfully that it was a very good point—we will follow up on the experience of people who are part of the scheme. Specifically on dropouts, it may be a bit more difficult, but we will attempt to follow up on the experience of people who dropped out and ask them why they dropped out. Was it because they did not like the provider, for example? Was it because they thought their issue was a housing issue but it turned out that it was a different issue? We are focused on that; it is an important point.
I hope I have responded to the main points that were made. I am grateful for the broad support for the instrument, even if it is on the basis that heaven rejoices over all sinners who repent. At least there was broad agreement on the principles underlying the pilot; I therefore commend the instrument to the Committee.