Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (Legal Aid: Family and Domestic Abuse) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2023

Debate between Lord Bach and Baroness Drake

Monday 23rd January 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise; I appreciated only this afternoon that this SI was being tabled for discussion today. I want to make reference to extending legal aid to special guardianship order applications for children in private law proceedings. Clearly, this is welcome but, regrettably, it is not matched in public law proceedings, where the majority of special guardianship orders are pursued, when children are often in a crisis situation. In effect, the SI will not cover all kinship carer situations, where legal support is needed and is further limited by the stringent means test.

The compelling evidence—and this has often been rehearsed on the Floor of the Chamber—is that kinship carers are left to navigate the family justice system without the legal aid and representation they need. Many incur significant debt from paying legal costs or find themselves sidelined in important decisions about the child, directly increasing the risk that more children will end up in care.

There are two key areas in public law cases where legal aid for prospective special guardians urgently needs to be considered. First, at the formal pre-proceedings stage, prospective kinship carers have access to only limited advice. Means-tested support is remunerated at such low rates that very few solicitors will now offer advice on taking on the care of a child. Secondly, during the care proceedings, prospective kinship carers are still entitled to only very limited advice. In fact, only when the prospective kinship carer is made party to the court proceedings or when they make a private law application may they be entitled to legal aid. We know from the evidence, which has been rehearsed many times in the Chamber, that many carers do not have the early advice even to know that becoming a party to proceedings is an option or how to make a private law application.

In putting those issues, my main point is that, while welcoming the extension of legal aid in the instance covered by this SI, in preparing their response to the MacAlister review, are the Government considering further extending access to legal aid to kinship carers seeking guardianship orders in public law situations? We know that the evidence is overwhelming that, in terms of the benefits to the child and the cost to the taxpayer, effective kinship carer situations with guardianship orders save the taxpayer money, give better outcomes for the child and will, in effect, end up paying many times over for the extension of legal aid that these people seek.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall be very quick, not least because the chairman of the committee mentioned by the Minister in his answer on the previous instrument is in her place, and she can talk with much more skill and expertise than I can. As a mere member of that committee, I remember well the Minister’s appearance before it; I do not think that it is flattering him too much to say that he was one of the star witnesses, not just on that day but during the whole of our proceedings. Indeed, the whole issue about early advice, as was clear from the Minister’s first reply, was clearly something that was a matter of concern to him.

Just as I supported the last instrument, I support this one. Again, in their comparatively small way, they are important improvements. One fault of LASPO, to put it mildly, was that too much of private family law was taken out of scope of legal aid. There have been consequences since, and my guess is that the Government have come round to that view and I think that this order, in a small way, shows that. The Minister will know that the issue around domestic violence and the evidence needed was a matter of huge controversy for many years after LASPO came into force. It looks as if that is, finally, I hope, being put to bed.

All that I want to do, if I may—and I certainly do not want to take the thunder away from the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, who I hope will speak shortly—is to invite the Minister, if he has not already, to see the recommendations that we made in this area of the Select Committee’s report. We ended by saying, as one of our major recommendations:

“We recommend that the Government urgently evaluate the impact of the removal of legal aid for most private family law cases, considering where reinstating legal aid could help improve the efficiency and quality of the family justice system.”


We heard a huge amount of evidence over the months that showed that the lack of the possibility of legal aid in some private family law situations was very harmful to their early solving.