Criminal Justice and Courts Bill
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, as the Minister said at the beginning of this debate, the Bill makes significant changes to the justice system through measures that create some new offences and reform sentencing and the operation of the courts. It is not a legal aid Bill, but having chaired a commission on the future of advice and legal support in social welfare law—an interest that I declare—I am naturally anxious to probe the potential impact of the Bill on the provision of legal aid.
As regards Part 1—Clause 28 in particular—questions need to be asked about the impact of this package of criminal justice measures, especially new offences and the cost of parole hearings, on legal aid costs. Has a legal aid impact assessment been undertaken, I wonder? Whenever new criminal offences are put on to the statute book, we need to understand whether this will lead to additional demand for criminal defence services and inflation in the criminal legal aid budget. It is important to know this in the current context when legal aid for both civil and criminal work is facing further cuts. Historically, greater pressures on the criminal legal aid budget have led to ever greater cuts in the scope of and entitlement to civil legal aid, since civil problems do not merit the same equality of arms in access to justice under the UK’s human rights obligations.
As regards the proposals for a new model of youth justice provision in Part 2 and the establishment of a new secure training college, what, if any, work has been done on locating support services at the college, such as help with claiming benefits on release, debt advice and housing options? The voluntary sector has an excellent record in successfully delivering such services in custodial settings, but I fear that many such services have been delivered by agencies such as citizens’ advice bureaux extending the outreach of their social welfare law advice services into prisons—sometimes through specific matched-funding formulas between civil legal aid and support from NOMS and probation services. Now that there has been a retrenchment in legal aid for social welfare law, I am worried that such services focusing on prisoners’ needs have declined, and given the changes to the scope of legal aid for prison law issues, the opportunity for advice providers to work with prisoners on a range of needs that might help them to change their offending behaviour seems to be diminishing. Money advice and financial capability support are particularly important for young offenders. Youth Access has consistently demonstrated the value of early interventions in working with troubled teenagers to develop money skills.
This brings me on to wider issues of financial exclusion and criminal justice that are relevant to the provisions of Part 3. The direction of criminal justice policy is for ever greater use of larger financial sanctions and penalties by the criminal courts. In Clause 42 we are presented with new proposals for magistrates’ courts and Crown Courts to impose on defendants mandatory court cost-recovery charges of between £100 and £900. This is in addition to the victim surcharge and any fines or compensation orders imposed. Yet all the social and demographic data that we have show us that defendants in magistrates’ courts are the most financially excluded in society. The MoJ’s own prison population data show that some 68% have been unemployed before conviction, and a survey of magistrates’ court defendants undertaken by Kemp and Souza in 2009 for the Legal Services Research Centre came out with a sample of more than 50% having incomes below £12,475.
Overreliance on financial sanctions in the criminal justice system may explain in part why the MoJ has such a poor rate of fine collection. Sometimes the Government can spend more on the cost of enforcement than they can actually recover in fines and other financial penalties. I note that the impact assessment puts the estimated costs of introducing, administering and enforcing the new criminal courts charge at £20 million a year. Is this really economical if only low rates of collection can be expected? One of the problems is that courts do not have nuanced systems for determining ability to pay, as the magistrates’ courts’ means-assessment form misses out a lot of priority and non-priority debt such as fuel bills and rent arrears.
Clause 44 suggests that the Government’s solution to the enforcement gap is greater discretion for fines officers. However, as appeared when we debated the previous criminal justice legislation, the Crime and Courts Act, these enforcement functions are being increasingly outsourced to the private enforcement industry. That means large private firms of bailiffs, and many noble Lords will have concerns about the methods and record of these firms.
This brings me back to my earlier point about the importance of access to timely and appropriate debt and money advice, and the importance of this sector being able to work within the criminal justice system to help to turn lives around. It has the tools to help people and the means to properly assess, via the common financial statement, how defendants can meet their liabilities on a very low income. A better approach would be to bring money advisers into the magistrates’ courts to run fines clinics and work with the fines officers.
Many other provisions on courts and tribunals in Part 3 merit greater scrutiny, including those on civil appeals and wasted costs. We need to think more imaginatively about how our administrative tribunals are funded and how users are supported. I should like a system to be put in place, for example, whereby tribunals can recover costs from government departments that have shown poor decision-making.
Finally, I turn to the provisions of Part 4 on judicial review. Nothing I can say can begin to match the withering attack directed at this part of the Bill by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. Others have commented on how the higher threshold set for granting permission to proceed with judicial review and the new cost liabilities on interveners and third parties could have a significant deterrent effect for citizens and their representatives pursuing their legitimate interests. These provisions, however, must also be seen in the context of some of the recent, post-LASPO, legal aid regulations that have restricted legal aid for pre-permission work in judicial review cases. Even though such cases remain within the scope of legal aid funding, the combined effect of legal aid changes already introduced alongside the judicial review changes in the Bill will surely act to cut a key avenue for citizens who need redress when unreasonable and unlawful decisions are taken by the statutory gatekeepers of welfare benefits, social housing and community care services.
In the time that remains, I want to say something about a group of victims of crime who are often forgotten: the children and adults dependent on offenders sent to prison. They feel isolated and ashamed. Prisoners’ children are often bullied and stigmatised. The experience of witnessing a parent being arrested can be extremely traumatising for a child, who may even be too young to fully understand what is happening or where their mum or dad is being taken. The statistics serve solely to emphasise their vulnerability: they are twice as likely as other children to experience behavioural and mental health problems, and they are three times as likely to go on to commit an offence. There are an estimated 200,000 children with a parent in prison at any one time, nearly three times the number of children in the care system, yet there is no official way of identifying them or ensuring their need for support is met. No one currently asks about them, so nobody looks out for them or cares about them.
The Families Left Behind campaign is therefore calling for a statutory duty to be placed on courts to ask an individual whether they have any dependants when they are sentenced to prison or held on remand. If they do, steps can then be taken to ensure that appropriate care arrangements are in place. They may be children, elderly parents or disabled partners: they are all people who are at risk of being forgotten when their parent or carer is sent to prison. The members of the Families Left Behind campaign and charities such as Barnardo’s, PACT and Partners of Prisoners can all give examples of children who have finished their day at school expecting their mother or father to be there to pick them up, only to find that there is nobody. Why? Because their parent had not expected to go to prison and had not made arrangements for the end of the day, let alone for the rest of their sentence.
An amendment to require courts to ask offenders this simple question and to check whether there are care arrangements in place would give offenders an opportunity to disclose whether they have a dependant. It would then no longer be so difficult to ensure that they get the support they need. Such an amendment would not be resource-intensive. Where care arrangements are already in place, no further action would be necessary. Where they are not, all that would be required would be a referral to a relevant local authority care provider.
The Bill provides an excellent opportunity to make a difference to the lives of these children and adults. It would be a tragic shame if the Government, while toughening up the system of justice delivered to criminals, missed the chance to help crime’s forgotten victims.
Social Welfare Law
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Low of Dalston
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to Tackling the Advice Deficit, the report of the Low Commission on the future of advice and legal support on social welfare law in England and Wales.
Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, I am very pleased to have this opportunity of introducing the report of the commission, which I was honoured to be asked to chair, on the future of advice and legal support on social welfare law in England and Wales. I am grateful to all those who have put their names down to speak—it is quality more than quantity tonight. I am particularly honoured that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough should have chosen to make his maiden speech in this debate and I am sure that we are all looking forward to what he has to say with eager anticipation. I am also looking forward to hearing what the Minister has to say with eager anticipation. I must place on record my appreciation of the contribution of my fellow commissioners and our hard-working secretary and researcher, Richard Gutch and Sara Ogilvie, for this was truly a team effort and we had a brilliant team.
As part of the Government’s austerity measures, there have been significant reductions, estimated by the Government to save £89 million a year, in the scope of legal aid for issues of social welfare law. These are for things such as benefit debt, employment, immigration, education and many aspects of housing. This is compounded by reductions in local government funding for advice and legal support, which are likely to amount to at least a further £40 million by 2015. Some local authorities are cutting virtually all not-for-profit provision in response to the cuts in funding from central government approaching 40% by 2016.
Services are closing or retrenching on a significant scale, yet the demand for advice and legal support has never been greater and can only grow further as the Government’s welfare reforms are rolled out. I could tell your Lordships harrowing tales of the serious consequences for the advice sector, and therefore for individuals needing support, of the almost complete removal from scope of welfare benefits advice. However, partly because of time and the need for brutal summary, I prefer to concentrate in a more dispassionate way on what we are suggesting to address the problem. I do not think that anyone doubts that the austerity measures, however necessary, have left us with a real problem.
We were under pressure to recommend simple reinstatement of the cuts from two quarters: from lawyers, of course, who thought that our recommendations focused too much on the front end of the legal journey and insufficiently recognised the importance of legal interventions for resolving social welfare problems; and from those who resist any change in patterns of funding for public services, such as the introduction of the market. However, in a situation where we have to accept that there will be less money for legal help and representation, we were anxious to develop a fresh approach which, through measures to reduce the need for advice and legal support in the first place, developing more cost-effective approaches to service provision and drawing on a wider range of funding sources than hitherto, ensured that people could still meet a lot of their needs through a greater emphasis on information and advice, while ensuring that there is at least some money available for legal help and representation.
Rather than recommending simple reinstatement, we preferred to think in terms of a continuum of provision including public legal education, informal and formal information and general advice—often provided by local authorities—specialist advice, legal help and legal representation. We took the view that it was important to tackle the whole of this continuum in an integrated fashion and that legal aid should be seen as just one part of it, not in isolation as a stand-alone funding mechanism. We do not underestimate the importance of legal interventions for solving people’s problems. Sometimes it takes a lawyer to bring a recalcitrant defendant to the table. However, with cuts of the order of £100 million a year in legal aid, it seemed clear to us that the advice end of the spectrum was going to need to take more of the strain. The more we can do at the beginning of the process, we reckoned, the less we may need to do at the end. However, we are absolutely clear that there needs to be provision for legal help and representation at the legal end of the spectrum.
Of course, the advice sector is not beyond improvement. There is a general perception that it is too fragmented and could benefit from rationalisation from closer working together and a greater spirit of collaboration. We would also like to see the national umbrella bodies, such as Citizens Advice and AdviceUK, working more closely together and sharing their resources and experience more widely. AdviceUK told us about a system in Portsmouth based on what it calls “systems thinking”. It moved from a system that involved waiting for two hours, seeing a volunteer for 20 minutes then making an appointment to see a specialist—altogether potentially involving 13 steps before seeing an adviser who would help you—to a system that dispensed with triage or rationing, put specialist staff in the front line, with expertise in one area but able to pull in others as necessary rather than simply referring on, enabling you to see someone within 20 minutes. It has shown that approaches such as this can achieve savings of at least 30% and sometimes, as in its work in Nottingham, as much as 95%. Although it may seem like a Rolls-Royce service it can end up costing less in the long run.
Our report contains 100 recommendations but the six most important are: first, that public legal education should be given higher priority, both in school alongside financial literacy and in education for life, so that people know their rights and where to go for help. Secondly, though there are certainly factors making for increased demand in the welfare reforms and other austerity measures, we are convinced there are also ways of reducing the need for advice and legal support in the first place. For example, the DWP could be incentivised to get more decisions right first time by being required to pay costs on upheld appeals. Thirdly, we suggest ways in which courts and tribunals could be made to work more efficiently. Fourthly, the next UK and Welsh Governments should develop national strategies for advice and legal support, preferably with all-party support and there should be a Minister with responsibility for advice and legal support within the MoJ with a cross-departmental brief for leading the development of the strategy. Fifthly, local authorities or groups of local authorities should coproduce or commission local advice and legal support plans with the local not-for-profit sector and commercial advice agencies. Sixthly, we estimate that a further £100 million a year is required to ensure a basic level of provision of information, advice and legal support on social welfare law.
We are calling on the next UK Government to provide half of this by establishing a 10-year—to enable long-term planning—national advice and legal support fund for England and Wales of £50 million a year to be administered by the Big Lottery Fund. We aim to spread the load so that no part of government is asked to bear too great a burden. We therefore propose that the fund should be financed by the MoJ, the Cabinet Office and the DWP, as the main creator of the need for advice and legal support. Ninety per cent of the fund should be used to fund local provision in line with local plans, with 10% for national initiatives. The Big Lottery Fund should allocate the 90% share of the national fund to local authority areas, based on indicators of need using joint strategic needs assessments and health and well-being strategies. We have also identified other national and local statutory, voluntary and commercial sources of funding that we believe could contribute an additional £50 million a year to match the national fund.
Greater use needs to be made of new technology for the section of the population that is increasingly digitally literate. This will free up resources to enable more face-to-face, in-depth and intensive support to be targeted at those most in need. In addition to the current range of specialist lines, there should be a one-stop national helpline providing a comprehensive advice service to the general public and able to act as a safety net for those who have nowhere else to go.
Although I said that we were not arguing for a simple restoration of the cuts, that does not mean that we would not like to see any of them reversed. We would like to see funding reinstated for housing cases, for instance, so that people can get help before they reach crisis point and face imminent eviction. The scheme for the funding of exceptional cases under Section 10 of the LASPO Act needs to be reviewed, because as things stand it is just not working. This was intended to act as a safety net for funding cases that would now be out of scope of legal aid but where either human rights or EU law required the provision of legal aid. During the passage of the LASPO Act, it was estimated that there would be between 5,000 and 7,000 of these cases a year, but a Parliamentary Answer on 11 February this year stated that the total number of applications so far was only 1,030, of which only 31 had been granted.
In summary, our strategy is to suggest ways of reducing preventable demand, simplifying the system and enabling it to work better, putting more weight on the advice end of the spectrum and suggesting ways in which it could work more efficiently. We believe that by investing in a wider range of information and advice, with some legal help and representation, many of the undesirable consequences of the LASPO Act can be avoided and we will actually end up saving money. I hope very much that the Minister will find not only that there are things in our report with which he can agree but that it makes a useful contribution to the stabilisation and rehabilitation of our system of advice and legal support on social welfare law.
Legal Aid
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and congratulating her on securing this important debate, which could not be more timely. I declare an interest up front. As noble Lords may know, I have for the past nine months or so been chairing a commission established by the Legal Action Group with funding from the Baring Foundation, the Barrow Cadbury Trust, LankellyChase Foundation and the Trust for London on the future of advice and legal support on social welfare law in England and Wales. We are on course to have a draft report for consultation in September and produce our final report by the end of the year. I have been keeping a fairly low profile so as not to compromise the independence of our report, but I have been prevailed upon to break cover for just six minutes today.
Let me say straight away that I understand the Minister’s problem. On my first day at university, we received a lecture from Lord Denning who said that the difference between a judge and an academic was that whereas judges had to find a solution for every difficulty, academics took pleasure in finding a difficulty for every solution. In this, I see Ministers as more akin to judges than academics. We shall certainly be trying to come up with solutions rather than difficulties. We do not think it is possible or even desirable simply to put things back as they were and I hope we will be able to come up with some suggestions for creating a more orderly landscape of advice services which will be helpful to Ministers in getting the most out of reduced resources.
The recent proposals are mostly about criminal legal aid, of course, and that is not our concern. But there are also some proposals affecting civil legal aid which have been less remarked on, although they have not been ignored today, perhaps because they save a comparatively small amount of money—£6 million, I think. They may nevertheless have some untoward consequences and I want to say a word about two of them in a personal capacity, in the hope that the Government might be willing to reconsider them, particularly when they make such a trifling saving. They also concern me because of their potential to impact on children with special educational needs trying to secure the special educational provision they require.
Often the only thing that makes a local authority do what they know they ought to do is the threat of judicial review. According to MoJ figures, about half the cases in which legal aid is currently granted to bring judicial review do not lead to a JR. My information is that the actual figure may actually be considerably higher than that. That is not because the claims are unmeritorious but because in many of them a local authority caves in when they know a JR is coming. If, as under the new proposals, lawyers do not get paid for the work they do before the permission stage, many fewer JR claims would be brought, as has been said, and local authorities would be let off the hook. Either that or, if lawyers get paid only for cases which are issued and permission is granted, and not for cases that settle, there will be a perverse incentive to commence cases which would currently settle and more, not fewer, JRs will be brought and the projected saving will soon disappear.
Secondly, stopping the funding of borderline cases will have a dramatic effect for tiny savings on disability and SEN cases. Many such cases are currently classified as borderline in terms of their legal aid merits, either because they are factually complicated or are test cases, raising new issues of law. Some very important test cases of strategic significance are borderline and will not now be able to be brought. Indeed, test cases are almost by their very nature borderline.
In passing, the residence test will impact very harshly on children challenging special educational provision who happen to be the children of persons who have not been resident for 12 months. In effect, they will be being punished for their parents’ immigration status.
Also in passing, I am advised that recent reforms to the costs regime in civil litigation have had a deleterious impact on disabled litigants trying to bring cases under the Equality Act. No longer having the benefit of cost-shifting rules or the ability to recover insurance premiums, it is much more difficult for them to bring proceedings under a conditional fee agreement. They are thus unintended casualties of the Jackson reforms. I wonder if the Minister would be prepared to meet me to see if we can find a way through this.
Finally, young legal aid lawyers have written to me to express concern about the impact of these latest proposals on junior lawyers. Some, such as the cuts to civil advocacy fees, will have a direct impact. Others, like price-competitive tendering, will have an indirect impact as firms cut corners in order to stay afloat. This will impact on the future of the profession. If junior lawyers are not paid, supervised and trained to an adequate level, we will lose our next generation of legal aid lawyers.
As the judiciary said in response to the consultation, there is a,
“real risk that the firms obtaining contracts will employ those who will take the lowest salary in order to maximise the firm’s profits”.
This can lead only to a race to the bottom. It will also impact on social mobility and diversity in the profession, which will become increasingly closed off to those from less affluent backgrounds. These are not fat cats talking but young lawyers with a real sense of public service, which I find runs strongly within the profession, who want to be able to provide a quality service to vulnerable clients.
Justice: Legal Advice
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Leveson Inquiry
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(12 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Garden of Frognal
There is one aspect of my noble friend’s question to which I shall resist replying at this stage. He is absolutely right. Under the Enterprise Act 2002, the Secretary of State has the power to intervene in the public interest and in a quasi-judicial capacity. My right honourable friend is on record as stating publicly that there are very strong arguments for politicians to be taken out of discussions on these sorts of matters and for them to be undertaken by the regulators. We will certainly look to be taking that forward.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I do not envy the noble Baroness having to answer questions on matters which are so obviously a matter of the personal responsibility of the Secretary of State. However, does she agree that the focus on the Leveson inquiry in this instance is a complete smokescreen? The terms of reference of Leveson, which I have just looked up, are entirely general and directed towards the future. It is not the role of the Leveson inquiry to pronounce on the Secretary of State’s handling of the Murdoch bid for BSkyB. Does the noble Baroness not agree that the Secretary of State has to answer to Parliament and not to Lord Justice Leveson?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
The noble Lord is quite right that Leveson has a very broad remit. However, it is a vehicle for all manner of evidence to be brought into the open and fully discussed. It appears to be doing an extremely thorough job on that basis. The Secretary of State is very well aware that he needs to answer to Parliament, which is one reason why he gave the Statement today followed by a full set of answers to questions. That will continue to be the position. We are not simply pushing these questions to the back of Leveson, but once you have set up an inquiry of this nature, you might also ask—and indeed Lord Justice Leveson has also asked, having set up the inquiry—that it be allowed to proceed.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(12 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wigley
My Lords, Amendment 24B improves on the original amendment rejected by another place in that it specifies the criteria that should be taken into account when determining the client’s needs.
The proposed telephone gateway would simply not be a suitable means for many people to access legal advice. Among the groups which the amendment seeks to protect are those whose disabilities and frailties would prevent them from being able to convey their case across the telephone; those whose first language is not English; and those whose cases are so sensitive that they would be hindered in discussing the details over the phone. That could include clients who have experienced abuse, rape and those with HIV/AIDS conditions.
The Government’s proposals have no regard to the individual circumstances of individual cases. People’s dignity should not be compromised in order to make what are likely to amount to modest savings. Cases should not be unnecessarily prolonged by operators with little or no legal training. The Government should surely listen to the many voices that oppose these proposals and reform this risky scheme.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I, too, have grave doubts as to whether a telephone helpline of the kind we are talking about can be regarded as fit for purpose if the purpose is to disentangle the client’s case with empathy and give appropriate advice on it. The matter is made worse if use of the telephone gateway is to be made mandatory. There may be a place for a telephone gateway—it can have a role in filtering cases, as the Minister said—but it is surely entirely inappropriate that it is made the sole route to discriminating and informed advice.
This is not a matter of speculation for we have been here before and we know what we are talking about. I am talking about the experience that we had with the student loans company when it took over the administration of the disabled students’ allowance. This was administered by a service staffed by the kind of people who will, presumably, be staffing the telephone gateway. They proved to have little understanding of or empathy with the kind of problems disabled students have and for which they were seeking the support provided by the disabled students’ allowance. In fact they were inclined to make light of them and even suggest that the students were somehow swinging the lead or making unmeritorious excuses for financial support from the state.
Those applying for disabled students’ allowance have much in common with the kind of vulnerable people we are talking about needing help with welfare benefits cases. I would not wish to place my confidence in a service of this kind as the mandatory gateway to legal advice and I do not think the House should either.
Lord Bach
My Lords, it is rather disappointing to have to speak on this subject again. One hoped that the other place might take note of our amendment and carry it through. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has in her usual clear and well expressed way explained that our concern is not with telephone services per se. That is not the point at all. All of us here know the value of telephone services. I saw it at first hand as a Minister and I am delighted that the noble Baroness quoted me in her opening remarks. I hope that that excellent work continues and expands—of course I do.
However, the point is that in a limited range of cases, whether classified by the type of person, such as those with communication problems, or by the type of case, such as very complex cases or cases that require searching through reams of papers to identify the nature of the real issue—a point that was made very powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury—it is counterproductive to expect someone to go through a telephone gateway. In those cases there should be a provision for face-to-face advice from the outset. That is hardly an unreasonable request. Indeed, it is common sense.
I am not the first and I will not be the last to remind the House that today is St George’s day. Perhaps in rather a laboured way, I make the point that there is an English tradition of pragmatism, flexibility, seeing what actually works in the real world rather than what I fear is behind the Government’s stance: too much inflexibility, a kind of didacticism and, as I have described before using a French expression, a rather dirigiste approach towards this issue. It is an issue that cries out for flexibility and trying various ways to make sure that people who need this help can get it. The noble Baroness made her case very powerfully indeed and other speakers have supported her. I very much hope that we can ask the other House to think again on this.
I end by reminding the House of powerful words spoken by the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrat party in the other place just last Tuesday. He had listened carefully and he said this:
“I was grateful for the Minister’s reassurance, but I have to say that I am not persuaded. Like any MP with a constituency containing people from many different races and backgrounds, with many different first languages, and with all the disabilities that any mixed community has, I simply do not believe that a telephone route into deciding eligibility for legal aid is right for everybody. It may be right for many people, and I understand that it will be a good service, but if we ask constituents such as mine whether they have always been satisfied with the council response line—whether under Labour now, or with us running it, as previously—the answer is always no. That does not change, irrespective of who is running the show. I understand the Government’s position and I hear what they say about a review, although I add a request for the review to be regional as well as general, but I believe that the Lords who pressed for amendment 24 have a well-made case. I shall support the Lords in respect of amendment 24”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/4/12; cols. 206-07.]
I do not always, or even often, agree with the right honourable Gentleman who I have just quoted at some length, but on this I do agree and I very much hope that the House will too.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, I am very pleased to welcome the government amendment in lieu, which follows very closely the amendments that the Liberal Democrats put down, both in Committee and on Report, for ensuring that there is proper legal support for appeals on a point of law to the Upper Tribunal, the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court. The Government are to be congratulated on taking that step.
The lacuna in the amendment that I moved in Committee and on Report was that legal points might arise at First-tier Tribunal hearings. It was to that end that my colleague Mr Tom Brake put down an amendment in order to clarify that, or to try to obtain a concession from the Government in relation to that, when the matter came before the Commons. A number of points have been made about it. About 80 per cent of cases, maybe more, before the First-tier Tribunal are decided on the facts: whether a person has sustained a particular injury, whether that injury disables him from doing a particular job or whatever. It covers a wide range of possibilities, but it is usually a factual issue.
However, from time to time a point of law arises. Now, there is no difficulty whatever in identifying what a point of law is. The best illustration that I can make is the famous case of Donoghue and Stevenson—the snail in the ginger beer bottle. For the purposes of coming to a conclusion on the law of negligence and how it should develop, the House of Lords, in considering that case from Scotland in the 1930s, assumed that the claimant’s facts were true; namely, that there was a snail in the ginger beer bottle that the claimant drank. Accordingly, all the argument was based upon that assumed fact. As a result, the law was clarified and developed, and is the foundation of the law of negligence to this day. When the case was remitted to the Scottish court to determine the facts, it was discovered that it was impossible to prove that there was a snail in the ginger beer bottle at all. Consequently the claim was, I think, settled, or it may have failed, but that is the distinction. A point of law is when you have a difficulty in coming to a conclusion, even if the claimant’s facts are true.
The First-tier Tribunal will frequently be faced with mixed facts and law. That is to say, it will have to determine what the facts are and, in that light, consider whether there is any legal problem in the statutory provisions—any point of law—which has to be decided as well before the claimant gets his compensation, allowance or benefit, or whatever it may happen to be. So there is no problem. Every day, in every court and tribunal, points of law are being disclosed, discovered, analysed and dealt with. Indeed, you cannot appeal from the First-tier Tribunal to the Upper Tribunal unless there is a point of law that the First-tier Tribunal identifies. Similarly, in going from the Upper Tribunal to the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court, there has to be a point of law, so there is no problem—as there appeared to be among certain minds in the other place—as to what a point of law is.
The problem that one has to face is: can an unrepresented applicant determine himself whether there is a point of law? There are two answers to that. First, any tribunal with a legally qualified chairman will perceive that there is a point of law involved in coming to a conclusion on the case, so it is in the hands of the chairman of the tribunal to determine whether a point of law arises. If it is unexpected, he can stop the case there, adjourn it and give legal aid for the case to be argued properly by a lawyer who is familiar with the statutory provisions. There is then equality on both sides. However, there is another approach. In the criminal context, if I am prosecuting and the defendant is representing himself when appearing in court, and if I as the prosecutor—the qualified lawyer—realise that a point of law arises which the unrepresented defendant has not realised, it is my professional duty to tell that defendant in a criminal case, “Look, there is a point of law in your case, which you should mention to the judge. Let’s have a discussion about it”. It is my job to bring it out.
I suggest to the Government that when it comes to tribunals, anybody representing the state—the Government or a government department—in a tribunal should be under a duty, which regulation should point out, to inform an unrepresented applicant if that state representative appreciates that a point of law arises. This is so that before they even get before the tribunal, the state representative will have told the litigant or applicant in person, “Look, my friend, you have a point of law in this case, which you must mention to the tribunal judge. If you don’t do it, I will”. That is the tradition of the legal system, and it must apply even when the state is represented not by lawyers but by representatives of the department in question. I urge upon my noble friend that he takes that on board and ensures that there is such a duty, as there is elsewhere, for lawyers to point out to the unrepresented applicant that there is a point that he should take.
I am very pleased that points of law will be properly dealt with under the government amendment. I hope that the moves that the Lord Chancellor makes to ensure that, where a point of law arises in a First-tier Tribunal, a case is either by agreement put forward for legal aid or the tribunal chairman will stop the proceedings and adjourn them until the point can be properly argued. In my view, that is the way in which all the fears that have been expressed on the position of the unrepresented applicant will be dealt with.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I supported the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, on Report, so I have no hesitation in supporting the more limited amendment moved so fully by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, this evening. I hope that the House will ask the Commons to think further on this matter. I will say something about the substance in a minute, but I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has emphasised the question of financial privilege because I want to say another word about that, if the House can bear it.
I come at this from a slightly different angle. There has been a change in the composition of the House of Lords in the past 10 years. I am not referring to the reduction in the number of hereditaries but to one that has been rather less remarked; namely, the appointment of so-called people’s Peers by the Appointments Commission. I am not greatly enamoured of the term “people’s Peers” but, for once, it may perhaps point to a reality that is worth observing—the links that those Peers, not being just the great and the good and the beneficiaries of political patronage, have with the diversity of civil society, which is something that the Appointments Commission has been keen to foster. They have been appointed for the distinctive contribution that they make and their ability to devote sufficient time to the work of the House. That last is an expressed criterion of appointment. I would not want to make too much of this, and I certainly do not wish to disparage other Peers, but the so-called people’s Peers have been specifically appointed on merit for the time, perspective and expertise that they can bring to the work of the House, including that of scrutinising legislation, and for their ability to reach and give a voice to parts of society that are not always reached.
That is part of what makes the Lords more accessible in some ways than the Commons. It is this House and not the other place that has been widely seen as speaking for the vulnerable and dispossessed in our consideration of the Welfare Reform Bill and this Bill. The House has done itself a deal of good. This may not be election but it adds a measure of legitimacy, or at least detracts somewhat from the air of illegitimacy, which is said to attend this House. We all know that the Commons has primacy in matters of supply, but I am sure that I speak for my colleagues when I say that this blanket resort to the claim of financial privilege as a ground for the summary negation of weeks of the very work we were appointed to this House to perform sits very ill indeed with the job description on which we were appointed to this place. It seems to me that it is the Commons’ heavy-handed use of the claim of financial privilege and not the existence of the House of Lords that deserves to be likened to what is going on in Syria or an affront to democracy.
The noble Lord, Lord Martin, whom we all greatly respect, and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, whom we also respect, say that the assertion of privilege is a completely objective matter decided on impartially by the Speaker and his advisers and has nothing to do with the Government. The Speaker may be the conduit through which these claims are asserted but, with the greatest respect, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has indicated, if you believe that the Government have nothing to do with it, you will believe anything.
Scholars differ about the extent of financial privilege but Dr Jeff King, a senior lecturer in law at University College London, said:
“The Lords has the clear right not to accept the Commons assertion of privilege without a protest”.
Lord Martin of Springburn
May I interrupt the noble Lord? It is very kind of him to mention me. I support everything that he says. However, on privilege, all the Speaker does is to remind the House that it is dealing with amendments that have come from the other place that involve privilege. If the other place wishes to accept those amendments, that is recorded in the Journal of the House. That is all the Speaker does. I make the point because when this last came up, there was an implication that the Speaker was perhaps pushed by the government Whips. I just make the point that the Speaker does not often listen to the Whips. In fact, the Speaker meeting the Whips is usually like a penance during Lent. I agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Low, has said. The reasons given are not a matter for the Speaker. They are agreed in the reasons room after decisions have been made. The reason can be to do with finance, but on other occasions other reasons are given. I hope I have not been too long-winded in interrupting the noble Lord’s flow.
Lord Low of Dalston
I am very grateful to the noble Lord. We are in a happy state of accord. He agrees with everything that I say and I agree with everything that he has said. I do not wish to suggest that the Speaker in the other place acts in any way other than objectively. I do not think that the Speaker brings any kind of subjective judgment to bear on these matters; he just rules on these cases. However, it stretches credulity to suggest that forces other than the Speaker—to whit, the Government—may not have a role in raising the matters about which the Speaker has to remind the House. That is all that I meant to say.
I am nearly at the end of this point but I shall go back to the beginning of the quote from Jeff King of University College London. He said:
“The Lords has the clear right not to accept the Commons assertion of privilege without a protest. At risk is the Lords’ future scrutiny of legislation on … the whole of social policy. At the least one hopes the Lords will respond that they do not consent to the Commons’ use of financial privilege on this bill constituting a precedent”.
He was referring to the Welfare Reform Bill on that occasion. As a non-party-political Peer, appointed by the Appointments Commission—if not with a particular mandate, at least on a particular set of understandings—I protest at the blanket use of financial privilege by the Commons to summarily defeat amendments passed in your Lordships’ House. We should not consent to its constituting a precedent, either.
In coming to the substance, I can be fairly brief. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, has set out the case very fully and I do not want to reiterate unduly what he said. However, I underline that this amendment is of enormous significance. The Government’s proposed exclusion from legal aid of the area of welfare benefits is colossal. According to their own impact assessment, removing welfare benefit cases from the scope of legal aid will deny at least 78,000 disabled people specialist legal advice on complex welfare benefit problems. Citizens Advice has estimated that it will amount to 49 per cent of its current legal aid caseload.
Disabled people are particularly disproportionately affected by the removal of welfare benefits from the scope of legal aid. As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said, 81 per cent of benefits cases heard in the First-tier Tribunal relate to disability benefits. As we know, the Government are undertaking a dramatic overhaul of the welfare benefits system. This will see millions of claimants reassessed and moved on to different benefits. For example, plans to replace disability living allowance with the personal independence payment will affect more than 2 million people. At a time of such unprecedented upheaval in the welfare system, access to legal advice is going to be essential, as inaccurate decisions will be inevitable. Indeed, even after three years of discredited Atos Healthcare assessments of people seeking to transfer from incapacity benefit to employment and support allowance, the success rate of appeals is actually going up. As we have heard, it was 45 per cent at the last count. As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said, legal advice makes all the difference; it is not just marginal. According to the MoJ’s own figures, you are 78 per cent more likely to win your case if you have had legal advice. Of those appealing against their assessment for ESA, 70 per cent of those who are advised win compared with only 43 per cent of those who are not advised.
The Government are in danger of getting themselves into the position where they are criticised for kicking a man down and then depriving him of the means of getting up again. I think we should give the Commons another chance to avoid that charge.
Baroness Doocey
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 168B. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, that the Government’s concessions are not an adequate substitute for the loss of legal aid.
The Government have acknowledged the fundamental principle that civil liberties are nothing if you cannot enforce them. If you do not have the money or the knowledge to defend your rights then, sadly, these rights become meaningless. That is where the legal aid system is so important, particularly for the many disabled people who depend on welfare benefits in order to survive.
The Government seem to support this principle in theory but not in practice. The Secretary of State’s statement that such legal aid should be available only on a “point of law” offers little in the way of practical help for disabled people appealing against incorrect welfare benefit decisions, the majority of which are then overturned on appeal. The difficulty is that it is completely unrealistic to assume that people with no legal knowledge whatever will be able to understand what a point of law is. I believe that many people will not even bring an appeal because they will not have the knowledge or the confidence to do so without legal advice.
The Government’s belief that their advice services fund is an adequate substitute for legal aid is groundless because it will not mitigate the cuts in legal aid. The fund was hugely oversubscribed, and in this financial year less than a third of the money has been allocated to organisations delivering advice on welfare benefits.
The Government have announced a further £20 million of funding for the next two years, and that is of course most welcome. However, this is likely to be spent plugging the gaps in generalist advice services caused by cuts to other funding sources, leaving specialist welfare benefits advice unfunded. Once legal aid cuts are introduced, the advice sector will lose at least £100 million a year, so the £20 million fund will make only a very small dent in this shortfall.
The inadequacy of the funding is exacerbated by the rising demand for services that most charities are facing. A recent survey carried out by Justice for All found that nearly 90 per cent of advice charities had more people coming to them for help in the last year, yet over 80 per cent of the same charities also predicted that, despite this increase in demand, they will be able to help many fewer people next year.
Discretionary funding is no alternative to retaining legal aid because it imposes no duty on the Government to fund specialist services and will guarantee nothing for advice agencies. Unless welfare benefit advice is retained within the scope of legal aid, it will limit access to justice and the right of people to enforce their freedoms.
The Department for Work and Pensions already reimburses the Ministry of Justice for the cost of running the tribunals, which was necessary after the huge increase in appeals caused by the introduction of employment and support allowance. It is unclear to me why this approach cannot be extended to cover the cost of independent advice to improve the effectiveness of these same tribunals.
We must do everything possible to protect the most vulnerable people in our society. I therefore urge the House to continue to press the Government to give more concrete assurances that disabled people will be able to access legal aid advice when appealing welfare benefit decisions.
Lord McNally
Nobody is suggesting that if this House wants to send the amendment back, it is not entitled to do so. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Low, said about the importance of people’s Peers. He may know that it is my long-standing opinion that having a party-political label does not somehow lower one’s capacity to take views on legislation. Indeed, for many hours in this House the only people taking a detailed view of legislation are those on the party political Benches. I admit and acknowledge that recent appointments have brought valuable experience to this House.
Although my membership of the other place was brief, I remain at heart a House of Commons man in terms of where—
Lord Low of Dalston
With respect, in my remarks I said that I had no intention of disparaging other Peers. More than once I have gone on record as saying that the contribution of Peers appointed from political parties is indispensable to the effective working of this House. I am certainly not one of those who would like to see the House of Lords a politician-free zone.
Lord McNally
The point is that it is still an appointed House and is an advisory and revisory Chamber. As such, where this House decides to draw stumps on a particular issue is a matter for its judgment. Although financial primacy may occasionally irritate this House, again, as a House of Commons man and as I said earlier, this is not something recently drawn up by the coalition agreement or even by the 1911 Act. It is 300 years of our much-valued history during which kings have lost their heads and their throne in the primacy of the House of Commons on financial matters. Much as I should like to flatter the House on this matter, I still believe that it is important.
I understand the desire to see more legal advice in these cases. As I said in my opening remarks, we believe that in most cases individuals will be able to appeal to the First-tier Tribunal without formal legal assistance. I quoted the president of the tribunal in highlighting that in many cases eliciting additional information from the appellant was the most useful exercise that the tribunal carried out.
I also think that we are not being idle while welfare benefit reforms are being brought forward. A number of proposals currently are being considered across government that should make it easier for people to receive the right provision of entitlement in areas such as welfare, benefits and education. The most notable of these is the universal credit which will help to reduce the scope of error significantly as it makes the whole benefit system simpler and easier to understand. We are working closely with DWP as part of its wider welfare reform programme to improve the quality and effectiveness of its initial decision-making.
As I have said, we have gone into this matter fully and it is not something that we have ducked. From the very beginning, from the first consultation paper, we took a decision that social welfare would be taken out of scope. I know how passionately the noble Lord, Lord Bach, feels about this matter. If he was in my position, it is not the road he would have taken to fulfil his party’s commitment to cut legal aid. That is the nature of things. This is the judgment of the Government.
We are not looking at complex points of law in other areas at the moment. As the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said, the problem is that if you make a concession somebody immediately stands up and says, “Why not look at it in other areas?”. We can build on what the Lord Chancellor promised about talks with the DWP. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, in explaining what he was proposing, illustrated why we have been careful in putting this matter forward. We will look at it carefully and I will draw to the attention of my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor the specific proposals he made in his speech.
As I have said before, we have had a very thorough debate on this. It has certainly been very thoroughly debated in this place over the past year. I believe that it would be better now if the House were to accept the Commons amendments and the noble Lord were to withdraw his.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Benjamin
I would like to ask my noble friend the Minister the following questions. Why is legal aid being withdrawn for advice in cases covering 6,000 children a year who would qualify under the current rules? Will he explain why legal aid is being kept for 35,000 children a year but is being withdrawn from the equivalent of 6,000 children a year? And how, when and where will professional legal provision, not just advice from social workers or the use of community legal advice helplines, be made to ensure that vulnerable children and young people are not left to suffer even more, though no fault of their own? If my noble friend does not have the answers to my questions now, will he have them before Third Reading? Can he give me an assurance that we will have a meeting to discuss what the Government have in mind to replace the protection that will be given to these children? Also, will he undertake a series of meetings to keep myself and those interested informed? Will he agree to make sure that this is a live issue that is retuned to at Third Reading? Finally, will he give us a timeframe and report back to us on when all this will happen?
We cannot abandon children who are in need. It cannot be morally right for us to neglect any child who cries out to us in need. I urge my noble friend to consider the content of these amendments and to respond favourably.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I am not sure why we are discussing all these amendments in the same group as they seem to deal with rather different issues. I should like to take the House back to Amendments 11 and 12 which were introduced at the beginning of the debate. I am sorry that I was not able to take part in the Committee stage of the Bill, but I want to give my support to Amendments 11 and 12, which deal with the removal of welfare benefit cases from the scope of legal aid. Amendment 11 deals with advice and assistance for reviews and appeals to the First-tier Tribunal and Amendment 12 deals with advice and assistance at Second-tier Tribunals in the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, plus representation. I will do so briefly as we have already heard from a heavyweight team of speakers who between them have deployed all the main arguments in favour of the amendments with as much passion, power and eloquence as one could expect. However, there are one or two additional points that I should like to make.
The proposal to remove legal aid for welfare benefit cases represents a triple whammy for disabled people. I do not wish to be unduly disabled-centric about this. The proposal to withdraw legal aid for challenges to welfare benefit decisions affects benefit claimants and recipients generally, but as the noble Lord, Lord Newton, mentioned when quoting from the letter of my noble friend Lord Pannick, some 81 per cent of all benefit cases heard in the First-tier Tribunal are for benefits related to disability, so your Lordships can see why this matter is of such concern to disabled people.
This represents a triple whammy for the following reasons, and noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that there are three of them. First, disabled people are disproportionately out of work. The gap between disabled and non-disabled people’s employment rates has shrunk over the past 10 years or so, but disabled people are still some 60 per cent less likely to be in work than non-disabled people. Secondly, benefits for disabled people are set to be reduced, as the noble Lord, Lord Newton, told us, on a dramatic scale as a result of the Welfare Reform Act. Disability Rights UK puts the figure at at least £3.5 billion. The Joint Committee on Human Rights in its report, published last Thursday on the right of disabled people to independent living, in the context of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities found that reforms to benefits and services risk leaving disabled people without the support that they need to live independently and that restrictions in local authority eligibility criteria for social care support, the replacement of DLA with personal independence payment, the closure of the independent living fund and changes to housing benefit risk interacting in a particularly harmful way for disabled people. So there is less work, much less benefit support and now no legal aid to challenge the mistakes that are bound to be made in such a colossal re-engineering of the benefits system. There is little wonder that it is described as a triple whammy.
People fear that the cumulative impact of these changes will force them out of their homes and local communities and into residential care. In the Government’s legal aid consultation paper, which prefigured this legislation, they stated that legal help for community care should be retained on the ground that,
“the issues at stake in these cases are very important because they can substantially affect the individual's ability to live an independent and fulfilled life”.
Surely, that rationale applies with equal force to disability benefits. The Joint Committee concluded that there is a risk of retrogression in respect of the UK’s obligations under Article 19 of the UN convention—the article on independent living—as a result of the cumulative impact of spending cuts and reforms. It argued that this risks breach of Article 19. If the Government do not look out, with these provisions on legal aid they also risk breaching Article 13 on access to justice, which requires that:
“States Parties shall ensure effective access to justice for persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others”.
Disabled people are twice as likely as non-disabled people to live in poverty. Welfare law is incredibly complex, as your Lordships know. Few of us could credibly claim to understand it. There is no hope of people on benefit, who would count as socially excluded by many measures, being able to cope with such cases without assistance. Someone came to brief us yesterday from Citizens Advice who illustrated just what those cases can involve by holding up a lever arch file stuffed full of case papers. That was only one of three files and by no means untypical.
The views of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and its international obligations should give the Government pause in going down this track of withdrawing legal aid from those in need of taking up welfare benefit cases.
Lord McNally
Cross-Benchers are individuals who make up their own minds. I am entirely right to say that decisions that we have taken in the context of this Bill relate to public expenditure and the need to bring this economy under control. I will also say this, because we have had enough examples in Europe in the past year: if you lose control of your economy you go into another round of public expenditure cuts. Part of the reason why we have been able to have this debate today is the success of the Government in stabilising the economy.
What we have never heard—and I hope that the Cross-Benchers will also put this into their minds when they make their decision—is that members of the party opposite were committed to making a similar round of public expenditure cuts. That is their right in opposition, but they did not have to spell out where or how or when. That is very comfortable in opposition, but I am proud that we in the Government have taken those decisions. I hope that those who are willing to accept that we have taken tough decisions will give us their support in the Lobby tonight.
Crime: Rape
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(12 years, 12 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord McNally
I do not know who is damaging confidence most, if damage has been done. It certainly was not anything that my right honourable friend said. Anybody who analysed what he said would accept that. I was caught by a paragraph in the Stern review, which said:
“We need to look at rape victims as people who have been harmed, whom society has a positive responsibility to help and to protect, aside from the operations of criminal law. Whether the rape is reported or not, whether the case goes forward or not, whether there is a conviction or not, victims still have a right to services that will help them to recover and rebuild their lives”.
That is the policy of Her Majesty’s Government and we will stick to it.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that it was extremely regrettable that the leader of the Labour Party chose to jump on a populist bandwagon the other day in an effort to undermine a Secretary of State who is pursuing some of the more progressive and enlightened policies of this coalition Government?
Lord McNally
I am very grateful for those comments. The Labour Benches and the Labour leader must make their own minds up whether that intervention was opportune. All I know is that this Government and this Secretary of State have put rape support centres on a secure financial footing for the first time, with £10.5 million of grant funding allocated to existing centres across the country over the next three years. Up to £600,000 is also being provided to develop four new rape support centres. We have run a grant-funding programme to award the voluntary community and social enterprise sector up to £30 million in grant funding over three years. We have guaranteed funding of up to £2 million a year for the next three years to fund specialist support for adult victims of human trafficking. We have provided Victim Support with £114 million in grants spreading over the next three years. That is the action that this Government have taken on rape: standing by women, supporting them and giving them the support they need. Everybody realises it is an extremely traumatic experience.
Prisons: OPCAT
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord McNally
The noble Baroness obviously sees herself as the minder of the Front Bench as she often pops up with questions that suggest, usually quite unjustifiably, that I have not answered the question. If she wants it more bluntly, we inherited an economic disaster. Every government department has had to take its hit, including mine; yet there are people within the public service grappling with those realities—in a way, may I say, that the last Government avoided. Those people will continue to do so, and I have every confidence that the UKBA will do that too.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, getting back to the report to which the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred in his original Question, the report raised significant concern about detainees with mental health problems, who often do not receive the support and treatment they need when in prison and are often held for long periods in segregation units. Even when they are held in more appropriate settings, they still experience difficulties in accessing mental health services. Can the Minister tell the House what efforts are being made to ensure that all detainees are able to access the services that they require regardless of where they are detained?
Lord McNally
My Lords, mental illness is being addressed by the Government in a new cross-government mental health strategy that was launched in February. On the segregation units, for prisoners for whom segregation is considered to be the only option an initial segregation health screening must be carried out within two hours of the prisoner segregation. In addition, for prisoners in an open mental health situation a mental health assessment must be undertaken within 24 hours. We are taking mental health in the prison population extremely seriously and we will be bringing forward positive proposals to divert those who need mental healthcare away from prison and into the appropriate conditions.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness O'Cathain
First, I support my noble friend Lord Forsyth on the basis of the reputation of this House, which will be eroded significantly if we carry on like this. Secondly, it is very difficult to do the proper job that those of us who work in Committees have to do here when we find ourselves without even a place to sit, if we come in late to some of the debates here in the House. It is making the working conditions very difficult indeed. Can my noble friends in the Government give us some assurance that this will be looked at seriously, because we cannot go on like this? If we have the same number of Peers coming in over the next few months as we have had over the last few, it would make the whole place intolerable. Again, I support my noble friend in saying that there is no suggestion that the people coming in here will not do the work, but it will just be impossible to get the work done.
Lord Low of Dalston
From the Cross Benches, I must say that that was an absolutely marvellous speech from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. Most ingeniously, he managed to give us a wonderful warm-up for the debates that we shall no doubt have about the reform of this House. However, at this stage of the Bill, on which we have laboured for so many hours, I suggest that it might not be a good idea to go too much further into that debate. At one and the same time, he has not only done that but has also given us a wonderful valedictory on the debates we have had. He pointed to a number of factors that he rightly suggested we would do well to reflect on. The first was the great increase in the number of Members of this place, but I will not elaborate on what he said about all the disadvantages that that can entail. In a very even-handed and fair-minded way, he made some comments about what his side of the House would do well to reflect on: namely, the flexibility with which they have handled the many issues that have been raised in this debate. He also suggested that the brinkmanship, which some of us may have felt has been practised on the other side, may have also gone too far and affected the reputation and regard in which this House is held.
The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has therefore at a stroke pointed to a number of factors that, unless we row back from the place that we have got to, could well contaminate the debates which we are bound to have about the future shape and composition of this House. We would do very well to heed his words and, as we come to the end of these proceedings, to reflect on all the points that he has brought to our attention and perhaps row back a bit from the place that we have got to at the end of this Bill.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, I believe that this is a significant amendment and that the speech that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, made in introducing it impressed the House with its quality and seriousness. He made a number of points that obviously resonated around the Chamber. I support the amendment. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Low, I do not agree that it is not appropriate for this Bill. It is appropriate because of the underlying principles that have been advanced by the Government in relation to why the House of Commons is going to be reduced.
The anxiety that now exists throughout this House is that no regard is being shown to the good workings of the House in the context of the people who are coming here. I make it absolutely clear that every single one of the people who have come has the highest possible quality and regard. This has nothing to do with the quality of the people who have come who are all much admired and many of whom have made a real contribution to the House. It is to do with the good working of the House. If we are having a reduction in the size of the House of Commons in order to make it work well, at the same time, we should not have an increase in the size of the House of Lords that might, for the sorts of reasons referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, make its workings become more difficult. In those circumstances, we support this amendment.
It is important to look briefly at the position of the Government. They justify the reduction in the number of MPs in part by the costs they incur. Mr Nicholas Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, stated during the Second Reading in the other place that:
“We settled on 600 MPs, a relatively modest cut in House numbers of just less than 8%, because it saves money—about £12 million each year”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/9/10; col. 39.]
I am not persuaded that cutting the size of the other place is necessarily wise; nor am I persuaded that the real way to judge whether we should cut the number of MPs is how much they cost; nor am I necessarily persuaded that that is the real motivation. But accepting all those things at face value, it is worth just considering what the cost has been of increasing the size of the House of Lords. Since the general election, the Prime Minister has appointed 116 new Peers. On the basis of an Answer given by the Chairman of Committees in 2009, each Peer costs £168,000 per year. That totals £19,656,000. According to the House Library, the Prime Minister is appointing—