Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Heidi Alexander Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I feel somewhat unqualified to take part in this debate, because we have heard from a lot of lawyers, and I confess to not being a lawyer. I must admit that I am marrying one at the beginning of August, but he is not affected by these changes.

I will speak about the changes to legal aid and the new provisions on knife crime. I do not stand here today to claim that the current system of legal aid is perfect, because it is not. The Opposition recognise that, and we made a commitment in our manifesto to reforming it, but reforming the system is different from decimating it, and that is what the Government propose to do. This Bill will restrict access to justice to those who can afford to pay, and it will leave some of our poorest and most vulnerable citizens completely defenceless. It is a shameful Bill, and I hope that it will change hugely as it progresses through Parliament.

One of the first occasions on which I had reason to think about the availability of legal aid was when I was a local councillor in Lewisham. I was the cabinet member for regeneration, and I led the council’s work to try to find a new Travellers site. Towards the end of the process, the authority’s decision to build a new site was subject to a judicial review challenge that was funded by legal aid.

I remember hearing how an elderly woman of limited means had been persuaded by her neighbours to front the challenge, and I remember being annoyed by that, questioning in my own mind whether it was right, but as time passed I concluded that it was right: right, because there is a fundamental principle at stake, and right that, irrespective of somebody’s means, they can challenge with the appropriate legal advice and assistance a decision that the state has taken.

Although I appreciate the Government’s plan to retain legal aid for such situations, I think that the principle has to apply across the board. Taking whole areas of social welfare law out of the scope of civil legal aid means that hundreds of thousands of people will not be able to secure the legal advice that they need on housing, education and benefits.

Many decisions challenged using legal aid are taken by the state. They include decisions not to award benefits or to provide housing, and some of that work requires a detailed understanding of the law, yet the Government seem to suggest that people will be able to go it alone. I honestly cannot see how that will work.

Every fortnight I hold my advice surgery, to which many people come with plastic bags full of paperwork, and I spend hours sifting through it with them to find the key document, and to understand what stage of the process they are at and whether they have a right to appeal against a decision. Those people are not the people for whom DIY justice, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) described it, is an option.

A few months ago I visited Morrison Spowart, a small firm of legal aid solicitors in my constituency. Solicitors at the firm are paid generally between £25,000 and £30,000. They are not City lawyers earning £100,000, but they do change people’s lives, and they talked me through a case in which a legal aid fee of £174 enabled them to overturn a council decision not to house a family, thereby avoiding a whole number of knock-on costs to the public purse, not to mention the misery that the decision would have caused the parents and children.

Members will know that organisation after organisation has sent out briefings for this Second Reading debate, talking about the false economy of these cuts to legal aid. The list of organisations that make the argument is a long one: the Law Society, Liberty, Shelter, Citizens Advice, the Law Centres Federation and the Child Poverty Action Group. I ask the Minister: are they all wrong? The Government have not listened to the consultation’s respondents, and, as I have already said, the Bill is shameful given what it proposes to do to access to justice.

In the final minute and a half of my speech, I turn to the new provisions on knife crime and the new offence of possessing a knife in aggravated circumstances. I represent a constituency where lives have been devastated by knife crime, and the Government will have to do much better than this Bill.

Last year I researched on YouTube the videos that gangs put up. Young men—probably boys, to be honest—brandish knives on the internet and wave them around in front of the camera as if they are just cigarettes. Tens of thousands of people have viewed these videos and I wonder whether that would qualify as aggravating circumstances. The videos glorify knife crime and the intimidating and aggressive violence that accompanies it, so I ask the Minister to think about such incidents and whether any change can be made to the law to try to tackle the culture that exists around the use of knives—

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Heidi Alexander]

I only have 30 seconds and many other hon. Members wish to speak—

[Robert Halfon]

I will not be able to speak.

[Heidi Alexander]

In that case, I will give way.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has only just come into the Chamber.

[Robert Halfon]

I beg your pardon, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Is the hon. Lady aware that knives are often sold on the internet priced with British pound signs and does she agree that action needs to be taken to combat that?

[Heidi Alexander]

Some of the things that we see on the internet are of huge concern. I tried to get YouTube to take those videos down, but I did not really have a hope in hell of it doing so. I tried to interest Home Office Ministers in the issue and failed. We have to look at what is out there in cyberspace in order to tackle these issues. If anything will entice someone to get involved in knife crime, it might be the idea that they will get their 30 seconds of glory on the internet with 16,000 people looking at their video. Can we think about other ways to tackle this issue?

I do not think that the provisions in the Bill on knife crime will get to the nub of the problem. I cannot see what will really change as a result of these proposals. While I am inclined to support a mandatory sentence for possession of a knife in aggravated circumstances, I question what will really change.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—