Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Joan Ruddock Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes]

That would be inappropriate, and I hope that it would not happen. There should be safeguards.

I want to be constructive about how we might deal with the matter. First, when there is a helpline, as there is already, there should be monitoring not just in theory by the Government. Just as we have lay visitors at police stations and so on, there should be a facility for Members of Parliament and others—perhaps a representative group, such as the Select Committee that my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed chairs—to be able to take part in seeing how the telephone helpline works. There will always be a telephone line, and I am not against that as an option, but it should be monitored by Parliament and Members of Parliament, as well as by the Government.

Secondly, I would be much more comfortable if somewhere was available in each region, rather than having to go through a national central location. If there was someone with the capability of knowing local circumstances, that would be hugely preferable. I hope that the Minister will be positive in his response to our concerns, and I hope that we will be given some encouragement that they will be not just listened to, but responded to at the first opportunity.

[Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the fact that I will have to leave the Chamber soon after I have spoken. I am taking part in the Royal Society’s parliamentary pairing scheme.

I want to support some of the amendments tabled by Labour Front Benchers, and by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) and my hon. Friend the. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue). I am here solely because of constituents who have written to me, and it is their words and their concerns that I wish to bring to the Chamber today. My hon. Friend made an important and informative speech, but I will make a much simpler speech, about my constituents and my relationship with them.

I have been contacted not by the 20,000 names on my database of people for whom we have been providing help, but by the people who help them—those who look to family proceedings and the care of children, and who care for those with mental health problems, and the whole range of welfare associations and advice centres. Those workers know from their experience the limits of their own abilities to assist my constituents and, like me, know the limits of my abilities to assist my constituents. It is they who are aware of how much difficulty people will face if the Bill is enacted.

The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) spoke about the telephone gateway. Recently I tried to use uSwitch. I rang it because I accepted the Government’s message to switch my energy company. I had all the papers in line as I sat at a desk with a landline. I called up and had a discussion, but when I was asked for my S number, I asked where I was likely to find that in the papers that I had already described. The person at the other end was unable to tell me. That should have been a simple process for a middle-class educated person.

We make e-mail addresses and phone numbers available to constituents, so why, in my constituency and those of the right hon. Gentleman and so many other right hon. and hon. Members, do constituents come to see us in person? The majority of my constituents do not come in person, but the 20, 30 or 40 people at every constituency surgery do not feel able to deal with their problems over the telephone. Although I have extremely experienced and competent caseworkers, with the best will in the world they often have to say to those who call up, “I’m sorry, but I can’t get to the bottom of your problem unless you bring me the paperwork, and I see you face to face.”

[Simon Hughes]

I want to endorse one point, and to amplify it. I gave an example of someone from abroad, but in my experience, even people who were born and brought up here and have spent all their life here often need two, three or four visits before we can sort out what the issues are and get them on their way. It is not one-off bits of advice that they need.

[Joan Ruddock]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. This is key to the service that we provide as Members of Parliament. I know that Government Members have argued that we should not provide these services for our constituents, but I believe that we should, and I want to continue to do so.

Sometimes a vulnerable, sick and disabled person who has been wrongly deprived of sickness or disability benefits comes to me. I can say, “This should happen,” “That should happen,” “Yes, there ought to be a review,” or, “There ought to be an appeal.” However, I cannot assemble the evidence with that person. I do not have people with many hours to spend on each individual case who can put together the paperwork and the arguments and do the research. At the end of the day, that expert job is done by an advice person in an agency, who will refer the person to a solicitor, who will provide them with legal aid—or we might refer them directly. That service is absolutely vital, and if the person does not have it, they are totally denied justice.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Is the right hon. Lady aware of any incidents of people coming in with multiple issues, some of which will qualify for legal aid and some of which will not, but they are intertwined because of the person’s situation? Does she think that clarification is needed within the legal aid system in order to have all those issues dealt with rather than excluding some of them?

[Joan Ruddock]

I certainly do, but of course the challenge for us now is not to be able to make things better but to try to save things from getting so much worse. That is the difficult situation that we are in.

There are tenants who are undoubtedly unfairly deprived of housing benefit, and home owners who are unfairly deprived of help with mortgage interest payments. They can get no assistance in the Government’s new system. In cases of housing disrepair I can write to the council or to the housing association, and very often I can get a remedy with my own resources and caseworkers. Every so often, though, there is a blank refusal by the council to deal with situations involving property that I deem unfit for human habitation, and I cannot persuade it otherwise because of the vast amounts of money involved or the difficulties of transferring people when it has tens of thousands on its waiting list. At that point a legal challenge is necessary—and that is what will be denied people in future.

[Glenda Jackson]

I am sure that in my right hon. Friend’s constituency, as in mine, there is also the increasing problem of absentee landlords in the private sector who hand over the management of their properties to a managing agent, when often there is no management at all. It is virtually impossible for the individual who is suffering to try to pin down those people’s legal responsibilities without some kind of knowledge and support.

[Joan Ruddock]

I could not agree more. That is so often the case, and often only the threat of legal action can even get us to the point of knowing who we are trying to deal with. That is an essential point.

Then there are those who are unlawfully evicted, and also those who may even be lawfully evicted, but could not or should not be evicted if they had an opportunity to contest the eviction. This morning we had a call from a family of five with the bailiffs at the door. If it had been a couple of days earlier, they could have been sent to a solicitor. We know about the case now, and the eviction could have been challenged. The family could have been kept in that home, although they would have had to be put under a stringent regime of dealing with their financial difficulties, which came about because things had gone wrong with their housing benefit. In future, they would not be able to get the assistance that they so badly needed, and they would therefore, as now, present themselves and cost the state a lot more money, if they could get the help at all.

Then there are the workers who are dismissed and found possibly to have a case for unfair dismissal. Under the Government’s proposals, they could get assistance only if they were able to claim discrimination. My constituency is hugely multicultural. Will people have to be told, “Can you possibly dress this up as discrimination, so that you can get the legal assistance that you will otherwise be denied”? We do not want to have to go down that path.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.

[Joan Ruddock]

There are real differences, I should tell the Minister. If he does not understand indices of deprivation, or the differences between constituencies in this country, I really do not think that he is fit for ministerial office.

Let me end by citing two other types of case, to which I hope that the Minister will listen carefully. I have a constituent whose sister died in Africa. Her young child was brought to Britain with a visitor, and he stayed here because his aunt is the only person who is prepared to take care of him. Lewisham social services want to see that child legally adopted, and the Government are very keen on adoption. However, the child has no legal status in this country. Such cases are complicated when it comes to getting all the paperwork together and arguing the case to the immigration authorities, which have already turned down my constituent’s case once. That is the kind of case that requires legal assistance.

The second case involves a trafficked woman, and it is one of the worst cases that I have ever had. She was trafficked here as a teenager, was raped repeatedly and gave birth to twins. She has never had her immigration status regularised. She cannot conceivably be sent back to Africa now, having been here for 12 years. These are the kinds of case that will be totally denied justice under the Government’s proposals. I appeal to the Minister, on behalf of my constituents and all those who work in advice services in Lewisham and elsewhere, to think again and not just to sit there laughing, as he is at the moment.

[Simon Reevell (Dewsbury) (Con)]

I too should declare an interest, in that I have practised at the criminal Bar since 1990.

I congratulate the Minister on at least having the decency to bring in clause 12 through primary legislation, unlike the previous Government, who sought to bring in such a measure through secondary legislation until they were prevented from doing so by the High Court. I am afraid, however, that that is the limit of my congratulations, because—