Legal aid

Debate between Julian Lewis and Karen Buck

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Ms Buck]

That is absolutely right, and I will deal with family law in a moment.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I do believe that the legal aid budget in this country is huge in comparison with those in other European countries, but I have had representations from the New Forest citizens advice bureau to say that it has two part-time caseworkers and it is wondering where its most vulnerable clients will go if that service is cut back in parallel with cutbacks in legal aid.

[Ms Buck]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point; it will be one of the issues that I address. There is an argument in addition to the argument about how much we fund legal aid by. There is consensus that the budget cannot expand indefinitely, but there are still issues about the speed at which and the manner in which legal aid funding is withdrawn and the impact that that could have on providers.

I think that value for money was also at the heart of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. Is it not the case that expenditure on legal aid and advice services does provide value for money, because it ensures that public services and others operate effectively and well, that errors are corrected and that public law is constantly challenged? It also helps people to redress wrongs and ensures that the take-up of benefits and other services is done properly.

The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, among other organisations, convincingly argues that there is a very poor business case for what the Government propose. Taking so much social welfare out of the scope of legal aid will undermine value for money. It is argued that between £2 and £10 is saved for every pound invested in the legal aid budget. An analysis based on data from the civil and social justice survey and on Legal Services Commission outcomes data estimates a saving of £2 for every £1 spent in relation to housing, £3 for every £1 spent on debt advice, £8.80 for every £1 spent on benefits advice and £7 for every £1 spent in relation to employment. That is besides the benefit to the individual; 80% of social welfare legal aid cases record positive outcomes for the clients.

It is impossible in a limited time—I want other hon. Members to have an opportunity to contribute to the debate—to pay proper attention to every area of civil law affected by the proposals, so I shall make just a few remarks on the areas that cause me greatest concern.

In relation to family law, no one disputes the value of mediation or the fact that in cases that go to court, the court action can have an extremely damaging impact on the families. However, relying on mediation is not always an option. It is not always the case that both partners are prepared to go to mediation. Also, it implies that there is a willingness to compromise and that the compromise should be somewhere around the middle of the argument about child welfare, maintenance or whatever. That ignores the fact that in many instances, one partner or the other has behaved excessively badly or is making unrealistic demands; indeed, it encourages them to make such demands.

Good and powerful cases have been raised by the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, and I shall read the details of two into the record as examples. One case study states:

“I am advising a client who is seeking contact with his children. The children’s mother has remarried and has a new child with her husband. She seeks to marginalize our client from the children’s lives, has denied contact, refuses to engage in mediation and has moved to a secret address. The case requires a preliminary application to ascertain the children’s whereabouts and once identified an application for contact. Clearly mediation is impossible and without early advice the client will have absolutely no idea how to re-establish contact with his children. His options would be to try to find them through any means available to him which would not be helpful or to give up which would deny the children the right to have a relationship with their father. With early advice, the application for disclosure would be made by solicitors and once the children’s whereabouts were identified a tactical attempt to negotiate and encourage mediation…would take place. This particular client has some learning difficulties and to navigate the court system as a litigant in person would almost certainly be impossible and any attempts made would be hugely time consuming.”

The other case study states:

“I am advising a client. He has 4 children and has shared residence for all those and is very active in their lives. We have helped him in the past with residence issues with the benefit of legal aid…He is now facing an application by one of the Mothers to take his 14 year old daughter to New Zealand where the Mother has a 2 year work contract. If this is allowed, from seeing his daughter half the week he will be lucky to see her in the holidays and will not be able to afford air fares…In future this client will have to deal with this on his own. This will lead to him probably giving up on fighting the application.”

Even in cases in which domestic violence is not an issue, without legal aid there are real dangers that individuals, particularly those who have difficulty in being sufficiently articulate or confident to navigate the courts system, will lose access to their children.