Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

Like other noble Lords, I wish to support what has been said by all speakers so far in this short debate. We are talking not merely about reinstatement of legal aid but about adding to legal aid issues that have not yet been considered. In the first debate this afternoon, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred to his experience, which I share. When I and many others in this House started practising the law, there were many things that we had not envisaged that we now take to be absolutely basic rights. For example, equalities legislation, the equality of women and the right to equal pay in the workplace for equal work had barely started when I was called to the Bar in 1970. We must, therefore, keep the door open for such issues to be added to legal aid.

The final point is a question to my noble friend the Minister. Why are the Government opposed to addition or reinstatement? The only informed speculation, if I can call it that, which I have heard on the reasons for this provision is that Ministers feel that they would avoid being lobbied by outside interest groups if this were a one-way-only provision. Surely being lobbied is something that we expect and welcome in political life in this country, and Ministers of the Crown and their officials should be robust enough to resist if the lobbying lacks merit. If the Minister is to resist the spirit of the amendments this afternoon, the House would be grateful for a coherent set of reasons why.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, I was exhilarated, enthralled and deeply flattered by the reference made by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, to my existence 50 years ago. It is surprising that he should remember that I was there at all, let alone the hackneyed clichés that I was given to in those days.

I shall speak to this amendment, and to Amendment 23, if I may. Their effect would be to give the lie to the canard, which may well be suspected by many people, that the Government are a liquidator of legal aid. The first part of Schedule 1 is the remnant, remainder and rump of what was once a splendid system created in 1949. I make no apology for reminding the House that in 1949 the financial condition of Britain, having fought and won a dreadful war, at massive expense, was even more parlous than it is today. Yet the Government did exactly that. They sent John Maynard Keynes to the United States to negotiate, on very hard terms, a massive loan that had harsh conditions, the last instalments of which were repaid only some six or seven years ago. That was the situation and it would have been easy for the Government of the day to have said, “Justice is a magnificent thing—it is a noble ideal—but in our weakened condition we simply cannot afford it”. They did not say that, to their eternal credit. The first point to be made is that the amendments give the lie to the idea that the present Government are trying to reduce legal aid and that they are a liquidator of everything that legal aid fundamentally represents. That is neither the attitude nor the intention of the Government.