Housing and Access to Legal Aid

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered housing and access to legal aid.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Main. Before I start, I want to thank the House of Commons Library, which provided me with advice and information for the debate, and the Ealing law centre.

Having been an elected councillor for 25 years before coming to this place, I know how important good-quality, early professional help is in preventing so many issues, but particularly homelessness, indebtedness and other related problems. I also know how important early advice is in preventing problems from escalating, which causes stress to families and costs to the public purse. The sooner and the earlier, the better and the cheaper.

Legal aid for housing advice was withdrawn by the Government between 2012 and 2013. At that time, we saw problems that were already there begin to escalate. More and more people were having problems trying to keep their home and to keep it safe and warm. Demand for social housing was increasing but there was an acute shortage, owing to the right to buy and the ending of Government funding for new council and other social rent housing.

Related to that was the escalation of private sector rents beyond the means of average wage earners, let alone those on low and minimum wages. In my constituency, private sector rents are three to four times those of council rents. There is also the related use of one-term tenancies, as landlords can afford to gain possession of a home and then rent it to someone else who is able to pay a higher rent in the inflated west London housing market. The escalation of zero-hours work and low-paid self-employment also affects the ability of many people on low incomes to pay their rents, while for many people, some of whom are working and some of whom are not, cuts and changes to many benefits and tax credits mean that there is less to live on. Finally, the draconian universal credit rules were introduced, which—apart from providing less to live on than legacy benefits—expect claimants to wait for five weeks with no money at all. In my constituency, five weeks of rent for a family can be anything up to £2,000.

It is therefore hardly surprising that more people need more help with housing and debt, or that landlords can get away with providing more substandard private sector housing, where repairs need catching early before they make homes dangerous. MPs and councillors offer advice, but too often it is left to underfunded organisations and their many advisers, who might not be legally qualified, to help; they might be willing and able, but one often needs legally qualified people, even at an early advice stage.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does she agree that there has been a serious decline in the number of providers of housing legal aid? In my area of Barnsley there are only two, which is simply insufficient. It leaves those most in need isolated and often without the help they need.

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are parts of the country with no appropriate legal advice services. For people in rural areas, having to travel tens of miles to find the appropriate advice, when they are already on a low income, is shocking.

Private Probation Services

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Reeves]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. After I have said a little bit about staff and morale, I will go on to talk a little bit about the financial bailout of CRCs, because it is really important that we recognise the additional money that has gone into propping up these failing companies. However, I will complete my points about staff morale and then move on to that issue.

I want to flag up some of the things that probation staff said in response to the Unison survey. One said:

“Chaotic, frustrating and exhausting. Caseloads are too high and I don’t feel as if I do anything to protect the public anymore, I simply process people. Service users…often comment as to how impersonal our service is now and that they feel telephone contact with offender managers is inadequate. Very sad knowing that I used to do good work.”

Another said:

“I have inherited a new caseload since early 2017—many cases have not been contacted for months—one case today I managed to contact had not heard from anyone at Probation for 16 months in a 24-month suspended sentence. It is not good enough.”

Perhaps the most damning response was this one:

“I feel stressed, de-professionalised and ready to give it up. This government have transformed rehabilitation alright. They have ruined it.”

Probation is ultimately a caring profession and it should be viewed as being a bit like teaching or social work. However, it is clear that those who work within the service are being hugely let down by privatised and profit-driven CRCs. That is summed up by the underlying tension between CRCs meeting contractual obligations and their responding to the needs of offenders, with the latter receiving much less attention than the former. Shockingly the Government are now in a position where, as has already been said, they are bailing out CRCs at a cost of millions of pounds. As things stand, CRCs are paid for the volume of rehabilitation activity.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does she agree that linking payment to demand has not only affected service in times of low requirement, but has made the position of the Work First employees, whom she has described in such detail, much worse, so that many of them are suffering from low morale and are in precarious employment?

[Ellie Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, and she is absolutely right. If a system is introduced whereby people are paid by results, that turns probation into the tick-box exercise that we have seen. It is not focused on rehabilitation and public protection but on making sure that all the right boxes are ticked, so that the CRC can generate profit. Profit-driven rather than people-driven is what has happened to the probation service.

CRCs are paid for the volume of rehabilitation activity that they carry out, rather than for the number of offenders that are supervised. The Ministry of Justice originally claimed that it would transfer the commercial risk of future volumes of rehabilitation activity going down, as well as up, to CRCs. They are paid in a complex way, with different payment bands for the provision of different types of rehabilitation service. However, the current volumes of activity that CRCs are paid for are far below the levels expected when the contracts were awarded.

According to National Audit Office figures, in 2015-16, the activities undertaken by CRCs ranged from 8% to 34% less than originally anticipated. In the first quarter of 2017-18, volumes of activity ranged from 16% to 48% less than anticipated. At the same time, the number of offenders supervised by CRCs increased by 20%. In effect, CRCs have to look after more offenders but do less work.

Moreover, as has become common across many private sector initiatives that have been put out to tender, CRCs underestimated their fixed costs when bidding for contracts. However, the MOJ agreed that the taxpayer, not the private companies, should shoulder that cost as well. So far, this is predicted to have cost the taxpayer an additional £342 million through a bailout of companies that was followed by adjustments made to the payment mechanism last year. It is not as if the MOJ is beyond rectifying the situation, as it has many tools at its disposal. It is entitled to fine the CRCs for poor performance, but it has either waived or allowed CRCs to reinvest 71% of the total fines due to the taxpayer.

One option that the MOJ considered in respect of poor performance by CRCs was to terminate some, or all, of their contracts. However, it decided instead to let the taxpayer take the strain of the failing contracts by amending the contract payment mechanisms to give the CRCs more money. It is clear that the privatisation of probation services has failed, and the overarching point, which repeats itself time and again, is that this is yet another example of Government-led privatisation that has gone wrong. The original arrangement and subsequent contracts were not fit for purpose in the first place, and what we are left with is a system driven by the ideological desire to privatise key elements of our justice system and defend the cause even when it evidently fails.

The idea of a Government bailing out a private sector service when the prison and rehabilitation services are in crisis should concern us all, particularly given that ageing, dilapidated prisons are falling apart—HMP Liverpool has been described as having the worst conditions inspectors have ever seen—services within prisons are grinding to a halt, with mental health assessments taking far too long, prisoners are denied access to education and rehabilitation facilities, and a quarter of prisoners are accommodated in overcrowded conditions. Notwithstanding the cost of CRCs on the public purse, how many more reasons do the Government need before they take the prisons crisis seriously, take control of the rehabilitation of offenders and make our justice system fit for purpose? Rehabilitation in the community, if executed correctly, can be a key factor in reducing reoffending, but how can services that continue to be rated as poor by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation continue to qualify for these massive payments from central Government while not even doing the job they are paid to do? It is time, once and for all, to bring the failed schemes back under public control, so that we can get to the root causes of reoffending and provide rehabilitation services that are fit for purpose.

Legal Aid

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the provision of legal aid.

Thank you, Mr Robertson, for calling me to move the motion in this critical debate on legal aid provision in the United Kingdom. As ever, it is an honour to serve under your chairmanship.

When people lack the money or knowledge to enforce their rights, those rights are worth nothing more than the paper they are written on. It is unacceptable that, in 2017, justice is fast regressing to a system that is not served to all, but instead belongs to those with the deepest pockets. Failings in the legal aid system are taking away people’s ability to defend their rights in practice, which is creating a system where a person’s income or economic status is a key determinant of whose rights matter when they are most needed.

That increasingly worrying situation is the result of a conscious political choice to restrict access. Just as the Labour party was founded more than a century ago to give working people representation in Parliament, legal aid was introduced by Clement Attlee’s pioneering Labour Government in 1949, alongside the pillars of the welfare state, to rebalance the scales of justice. The principle underpinning its creation was the belief that every person should have equal access to, and protection under, the law, regardless of financial position or social status. That was, and still is, a key way to support our ambition for a fairer society.

Since then, legal aid has been a lifeline for the vulnerable. It has funded action to stop justice being available only to the privileged few in a wide range of areas, from housing and family break-ups to benefits assessments. As Lord Bach stated in a Fabian Society investigation of the state of legal aid, which was recently commissioned by the Labour party:

“We will all lean on the law at some point in our lives… an effective legal system in which all can access justice fairly is the cornerstone of a free society…The law guarantees our rights, underlines our duties, and provides an equitable and orderly means of resolving disputes.”

But in all parts of the UK it is becoming harder and harder for the poorest people to access justice. Access to legal aid lawyers continues to become ever more difficult, with the Law Society warning of “legal aid deserts” where there are no legal providers, or just a sole legal provider, for whole regions.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the number of legal aid providers has fallen by 20% since the Government changed the eligibility criteria?

[Mr Sweeney]

Absolutely. I will refer to that statistic later. It is a shocking indictment of the cuts and the attrition of the access available to the weakest in our society, who rely on that point of contact and are otherwise shut out of the legal system altogether. Where in our country someone lives should never affect their ability to access justice, but it does, because of the wide variation in availability of legal aid providers.

Legal aid is often a lifeline, particularly for women, when the case is domestic violence, family law or employment tribunals on equal pay, unfair dismissal or discrimination. In my constituency and across the country, it is clear that we need to relearn just how critical legal aid is as a cornerstone of a civilised society. Although Scotland has a distinctive legal system within the United Kingdom, the Law Society of Scotland recently raised concerns about the sustainability of the legal aid system there, stating that, in particular,

“current rates of payment for legal aid work risk making the provision of legal services to some of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society”

simply “uneconomical”. We already know that gaps are developing in the provision of legal aid in parts of Scotland, and we must work hard to stop those gaps growing. The Law Society of Scotland also said that a lack of investment in legal assistance had made it

“increasingly difficult to maintain a sustainable, high-quality legal assistance system”

across Scotland. It urged crucial investment to halt the ongoing real-terms decrease in legal aid funding.