A Labour lord predicted a ‘prolonged and hard winter for access to justice’ as peers condemned ‘crude’ and ‘ill thought-out’ cuts to legal aid fees in a debate last night.
The House of Lords was debating a motion tabled by Lord Bach, the former legal aid minister, calling for the annulment of the statutory instrument that introduced 10% fee cuts in civil and family legal aid earlier this month.
The motion, which was withdrawn at the end of the debate without a vote, said the rule bringing in the cuts ‘seriously undermines access to justice because it threatens the financial viability of already hard-pressed community legal aid practitioners who carry out an essential service to those least able to afford it, including the most vulnerable in society'.
Bach agreed that there had to be cuts to legal aid, but said the government is cutting ‘too far and too much’ and focusing the cuts on the wrong areas of law.
He said the government’s cuts, which will remove several areas of law from the scope of legal aid, would ‘decimate’ social welfare law and drive out of practice ‘hard working’ and ‘poorly paid’ lawyers that practice in that field. He voiced particular concern about the cuts’ effect on not-for-profit organisations such as the CAB.
Instead, Bach said the government should concentrate on reducing the amount spent on criminal legal aid. He described the government as ‘quite ruthless’ when it comes to civil and family legal aid, and ‘soft as butter’ when it comes to criminal legal aid.
On the 10% cuts, Bach said the government had given insufficient thought to the consequences of its policies, either in human or financial terms. He said: ‘To describe it as a rough and ready figure would be a gross understatement. It is a crude and ill-thought-out measure with no evidential justification whatever.’
‘It is as though they have no sense at all of the fantastic value social welfare law has in our society, allowing, at comparatively cheap costs, early advice for many of those who could not possibly afford to get it, with the result that issues are solved and the courts are not full of hopeless cases and litigants in person,’ said Bach.
Crossbench peer and Bar Standards Board chair Lady Deech spoke on the effect the cuts would have on reducing the diversity of the legal profession. She said the cuts ‘will be felt hardest by women and black and ethnic minority barristers, who are disproportionately represented in dependence on legal aid'.
Deech and other peers also voiced concern about damage to children who are the subject of court orders, due to the reduction in experts’ fees. Reducing legal aid for judicial review and reforming the law on maintenance on divorce would be more constructive ways to save money, she said.
On judicial review Deech said: ‘There should be a push back against the notion that human rights mean that any and every decision can be judicially reviewed at great cost to the public. As far as human rights, the real denial of those is to the middle classes, who are neither poor enough to be eligible for legal aid nor can afford to go to law at their own expense. They are the real victims, who cannot access justice.’
On divorce law she said: ‘As long as we have our Rolls-Royce discretionary system of settling property issues on divorce, couples will continue to waste sums they can ill afford - sometimes amounting to as much as the property in dispute - on deciding who gets what.’
In anticipation of the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill reaching the Lords, Labour peer Lord Beecham said the debate was a ‘tawdry harbinger of what is very likely to be a prolonged and hard winter for access to justice’.
Using as an example the fees paid to lawyers at Newcastle Law Centre and the impact the cuts could have on them, he said: ‘By no stretch of the imagination could these be described as fat cat lawyers - some might regard them as potentially half-starved lawyers.’
For the government Lord McNally responded to Beecham’s comments, saying: ‘There would be a long hard winter if this government did not face up to the spending cuts that are needed.’ McNally said the government accepted that the reforms may be particularly challenging to the not-for-profit sector, and highlighted the funding that had been provided by the government to help the sector adapt, as well a further £20m to come.
Speaking to the Gazette after the debate, Bach said: ‘The government was undoubtedly on the back foot. It couldn’t justify why it was cutting social welfare law; or argue against the fact that solicitors would go out of business because of the cuts; or explain where people who could not afford to go to law were going to get legal advice from.’
Bach said he hoped there would be ‘some movement’ from coalition MPs who are opposed to the LASPO as the bill enters its report and third reading in the House of Commons. And, looking to the when the bill enters the Upper House, he said: ‘If the bill remains as it is, we intend to fight it hard when it comes to the Lords.’
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