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Legal Aid

As the Minister heard, I introduced what I said and I was specific, by saying that she has introduced a revision to the Carter review. Some measures will come in later and there will be pilots in some urban areas first. There is a delay for further consultation on other areas, such as family law, mental health and so on. I said that at the beginning. I am outlining the consequences of the most recent proposals—in this case, in the criminal sector. The Minister will agree that nothing has come since then. I am putting the case that we need a system that is more flexible as well as generally better funded. Lawyers specialising in mental health cases—an area that is to be reconsidered and re-consulted upon—might need to consult more than once when examining the same client, because, as the Minister knows as well as I do, mental health patients often have recurrent conditions that mean that they have to be visited over and over again. I am putting to the Minister the case, which was also put by the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman, that since her November proposals the citizens advice bureaux have been concerned, and still were at the meeting the other day, that many of them will have either to close or to merge inappropriately. In Hammersmith and Fulham there is a federation of local providers, and I am not against such things. A local federation in an urban area is a good thing; however, it is not such a good thing in a rural area, where having a legal aid provider five miles from one’s house is no good if it deals only with crime and housing and not with the issue that one wants to take to it. The lack of London weighting will be a particular problem for constituencies such as mine, where a third of the community comes from black and minority ethnic communities and where three quarters of people live in rented housing, and so on. If the Minister is concerned that we are misrepresenting the case, she must re-examine the impact assessment published by her Department in December. Her Department’s figures—not mine—make the point that the introduction of a standard fixed fee will be most acutely felt in London and by not-for-profit providers. Some 67.79 per cent. of providers in London and 55.5 per cent of not-for-profit providers will experience a decrease in legal aid income. The same thing applies, although the figures involved are smaller, in Reading, Cambridge and Bristol. Other people have done assessments since November—these are not our figures. I hope that the Minister will tell us that the impact assessment will be taken into account, because if it is true, it must betoken an adverse consequence. When the current consultation is over, I hope that we will be given an answer that says that that adverse effect will not take place.