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Carter Review (Legal Aid)

Perhaps self-confidence and even occasional arrogance are seen more often in barristers than in solicitors. I say for the benefit of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Cox), that that applies in only a minority of cases. We are asking the Minister to reconsider the matter calmly and coolly. We hope that she will take that opportunity. If the suggestion that super-casinos in poorer areas of a major city are a means of regeneration can be reconsidered, surely the suggestion of marketisation, without pilot, without practice and without evidence, of something that affects the most vulnerable people in our society can also be reconsidered. I hope that the Minister will have the courage and self-confidence to do so. A solicitor in Hull wrote to me saying:"““Civil liberty and freedom are illusory concepts if you cannot afford legal representation to defend them.””" That is why so many hon. Members are in the Chamber today. Eight firms in Kingston upon Hull undertake publicly funded criminal defence work. They have historically covered towns in the East Riding, such as Beverley, Bridlington, Goole, Driffield, Hornsea and Withernsea. As a result, more than 8,000 East Riding residents received help through legal aid in 2006. Their united opposition to the Carter proposals stems from the fact that the Government have designated 16 urban areas in which solicitors can no longer charge for travel and waiting time. Hull has been declared an urban area, although, oddly, Norwich, Middlesbrough and Doncaster, have not. That has had an impact on out-of-town courts, such as Beverley It is worth making the point that criminal legal aid solicitors are not in a highly paid area of the law. People who enter that sort of work do not do so because they seek riches; they do so because they want to put their legal skills to work to help some of the most vulnerable people in our society. However, they expect to be able to make a living and to sustain their practices. The diversity of supply may be confusing for the Government and perhaps for civil servants. There is complexity all over the country: different areas have different sorts of practices and different specialties are provided in different ways, but that organic system works and has provided stable costs. Many hon. Members cannot understand why the one area of legal aid work where costs have not exploded, is the very area in which the Government are smashing through change and putting at risk good practice provided in a stable, cost-controlled way. That is a question for the Minister to respond to. The firms in Hull went on strike—they were hardly minded to do that—but when that got them nowhere, they announced that they would no longer provide duty solicitor services for courts based outside Hull or take on new cases. That came into effect on 16 April 2007. The firms decided that it did not make economic sense to do such work, despite the fact that it constituted 20 per cent. of their business. The decision had a major impact on their businesses, but they could not afford to do the work. They are not high-earning individuals charging the vast hourly rates that perhaps the former Minister was able to charge as a barrister. The firms decided that they could not go to Beverley, Driffield or Bridlington, and that was not an easy decision. The Minister disputed the figure that the firms concerned would lose 20 per cent. of their income, but the Legal Services Commission admitted that Hull firms were expected to take on the same work load as last year, but for £30,000 less. The previous Minister in the earlier debate tried to make out that those solicitors had pay rises, but, on the contrary, they lost business and were expected to do the same work for £30,000 less when they already had low margins. That decision meant that there was potentially no legal aid provision at Beverley magistrates court in my constituency. The Legal Services Commission, after a short spell using the public offender service in Darlington at heaven knows what cost, arranged for three firms—one from Bridlington and two from Scarborough—to be used. Those firms are now being paid to travel and wait, at a cost of £26 per hour to the taxpayer. When one considers that a case programmed for an 11 o’clock start at Beverley may often not start until 2 pm, we are talking about a significant amount of waiting time. If Hull solicitors come out—the previous Minister attacked them aggressively during the earlier debate—they are expected to sit unpaid in a courtroom while another set of solicitors is paid for waiting and the inevitable delays. Surely it is madness for firms to be brought in from further afield when local firms are willing to do the work.