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Carter Review (Legal Aid)

I will be brief, because I want to ensure that everybody gets in. The attendance here, the volume of correspondence and the briefings that we have had indicate just how much of a crisis currently surrounds legal aid. Crucially, the issue is access to justice for the very poorest and most vulnerable people in our society. The comments of each Member who has spoken have reflected that point. I start from the point of view that if we deny people access to justice because they cannot get legal aid, and if they do not get a fair hearing in divorce, immigration, housing or criminal cases, we are effectively saying that they are not good enough to get any kind of justice. If we believe that the law is there to bring about justice and should have some degree of equality in its operation, we must be prepared as a society to spend a great deal of money on legal aid to ensure equality of representation when a case finally gets to court. I represent an inner-city London constituency, which, like those of my hon. Friends the Members for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), has the perverse characteristics of fantastically fast-rising house, land and business prices, very high costs of running any business and an increasing sense of isolation and deprivation among many people. In the midst of all that, legal aid firms face a combination of factors. One is lower income, another is greater demand on them and yet another the people who end up in our advice bureaux. I was doing an advice bureau this morning for people with really serious problems. I am sure that all Members do this: we ask someone in an immigration case who their solicitor is and they say, ““Haven’t got one. Don’t know where to get one. What can I do about it?”” I sometimes then start ringing round local solicitors to get them to take cases on. It is not the function of an MP to go round finding solicitors for people—it ought to be a relatively simple process. I would be grateful if the Minister considered in her reply the related issue of access to the advice that goes with legal aid. She can write to me on it if she prefers. I find that people increasingly get into all kinds of serious legal problems on housing, immigration, divorce and so on because they do not have adequate access to basic advice in the first place. Funding for people’s rights groups, citizens advice bureaux or whatever there happens to be in a given locality is important. The Select Committee described well in its report a lot of the issues involved. Its points should be read carefully, such as the one that it was breathtakingly risky to go ahead with the reforms. I took part in the debate in this Chamber a few months ago, and in today’s debate there is a sense of déjà vu plus. We are all making more or less the same speeches, but we are six months further on and have the experience of what has happened in our communities as a result of the changes. I shall quote from a letter that I have received from Islington Law Centre, which shows one of the reasons why legal aid is at crisis point. The letter urges me to get involved in the debate, which I am happy to do. The law centre is very good and the people there work incredibly hard. Nobody there is particularly well paid and they are totally dedicated, just like most legal aid solicitors all over the place. I do not draw a distinction between somebody who works in a law centre and somebody who works in a legal aid firm—they usually have an equal commitment to the community. The issue of funding is serious, and the letter states:"““While general inflation has risen by 43 per cent. since 1993, legal aid rates have been increased by less than 10 per cent.””" Ruth Hayes, who wrote the letter, says:"““I started work at the Law Centre in 2001, and we have received an inflationary increase in our legal aid rate only once ""since I have been here—5 years ago. As we have not received an inflationary increase from any of our other funders, it is a massive struggle every year to maintain our services.””" I know that, because I ring up the staff to ask them to see people who cannot get a lawyer anywhere else, and they have a problem dealing with such cases. It is up to Parliament to do something about that, and I hope that the Government are listening to such concerns and understanding them. I have a letter from another firm, which is quite well known and not local to me. It points out:"““As things stand we have already taken steps to shed staff in our Housing, Community Care, Family (including Children cases) and Mental Health Departments.””" That is the story for legal aid firms across London. The big firms that do a proportion of legal aid cases are continuing to do so only because they can cross-subsidise within the firm—not because there is sufficient funding but because they can afford to. However, I have a number of legal aid solicitors’ firms in my constituency, as I am sure colleagues do, in which sometimes as much as 90 per cent. of the work is on legal aid. If the cuts go on, they will have to close down and we will lose the benefit of them. After the last debate, I took the opportunity of writing to every solicitor’s practice in my constituency. I sent them a questionnaire and asked them to outline what they did, whether they had signed the new contract, what they thought the effect would be on their clients and whether they would be prepared to take part in a repeat exercise in a few months’ time. Many companies replied. All of those that replied had signed the contract, but they pointed out that they had been unwilling to do so, it was done at the point of a gun and so on. They did not do so willingly. On 16 May, Deighton Guedalla and Company replied to my questionnaire. I asked what the effect of the new regime was likely to be on finances, training and so on, and the company replied:"““Effect is likely to be adverse, and is already felt as such in terms of uncertainty which makes future planning almost impossible. We are uncertain whether and for how long we can survive.””" Deighton Guedalla is a good, effective local company. I could read out all the survey reports, because they say much the same kind of thing. Colleagues may have done similar surveys of local firms in their constituency. I have a quote from Islington Peoples Rights, which is a very effective, popular voluntary organisation. It has a legal aid contract. My questionnaire asked:"““What is likely to be the effect on your clients?””" The reply was:"““Lack of support to enforce their rights, financial exclusion, further marginalised communities, negative effects on improving child poverty.””" There are so many more responses like that one. I had a letter from a local legal aid solicitor, Greg Foxsmith, who referred to a meeting of legal aid lawyers that he had attended the day before in Conway Hall, at which it was said that allegations about the top 10 high-earning barristers had been used to an absurd degree by the media and others who go on and on about the gravy train for fat-cat lawyers. I do not doubt that there are fat-cat lawyers. I do not doubt that those who represent the Beckhams and other such people in this world probably make a lot of money. There is a difference between the world of the rich and the famous for being famous—those who are famous because of their barrister—and the reality of life for ordinary people who we have been sent to Parliament to represent. I wish that we could separate the two and seriously review the consequences of the changes that have been introduced. Access to Justice Alliance set out a good summary of the issue. It asked, what is the point of legal aid, and said that it was the supply of advice, accessibility of legal aid services to all ethnic groups, local networks of organisations that provide help and support to vulnerable people, and quality of advice. Given that good advice and those sound points, it is important that the Government recognise that the Carter review came along, there were warnings about problems, and problems occurred. There was a debate in this very Chamber when prescient warnings were given. The Select Committee published a report—and a very good report it is, too—and here we are again, having another debate. We have a new Minister. I compliment her and congratulate her on her appointment. She has a real chance to do something about the situation by listening to those who work day to day in this field, by understanding the problems that they face, and by understanding that, in the present atmosphere, the reality is that the people who are being short-changed and treated the worst are those who have already been short-changed and treated the worst by society as a whole. If we are here for justice, we must ensure equality of access to justice. That is what I want. That is why I ask the Minister to think seriously about the Government’s response to the Select Committee report, and to give us some hope when she replies that there will be a rethink on the contract and the funding, and on accessibility to advice services in constituencies and communities. I shall conclude with this point. I have represented Islington, North since 1983. When I was first elected, the borough had three law centres, two citizens advice bureaux, a large number of community advice organisations and an effective welfare rights organisation run by the local authority. In other words, many people could get access to advice. Therefore, benefit take-up rates and all the other things that go with that were high. The borough now has one law centre, no citizens advice bureau—the last one just closed—Islington Peoples Rights, which does its best but is flooded by demand, and legal aid solicitors who do their best. I suspect that many people, particularly those whose first language is not English, have no access to any advice or the benefits that would come if they were to get advice, and no access to legal aid because of the shortage of legal aid provision. It is up to us, as Labour Government Members, to ensure that those people in our society do not go under-represented and short-changed.