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Carter Review (Legal Aid)

I am not a lawyer, and neither am I here to represent the producer interest—to use a rather distasteful piece of jargon. I want to talk about the thousands of people whom I have dealt with in my 20 years of representing one of the poorest areas of the country, who would have faced disaster in their personal lives, with housing and access to their children, for example, without receiving quality legal advice that was paid for by legal aid. In the inner city, legal aid is not a luxury frill, but a pillar of the welfare state. I shall speak specifically about the plight of black and minority ethnic solicitors, partly because it sheds a light on what is problematic about this whole reform. My hon. Friend the Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley) disputed whether the Carter reforms will have an unfair impact on black and minority ethnic solicitors. Of course, we do not really know, which is why some of us are calling for a pilot scheme, at least, or a proper race impact study. People who should know, however, such as the Law Society and different bodies that represent black and Asian solicitors and lawyers, say that black and ethnic minority solicitors will be decimated by the Carter proposals. That is also what the Committee’s report says. In their response to the report, the Government say:"““The evidence in the regulatory impact assessments suggests that the impact of some of the civil, family and immigration fee ""schemes on BME managed providers is somewhat greater than that on white-managed firms.””" I must tell my hon. Friend that the people whom I know who were involved in fashioning the Carter reforms concede freely, in private, that of course they will have a disproportionate impact on black and minority ethnic firms. That is why I asked whether he, with his particular family background, thinks that is a price worth paying. Some Members might ask whether it really matters that black and minority ethnic solicitors will be decimated if it means that taxpayers in York will pay less tax. I say that it does matter, for several reasons. Black and minority ethnic solicitors, especially those in London—I accept that the issue might look different in inner-city Brixton, Hackney and Islington than it does in York—add value to our legal and justice system. Many members of the ethnic community prefer, rightly or wrongly, to go to such solicitors. My hon. Friend will remember the Lawrence case; a brilliant minority ethnic solicitor took that case and drove it forward, when there was not necessarily any money in it, and made sure that Doreen Lawrence got justice for her dead son. She chose that brilliant solicitor, but she might no longer have that choice under the proposals that my hon. Friend supports. Black and minority ethnic solicitors add value through their language skills, their understanding of the community and because some members of the community are more willing to go to them than others. In Asian communities in Blackburn, for example, many Muslim women are trying to pursue divorces, and they simply would not go to a white, male solicitor. They want to go to a solicitor with whom they feel comfortable. Black and minority ethnic solicitors bring added value, but if we remove the choice to go to them by decimating the profession, we will affect people’s access to justice. That is the basis of the court case that the Government currently face.