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Community Legal Service (Funding) (Counsel in Family Proceedings) (Amendment) Order 2009

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for today’s lively and interesting debate and, in particular, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for bringing the Committee’s attention to the important issue of legal aid. We should debate it as a House more often than we do. No one who has listened to the debate could fail to be impressed by the expertise not only of the noble and learned Baroness but also of all those who have spoken so far. Legal aid funds help all kinds of people in all kinds of situations: the young man suspected of burglary, the elderly woman threatened with eviction, the looked-after child being offered a new life through adoption and the overburdened mother struggling with debts. Too often, legal aid is seen as being just about courts; it is not. It is also about getting the advice that you need at as early a stage as possible, so that your case does not necessarily end up in court. It is about making sure that court is the last resort—this is particularly true in family law—and not the first port of call. At the risk of incurring the wrath of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, early on in my speech, I draw to the Committee’s attention a recent independent report, hot off the press, on international comparisons of legal aid spend in England and Wales. It is a proper academic report and does not all go one way. While it is not something that I intend to boast about, particularly before this group of noble Lords gathered today, it shows something that is undoubtedly true: that England and Wales has one of the highest per capita legal aid spends in the world. The report confirms that, as a result of higher case volumes and higher average costs per case, legal aid expenditure per head of population in England and Wales is infinitely higher than in other countries, including France, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden—which all have different systems from ours—and Australia and Canada.