---

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

There will always be a place for an independent Bar with highly specialist, skilled barristers. However, I do not agree with the noble Lord in making this distinction between solicitors and barristers. In serious family law work now, in public law and in private law—the most serious, in my view, is always public law—solicitors play a much greater and important role in these difficult and sensitive cases. It is absurd that they should be paid less than barristers for the same work. There is not much between the noble Lord and me, but it is an important principle that should have been brought in many years ago. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, agrees with me on this matter at least. The changes were welcomed by the Association of Lawyers for Children, about which we heard earlier. We are acutely aware that legal aid lawyers will be feeling the effects of the recession in the same way as everyone else, but the final scheme that we published in October will allow us to achieve a reasonable balance between complexity and value for money which will help sustain access to quality legal services for the most vulnerable in our society. On family matters, we dispute strongly that vulnerable children will not get the representation they need and that people will go unrepresented. The fee scheme proposals do not involve cuts to the services received by children and families. Clients will of course continue to receive legal assistance through the legal aid scheme as they do now. The majority of this work is conducted by solicitors, who will see significantly increased fees. Under the new scheme, we would expect more solicitors to start doing their own advocacy or to increase the amount of advocacy they already do so well. We are confident that the fees we are offering are fair and will ensure that people will be able to receive the legal advice and assistance they need. The new fee scheme moves directly more money into public law cases to ensure that children and adults at risk of abuse take the highest priority for legal services. The fee schemes do not represent cuts to the family legal budget or to the services received by children and families. As I say, spending across all levels of family legal aid has increased dramatically. During that same period, the number of funding certificates issued in family proceedings decreased. Of course I accept the argument about complexity; there may be fewer cases but some of them are certainly more complex than the ones that went before. The cost increases were unsustainable within a limited budget and our fee scheme will help to control future increases. Pressure on the legal aid budget is severe and is likely to increase in the current economic climate as more people require advice on housing, debt, welfare benefit and family breakdown. If we do not control family advocacy costs then we will be forced to cut services to clients, either through cutting the scope of the services that are funded or by reducing the financial eligibility for services. The phase 2 family fees consultation proposals represent the next phase of the reform programme to bring family advocacy costs under better control and offer a fair payment structure to advocates. We aim to contain inflationary costs on family advocacy and maintain legal aid expenditure at 2007-08 levels. This will be done through the introduction of two standard fee schemes and changes to the scope of funding. We spend more than £120 million a year on family advocacy and we will continue to spend this under the new scheme. Our proposed family advocacy scheme is about paying the same fee for the same work. We have not reduced barristers’ rates to solicitors’ rates but have set an intermediate rate which is fair to all advocates. I repeat: we are making no cuts to services for children and families. Clients will receive legal assistance through the legal aid scheme, as they do now. There are more than 3,000 family legal aid barristers and we are confident that access to their services will not be significantly affected by these necessary changes. We shall see whether there is a successful and lively family Bar in the years to come. My guess is that there clearly will be.