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Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

We will listen and we will ponder. I hope that that will be the spirit in which we conduct the debates. It is certainly not, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, suggested, an attempt to turn the clock back. Even when this exercise is finished, no one could dispute that we will have one of the most generous legal aid schemes in the world. My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor, in his article in the Guardian, which has been quoted a number of times, says: "““Access to justice is a fundamental part of a properly functioning democracy””." He goes on to make the point that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and a number of others made: ““Without legal aid, and””—I emphasise this— "““the dedicated lawyers who deliver it, our system of justice would quite simply collapse””." That is the starting point.