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Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, perhaps I may add a brief point to the debate, and I very much agree with the comments that have been made. A number of Members of this House have been Members of the Commons, as I have been, and we relied heavily in our advice surgeries on being able to steer people towards citizens’ advice bureaux or, indeed, to lawyers who could do a good job. However, one phenomenon that has disappeared more recently, but which was very marked as regards immigration cases in the 1980s, is people who set themselves up as advisers and who normally give thoroughly bad advice to distressed people who want help. One had to deal with that. If I got hold of constituents who were in such difficulties, I always steered them to the CAB, to the local law centre in Wandsworth or to decent lawyers. I am worried that the phenomenon may happen again whereby, in the absence of legal aid support for certain types of cases, people will set themselves up as advisers who will pretend that they are doing this on the cheap and give advice that is not of the best quality and is, given my experience, thoroughly bad. I very much hope that one consequence of the Government’s measures will not be that people can set themselves up and mislead distressed and vulnerable people, take some of their money from them, and provide advice that is not at all helpful.