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Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their support on these amendments. I have listened very carefully to what the Minister has said and I cannot pretend I am not disappointed by the response. There is no doubt that we need to get a higher proportion of benefit decisions right the first time round but I have not seen anything to convince me that this is going to happen any time soon. Huge numbers of mistakes are made in decisions on benefit, and these have catastrophic effects, not just on the person trying to claim the benefit, but on their entire family. I will give you one example. Somebody that I have known for 30 years has incredibly complex problems with her back following an accident. She had worked all her life, and was forced to claim benefit. She is so badly damaged, having had multiple operations, that she is incapable of standing for more than three minutes at a time. She spends the majority of her life lying down to take the pressure off her back, and is on incredible amounts of medication. Initially she was assessed as having no problems whatever, and that she could work. While she is a highly articulate person, she is terrified of authority, and so without being pushed by a number of us, and having recourse to legal aid, because she had no money at all, she could never have appealed that decision, which was clearly absolutely wrong. I therefore really worry about what is going to happen if this goes through. I really hope that the Minister will reflect again and consider bringing back some hope at Report stage. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment. Amendment 32 withdrawn. Committee to begin again not before 8.41 pm. Moved by