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Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Of course it is deliberate. One of the things about that rather long opening speech is that it is the same speech that the noble Lord has been making for 18 months. I appreciate that he disagrees with our judgment on social welfare law, but we have never made any bones about the fact that that is where we took a tough decision. On criminal legal aid, I am quite sure that we will return to it, but the judgment we made was that since the previous Administration had made a series of quite significant cuts in criminal legal aid, we would allow them to bed in before returning to that matter. The fact is that the decisions have been tough, and we stand by the fact that tough decisions were required in the economic circumstances that we found ourselves in and also because successive Administrations have said that the legal aid system was in need of reform. I do not know whether we have got the specific answers to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, about the balance in other common law countries. I have never used comparisons with continental legal things; I have always made the point that as far as Britain is concerned the comparison is with common law countries. Many months ago, on my return from the Commonwealth Law Conference in Sydney, I mentioned that the one message I brought back from Commonwealth countries with legal aid systems was their amazement at the generosity of the British system. We are in a process in which we have had to take tough decisions. Some of the contributions today by the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Martin, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, almost made the case that the only practical help is legal advice. That is not something we accept. We think that in these cases there are other forms of advice that are just as valuable. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Martin, that I had said that we cannot give offence to the House of Commons, I think that if he checks Hansard he will find that I have never been against this House giving offence to the House of Commons. Indeed, I quoted the Companion earlier: "““Criticism of proceedings in the House of Commons or of Commons Speaker's rulings is out of order””." However, the Companion goes on to state that, "““criticism may be made of the institutional structure of Parliament or the role and function of the House of Commons””."