Schedule
Sustainable Communities Bill
3:30 pm
Julia Goldsworthy (Shadow Chief Secretary To the Treasury, Treasury; Falmouth and Camborne, Liberal Democrat)
I would like to endorse everything that the hon. Member for Stroud has just said and I would like to speak very briefly to amendment No. 36, which follows representations from the Law Society about the need to ensure that legal services are also included in definitions outlined in the schedule. The Law Society wants to ensure that local legal services can provide a valuable role in producing thriving sustainable local communities. It wants to register its concern that providers of such services are also suffering from the phenomenon of ghost-town Britain, which is a familiar theme to all those who have participated in the debate on the Bill. It wants to underline the fact that—along with the local post office, the shops and the pubs—local, often independent, providers of legal services also feel the threat of exactly the same kind of pressures and want to be recognised in a similar way.
I draw the Committee’s attention to a Law Society survey about the developments in local legal services and their relationship with local communities. The overwhelming majority wanted to highlight their concern about the current level of provision. Puttingit into the context of the Bill, 100 per cent. of the respondents regard adequate access to locally provided legal services as important to the sustainability oflocal communities. By definition, that is a unanimous response.
I would like to quote some of the comments that were made. We need to consider them in the context of the changes being made to legal aid, which many local people feel could threaten access to such services by the most vulnerable people in society. One person said:
In my area, there used to be over 20 solicitors, now there are just four.”
Another referred to competition from outside, which has reduced the availability of locally provided services. Another one stated:
“More people are appearing at court unrepresented and completely without access to legal advice or assistance. This leaves people feeling disenfranchised and disaffected.”
One of the key points that local people wanted to underline is that access to such services, especially at a very early stage, is massively important to members of the communities that we want to ensure remain sustainable. If people do not access legal services at an early stage, it can lead to them requiring access to other, more costly services. Ultimately, it will be beneficial to the community in that way.
That reminds me of an important service that the citizens advice bureau provides in my constituency. It has an agreement with the local courts that all mortgage repossession hearings be held on the same day, so that the legal specialists can go there and give advice to people. The vast majority of people still turn up at court having sought no advice. Dozens of people who would have lost their houses keep them as a result of that advice. If they had not, just think of the extra knock-on costs that it would have represented to local authorities through having to try to find them temporary accommodation. It is about not just protecting services but ensuring that other services provided do not have additional financial burdens.
The Law Society, among other organisations, welcomes the opportunity that the Bill provides to help counter many of the difficulties facing communities. With the inclusion of local legal services, it feels that the Bill will help to reverse the effects of ghost-town Britain, which we have been debating.