New Clause 4 — Status of Director and Lord Chancellor

Part of Devolved Administrations (Armed Forces Covenant Reports) – in the House of Commons at 4:45 pm on 2 November 2011.

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Photo of Jonathan Djanogly Jonathan Djanogly The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice 4:45, 2 November 2011

I shall now turn to amendments 69, 70 and 71, tabled by Kate Green, which address pensions and compensation.

Amendment 69 looks to ensure that Legal Services Commission employees transferring to the civil service are treated fairly. As drafted, the Bill and commitment between the Ministry of Justice and the LSC will achieve that. The Ministry is committed to ensuring that transferring staff are not put in a less favourable position than that of existing civil servants. The Bill protects LSC employees’ terms and conditions at the point of transfer, with the exception of those for pensions and compensation. The Bill also protects employees’ length of service.

When LSC employees transfer to the civil service, they will be enrolled as members of the premium section of the principal civil service pension scheme. The Government Actuary’s Department has determined that that scheme is “broadly comparable” to the existing LSC pension offer. Broad comparability is the standard defined by the Cabinet Office for the pension offer for staff transferred to organisations within the public sector. LSC staff will be able to choose whether to move any entitlement built up in the LSC scheme to the civil service pension scheme, or whether to leave it within the LSC scheme. Those arrangements have been communicated to LSC employees and their representatives. I will write to the hon. Lady on the TUPE point.

New clause 17 was moved by Yvonne Fovargue. Her significant experience in the field became clear, as it also did in Committee. Many Members spoke to the new clause, including the hon. Members for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), Joan Ruddock, my hon. Friends the Members for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) and for Bradford East (Mr Ward) and my right hon. Friend Tom Brake.

The new clause is very broad and would widen the scope of legal aid and increase its cost at a time when we are seeking to focus funding on the highest priority cases. It would have the effect of bringing into scope areas which are not covered in schedule 1—and which we intend no longer to fund—by virtue of their interconnected and complex nature. We have undertaken a comprehensive consultation of legal aid with published impact and equality assessments, and we have received almost 5,000 responses. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington pointed out, cases will arise where it will be difficult to separate two or more legal issues in terms of funding. Under the current legal aid scheme, there are provisions in the funding code to cover mixed cases, where the case is partly in and partly out of scope. Those provisions allow funding of the whole case in certain circumstances, and in others they allow funding for aspects of the case. I am pleased to confirm to my right hon. Friend that paragraph 39 of schedule 1 ensures similar appropriate provision in the new scheme. We consider that that approach provides a more proportionate means of dealing with interconnected matters than the new clause proposed by the hon. Member for Makerfield.

Leaving aside the technicalities, I appreciate that various right hon. and hon. Members have used the new clause as a hook to debate admittedly important issues on the scope of social welfare law and legal aid. As anyone who attended the Committee will know, that area was of significant concern to all hon. Members, not only as a stand-alone issue, but in its interaction with the not-for-profit provision. The Government have already made a number of changes to our proposals in the area of social welfare law following consultation, which shows that we are aware of concerns and have been listening. Those changes include: retaining special educational needs cases; expanding the range of debt matters; and retaining unlawful eviction cases in scope. We will also still be spending £50 million on social welfare law post-reforms. I shall address the not-for-profit sector, but I take this opportunity to assure hon. Members that, as this Bill heads to the other place, we will continue to listen and engage on this important issue. For the reasons I have given, therefore, I urge the hon. Lady not to press her new clause to a Division.

On not-for-profit organisations, I wish to address points made by the hon. Member for Makerfield, my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington, the hon. Members for Bradford East and for Walsall South, and Simon Hughes. In order to do so, I shall speak to the new clause tabled by Jonathan Edwards, although it should be noted that it was debated in Committee and his amendment 162 also covers ground debated then.

The primary purpose of new clause 43, as in subsection (1), is to enable funding to be made available for advice on areas of law that would otherwise have been taken out of scope. However, the important qualification to that is in the definitional provision in subsection (5), which specifies that “civil legal advice” does not include representation for the purposes of proceedings. As such, the provision is limited to the “legal help” level of service, which encompasses the range of early advice offered, in particular, by the not-for-profit sector. Amendment 162 is very similar in nature and seeks to provide funding for out of scope areas under schedule 1 at the “legal help” level.

New clause 43 and amendment 162 are unnecessary. Let me start by reiterating my statements from Committee, where I said clearly that I greatly admire the work of the UK’s not-for-profit advice centres and recognise that they are an important national asset. I can tell the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford that I very much value the advice they provide to my constituents, and I am sure that all hon. Members feel similarly. Throughout all the parliamentary debates thus far on changes to legal aid, the value and esteem that MPs and local communities place on their local advice centres has been made very clear.

In that context, I would like to deal head-on with the issue that hon. Members have raised about the provision of early advice. Let me make it clear that, as I said in Committee, I strongly agree with the argument that many people with disputes or grievances need early, good-quality general advice, and not necessarily the expertise of specialist lawyers. I acknowledge hon. Members' points and intuitively I agree with the hon. Member for Makerfield that some early advice may well have a preventive benefit in avoiding downstream costs. However, changes to legal aid should not of themselves undermine the provision of general advice. As a matter of principle, legal aid is money that has been intended for specialist advice, not for cross-subsidising other activities, as the amendments appear to provide for. I say to Glenda Jackson that, as a matter of practice, legal aid represents only one of several income streams for many organisations. For example, 85% of citizens advice bureaux funding comes from other sources, with half of all bureaux getting no legal aid funding whatsoever.

The Government share the views raised by hon. Members and want to see a robust and sustainable not-for-profit advice sector. We have heard and considered carefully the concerns about the risks that a combination of funding changes presents, and we intend to keep the conversation with the advice sector going. Kate Green asked about this area, and I can tell her that the £107 million transition fund made available last December is testament to a pan-government commitment to general, practical advice that empowers individuals in resolving their issues.

In addition, the Lord Chancellor announced £20 million for this financial year to support not-for-profit agencies delivering front-line services. Both citizens advice bureaux and advice centres more widely will be able to bid for that. Work between Departments on the administration of the fund is proceeding well. I hope and expect that the Cabinet Office will make an announcement shortly to provide the detailed terms of the fund. A review of free advice centres will be launched to ensure that we are doing all we can to support the sector. The review will start in early November and conclude early in the new year. It will look at the future funding for these services and likely levels of demand, and will focus on what Government can do to help the sector.

My right hon. Friends the Members for Bermondsey and Old Southwark and for Carshalton and Wallington and my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne all spoke about help for complicated benefits advice. They will appreciate that that is very much to do with identifying what should be dealt with as legal advice and what should be dealt with as early general advice. It is this type of issue that the review will need to cover, so yes, we will be looking carefully at these issues not again, but on an ongoing basis.

Subsection (2) of new clause 43 seeks to provide the Lord Chancellor with a power to enter into arrangements regarding the funding and delivery of services, and specifies the nature of the funding arrangements that the Lord Chancellor may enter into. This is an unnecessary amendment because the Lord Chancellor enjoys wide powers to enter into any arrangements under clause 2, pursuant to his duty to provide legal aid under clause 1. I therefore urge the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr to withdraw his amendments.

Let me agree with my right hon. Friend Sir Alan Beith—my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington, and the hon. Members for Hammersmith and for Makerfield made the same sort of points—that the Departments of State need to make better decisions at an earlier stage, leading to fewer appeals. I can tell hon. Members that I have been working closely with Ministers in the relevant Departments to that end and I will continue to do so.

The hon. Member for Walsall South said that she was concerned about the removal of education. I can confirm that we will now retain legal aid for special educational needs and discrimination matters relating to the contravention of the Equality Act 2010.

The hon. Members for Hammersmith and for Makerfield spoke about welfare benefits law being complex and asked how claimants could prepare their own tribunal applications. In most cases individuals will be able to appeal to the first tier social security and child support tribunal without formal legal assistance. The appellant is required only to provide reasons for disagreeing with the decision in plain language. According to the 2007-08 report by the president of the tribunal, it is a regular theme at the tribunal that DWP decisions are most commonly overturned because the tribunal elicits additional information from the appellant, rather than through legal arguments. So success is clearly not generally dependent on the appellant receiving legal advice.

Finally, on clause 12, many points were made by my hon. Friend Mike Crockart, my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington, Mr Llwyd, Karl Turner, my hon. Friend Ben Gummer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, my hon. Friend Simon Reevell, and the hon. Members for Islington North and for Bolton South East. The final series of amendments—90, 104, 116, 125 and 148—seek to amend clause 12, which deals with legal aid determination for individuals arrested and held in custody in a police station or other premises.

I should point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West and the hon. Member for Darlington who spoke to the amendment that amendment 116 would remove clause 12 entirely, which would mean that the Bill would make no provision at all for individuals held in custody at a police station or other premises to be provided with initial advice and initial assistance. Surely that is not the hon. Lady’s or any other hon. Member’s intention. She may therefore wish to reconsider whether a Division is appropriate on the amendment.

Many right hon. and hon. Members made serious and appropriate points. Having heard what has been said and having considered the issue, I appreciate that there are many deeply held concerns across the House and more widely on both the principle and the practicality of means-testing for advice and assistance for those in police custody and in relation to the concept of contingent legislation, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich said. I can confirm that we will, therefore, carefully review our approach to these clause issues as the Bill goes through its stages in another place.