Wide Support for Amendments to the Legal Aid Bill

Today is the last day for peers to submit amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Bill. The LASPO Bill is due for its first day in the committee stage in the House of Lords next Tuesday (20th). There is widespread support amongst peers for changes to the Bill.

Perhaps the most surprising supporter of an amendment is Lord Tebbit, the former conservative cabinet minister and right wing political bruiser, famous for his outspoken pronouncements. In 1981, in a curious echo of contemporary events, commenting on the possible link between unemployment and the riots which had taken place that year he said, “I grew up in the '30s with an unemployed father. He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking 'til he found it.”

Lord Tebbit is supporting an amendment which would bring back legal aid in medical negligence cases concerning children. This is one of the sections of the Bill, which LAG and other pressure groups want to see changed. Many other provisions in the Bill identified as priorities for changing have been covered by the amendments submitted so far. For example an amendment on clause 8 of the Bill, put down by Lord Pannick, Lord Woolf and Lord Faulks, deals with the issue of giving the government powers to put areas of law back into the scope of the legal aid scheme. LAG believes this is important, as without it none of the proposed cuts could be reversed without new legislation. Previous legal aid acts have allowed for changes in what the system covers without primary legislation.

An amendment by Baroness Scotland of Ashal addresses the important issues of the definition of domestic violence and the criteria for qualifying for legal aid in such cases. Lord Bach and Lord Beecham have also put down a number of useful amendments, including one which provides for the establishment of an independent tribunal to review decisions on entitlement to legal aid. LAG believes that both in appearance and practice, decisions on whether cases should be paid for by legal aid must be subject to independent adjudication, otherwise the government will be put in the invidious position of reviewing decisions on whether to grant legal aid for cases against itself.

There is a good spread of support amongst peers from all of the political parties for the amendments. Non-political cross-benchers are particularly prominent in their support of amendments which contradict government policy. Prominent among these are heavyweight legal figures such as Dame Butler-Sloss, former President of the Family Division, who is supporting a number of amendments, one of which would reinstate entitlement to civil legal aid for people with dependent children.

A letter sent to peers this week from the government minister Lord McNally offered no concessions and reiterated arguments made in the House of Commons stage of the Bill in favour of the cuts to legal aid. In essence Lord McNally, who is in charge of trying to steer the Bill through the Lords for the government, was saying- times are hard and we have to make these cuts. LAG believes he is unlikely to be able to continue holding this line, given the breath of support for many of the amendments. Perhaps its time for him to get on his bike and look for some compromises? Otherwise, the government risks some heavy defeats on the LASPO Bill in the Lords.

Pic: Christmas card sent to members of the House of Lords from the Justice for All campaign

Details of advice fund announced

LAG has been advised by the Cabinet Office that the £20m fund to assist not for profit (NFP) agencies hit by spending cuts will be officially launched today (Monday 21 November).

The fund will be aimed at frontline NFP advice providers in England, which give advice on one or more of the following areas of law - debt, welfare benefits, housing and employment. To qualify for a grant of between £40,000-70,000, organisations must have suffered a ten per cent cut in funding for advice services from either central or local government in the current year (2011/12). According to the Cabinet Office, priority will be given to those organisations with a high level of cuts which have not received cash from the Transition Fund. A review of NFP advice services has also been announced.

'This is a serious commitment to help free advice services carry on delivering much needed help to people struggling with debt, welfare benefits, employment and housing problems in these difficult economic times. The Cabinet Office will also be carrying out a review of free advice services to ensure that we do all we can to help the sector,' said Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society.

England will receive £16.8m of the £20m fund, with the balance being split between the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The fund will be administered by the Big Lottery Fund and details of how to apply to the fund will be posted on its website by the end of November.

LAG welcomes this announcement. NFP organisations have been hard hit by cuts in legal aid and other funding. We have also argued that the government needs to consider developing a strategy to better fund and co-ordinate the provision of NFP services. LAG hopes this review will be the starting point for this. However, we would warn that if no cash is made available on an ongoing basis, the fund announced today will be seen as providing nothing more than a transition from the frying pan into the fire for advice services facing big cuts in legal aid funding next year.

Both NFP and private practice legal aid providers were hit by a ten per cent reduction in fees last month (October). Next year the government plans to remove employment, debt and welfare benefits law completely from the legal aid scheme, as well as large parts of housing and immigration law. In total, £80.5m funding for this work will be lost if the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which is receiving its second reading in the House of Lords today, is approved without amendment. LAG estimates that around £50m of this money is currently paid to NFP organisations and the government plans to cut this from October next year.

Particularly in these difficult economic times, LAG believes the government is wrong to abandon members of the public who need advice with what are everyday legal problems. We are urging the House of Lords to amend the bill and the government to rethink its plans.

Advice service cuts

Manchester City Council has announced the complete closure of its in-house advice service, Manchester Advice, as part of £40m in cuts to its adult services department.


Manchester Advice was one of the first such council advice services established in the country. Around 100 staff will be made redundant and LAG understands that they are currently being asked to consider taking voluntary redundancy. A total of £1.68m will be saved if the service closes.

Manchester Advice offers free, confidential and independent advice on benefits, housing, debt, and consumer issues. Last year it assisted 80,000 Manchester residents and brought them around £30m in income from entitlements and savings. A letter, seen by LAG, sent to Manchester City councillors by a campaign group called Access2Advice argues that while the group is 'reconciled to share the pain over cuts', the complete closure of Manchester Advice is 'a scorched-earth policy which will bring devastating effects for many tens of thousands of vulnerable Manchester residents'.

The council’s paper detailing its budget proposals argues that the services in the city provided by the Community Legal Advice Service (CLAS) will provide an alternative to the directly run council service. The CLAS was established last year and is led by Manchester Citizens Advice Bureau Service. It is funded by the council and the Legal Services Commission. However, if the government’s planned legal aid cuts go ahead the CLAS would lose much of its income from legal aid next year. This would leave Manchester residents without advice on benefits, debt and other civil legal issues. Clearly a rethink of the council's strategy for advice is needed as the plan to close Manchester Advice could not have envisaged that legal aid funding for advice would be cut.

Birmingham Citizens Advice Bureau Service seems to have avoided a funding crisis which could have resulted in the immediate closure of its five open-door services in the city. The city council has withdrawn its £600,000 grant to the bureaux. However, after meeting with councillors, the Citizens Advice Bureau Service withdrew its threat to immediately close its five offices in the city after being given assurances regarding a new council grant pot for advice services. LAG understands that around £300,000 will be made available by the council to fund such services in the city later this year, but this will still mean a large cut for the bureaux.

LAG is calling on the government to conduct an urgent review of legal advice services in social welfare law jointly with the not for profit legal advice sector. Local government as a whole has to find 28 per cent in cuts and it is clear that advice services, as they are mainly non-statutory, are in the firing line. Through a combination of council and legal aid cuts we believe many areas like Manchester and Birmingham will lose the advice centres which provide a lifeline for thousands of people with housing, benefits and other common civil legal problems.

Image: South Manchester Law Centre. The Law Centre now provides a much reduced service after losing most of its funding from the city council last year.

Financial Inclusion Fund cuts confirmed

LAG has learnt that the Financial Inclusion Fund (FIF) will end in March. FIF pays for just under 500 debt advisers based in Citizens Advice Bureaux and other not for profit (NFP) advice centres. LAG believes this will be a devastating blow to many of the centres as they are also facing cuts in legal aid and local government grants.

The FIF was established in 2004 by the last government. A total of £45m was allocated from the fund to pay for face-to-face advice services in the NFP advice sector to help people facing debt problems. Around 100,000 people a year were assisted by the money advisers paid for by the fund. Most of these advisers now face redundancy. News that the fund was to be discontinued was given by Mark Hoban MP, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, in response to a written question in the House of Commons. Advice agencies, though, are still waiting for official confirmation that the scheme will end from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills which administers the cash.

It is difficult to exaggerate the impact of the abolition of the FIF grants. Many in the NFP sector had feared that the fund would discontinue due to public spending cuts. Prior to the election, Labour was making no promises over whether the FIF would continue, but the coalition government is now also planning to discontinue funding for debt advice under the legal aid scheme, except if people are in immediate danger of losing their homes.

LAG believes that the decision to cut the FIF and the government’s threat to end legal aid funding for debt advice is remarkably short sighted. Early intervention in debt cases ensures people deal with their money problems before they spiral out of control. Often, when mortgage and rent possession proceedings are imminent, it is too late to keep families in their homes. Aside from the damage this causes to people’s lives, the loss of a family home brings an enormous cost to the state. Shelter, the housing charity, recently calculated that each family forced out of their home costs the state £50,000.

Anyone can face money problems caused by the loss of a job or when something else goes wrong in their lives. LAG is calling on the government to establish a commission or review of the services and funding in place to help people with debt and other civil law problems. The FIF decision shows a lack of strategic thinking on civil legal problems by the coalition government. We believe this has to be addressed as a matter of urgency, before more of the services people rely on when they are hit by common legal problems disappear for good.

Andy Murray of Unite, the trade union which represents many of the advisers now due to be made redundant, told LAG: 'It is absolutely staggering at a time when City bankers are receiving massive bonuses after being bailed out by the taxpayer that the government decides to withdraw this key support to members of our society in distress. The claim that "We are all in this together" is increasingly hollow.'

Update today (24th January). LAG has contacted Phil Jew at Advice UK, the national organisation for independent advice centres. Jew is asking for clarification from the government about the future of funding for debt advice, "Mark Hoban's statement caused alarm by seeming to signal an end to the Government funded face to face debt advice scheme. Such a cut would be a huge blow and would not make economic sense. If there's a possibility of an alternative scheme, we need to know - now!"


The Treasury announcement in full

Image: South Manchester Law Centre

LSC: no appeal on family contracts

The Legal Services Commission (LSC) has confirmed yesterday that it will not be appealing against the judgment made on the Law Society’s judicial review of the family law tender process. The LSC had 14 days from 14 October 2010, when the transcript of the judicial review was published, to decide whether or not to pursue an appeal.

The LSC had extended the current family contracts until 14 December, pending a decision on whether or not to appeal the High Court’s judgment. The judgment quashed the result of the tender round for family and family with housing matters, after finding that the process was illegal (see 1st Oct blog Civil Contracts-what now?). LAG understands that the LSC is now in negotiations with practitioner groups to thrash out a way forward in managing the family legal aid contracts. It says that it is keen to encourage dialogue with the practitioner groups in order to minimise disruption of services to clients. It is likely that it will be forced to extend the current contracts and has the option of doing this until April 2012. The LSC also wants to push through already planned changes in family fees to ensure that the same fees are paid to both barristers and solicitors.

LAG welcomes the LSC’s decision not to appeal against the judgment in the Law Society’s judicial review. An appeal would have led to fresh uncertainty. We believe the LSC is not ruling out a further bid round in family to allocate matter starts. Much still remains unresolved. The way is now open for firms which were successful in the bid round to bring claims for damages. The most pressing problem is that the government is going to consult on planned changes to scope, which is likely to include areas of family law such as divorce and ancillary relief, in the next few weeks. It would seem pointless to run a tender round for contracts which might not be viable in a year or two when these expected changes are introduced.

Non-family legal aid contracts and family mediation contracts will start on 15 November. These contracts had been delayed for a month due to the Law Society’s judicial review. The LSC had initially argued in the judicial review that the non-family contracts were interlinked with the family contracts, but had not pursued this line of argument further at the full hearing. LAG understands that at least four judicial review hearings relating to these contracts are pending, but we believe these could be settled before hearing in circumstances similar to the successful challenge brought by the Community Law Partnership, which withdrew its case after the LSC reversed its decision not to offer it a contract.

Poorer areas miss out on extra legal aid cash

LAG has published an analysis of the Legal Services Commission’s (LSC’s) distribution of an extra £10 million for help with civil law problems (see: www.lag.org.uk/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=92925). The figures show that many of the poorest areas in the country missed out on the cash for more cases that was supposed to counter the impact of the recession.

Liverpool, the east London boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, Manchester and Knowsley are the top five most deprived areas according to government statistics and none of them received money for extra matter starts, to use the jargon, for debt, welfare benefits and other social welfare law work. In contrast solicitors and not-for-profit agencies such as Citizens Advice Bureaux (CABx), in three out of the five most prosperous areas, West Berkshire, Surrey and Rutland were all invited to apply for the extra money. Out of the top 20 most deprived areas only three received more cash while 15 from the 20 most prosperous areas did. Overall the figures show 20 per cent of the most deprived areas got only 23 per cent of the cash, while 20 per cent of the least deprived areas got 73 per cent of the cash.

The £10 million was allocated to matter starts in both family and social welfare law in the last six months of last year by the LSC. The LSC argues that the explanation for the seemingly unfair distribution of the money is due to its ‘indicative spend formula’ which it says seeks to rectify the uneven pattern of spending across the country.

We do not know if the indicative spend formula is fair as it has not been piloted or independently verified. Even if it had been, these figures still illustrate the bizarre postcode lottery that operates in allocating legal aid funds. The recession is hitting these areas the hardest. This is illustrated by the unemployment figures which show that it is the poorest areas that are losing the most jobs. It would seem that they are also missing out on the extra legal aid needed to tackle the problems unemployment brings in its wake.

One of the main issues with legal aid services is that the pattern of provision was largely set over the last 30 years by firms choosing to set up practices, not surprisingly, where there was sufficient concentration of clients to make their businesses viable, which tended to mean urban areas. As far as not-for-profit provision goes, well-funded CABx, Law Centres® and other advice agencies tend to be sited in the same areas, those with large local authorities which have the cash to spend on advice services. When such services are available clients pursue their legal rights, but demand often outstrips supply, as the full waiting rooms of many advice agencies and solicitors illustrate.

Recent comments from the minister for legal aid, Lord Bach, indicate that the government now recognises that these services have been chronically under-funded over the years and do not cover every part of the country. The question LAG asks is does the government have the political will to establish a rational system of planning based on client needs and is it willing to find the necessary injection of cash to ensure that all of the country is covered by an adequate level of services?