Downs and out!

It emerged last week that Carolyn Downs, the chief executive of the Legal Services Commission (LSC), is leaving to join the Local Government Association (LGA) as its chief executive. It seems curious to LAG that the world has learnt of her departure not from the LSC or the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), but from her new employer which announced her appointment in a press release. Her departure is also rotten timing given the uncertainty over the LSC’s future and the reasons for the departure of her predecessor.

The chief executive’s job at the LSC has proved to be something of a poisoned chalice in recent years. Carolyn Downs stepped into the role as a stop gap when her predecessor, Carolyn Regan, quit after three and half years at the LSC in March last year. At the time LAG said that we believed that CarolynRegan had been made the scapegoat for long-standing financial management and other problems at the LSC. Prior to Carolyn Regan’s departure the commission had been without a permanent boss for over a year. This was due to the then chief executive, Clare Dodgson, being on long term sick leave. Clare Dodgson had joined the LSC in June 2003, replacing Steve Orchard who’d held the top position at the LSC, and its predecessor the Legal Aid Board, for 14 years. In May 2005 Clare Dodgson suffered a serious back injury while at home, after which she did not return to work and this led to her eventually having to agree to resign in June the following year.

The publication of the Magee review on the future of the LSC was the catalyst for Carolyn Regan’s departure. In his report Sir Ian Magee was critical of the duplication of policy functions between the LSC and the MoJ and recommended that the commission be taken under the direct control of the government, (this change of status to an executive agency is included in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill). More importantly Sir Ian’s report found serious weaknesses in the financial management at the LSC, which were also reflected in critical National Audit Office reports.

In a surprise move the week Magee’s report was published, Carolyn Regan’s resignation and the appointment of Carolyn Downs on an “interim basis” were announced by the chair of the LSC, Sir Bill Callaghan. Carolyn Downs moved from her position as Deputy Permanent Secretary at the MoJ to take up the post at the LSC. The Board of Commissioners at the LSC had to agree to her appointment with the MoJ. LAG assumes that any temporary or permanent replacement will have to be agreed by both parties again.

In the short time she has been at the LSC, Carolyn Downs has enjoyed a good relationship with providers, despite continuing disagreements with them. Her move to the LGA fits with her background as she was the chief executive of Shropshire County Council for six years. However, given that the commission has yet to make the transition to executive agency status, LAG asks would it not have been better for the MoJ to persuade her to stay on to oversee this or maybe she believed that it was better to get out while the going was good?

Now Downs is out, what about her successor? The ideal candidate would need to be both a brilliant administrator and diplomat. The diplomatic aspects of the job are the most important and to this end building a good relationship with the suppliers of legal aid is a given. LAG would argue that this is superseded by the need for a chief executive who would fight for legal aid in the corridors of power. This means standing up to ministers to tell them when they have got it wrong. To do this successfully, the head of legal aid will have to tread a fine line between diplomatic persuasion and career suicide- not an easy task.

Steve Hynes

Civil law to suffer bulk of proposed legal aid cuts

The green paper on legal aid published last week outlines proposals on reductions in fees and in the scope of legal aid in order to make savings of around £350m. The bulk of the cuts, £279m, will fall on civil legal aid.

A telephone advice line is proposed to replace much of the service people currently get from civil legal aid providers. LAG supports the use of telephone services as they can be useful in dealing with many problems and in signposting people to face-to-face advice if they need it. Such services, though, cannot replace legal aid as the results of our recent opinion poll survey indicate that the poorest people are also least likely to use telephone and internet services. These people are therefore the most reliant on local face-to-face legal advice services.

If these proposed cuts are implemented, just under 550,000 less people will receive help with civil legal problems. The civil legal aid system helped just over 1 million people last year and so this cut represents a 50 per cent cut in civil legal aid services to the public. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is aiming to implement these cuts from October 2012. LAG understands that the proposed changes to legal aid will be included in legislation and that the first reading of an Act of Parliament to put this in place has been scheduled for spring 2011.

The cuts include taking out of the scope of the legal aid scheme welfare benefits, debt, employment, education and clinical negligence cases. It is proposed that housing law cases are cut back to include only homelessness and disrepair (non-damages). Divorce and private law children cases will be cut from scope saving £178m and the total saving from cutting non-family civil legal aid is around £100m. Around £900 million per year is currently spent on civil legal aid and so this represents just under a third of the budget.

The cuts fall disproportionately on the services which help people with the everyday problems of life such as debt and housing. Sixty-eight per cent of the civil legal help scheme which gives initial help and advice on legal problems is to be cut. Such deep cuts have not been proposed for any other public services.

The bulk of the cuts in non-family civil legal help will fall on the not for profit (NFP) sector. We estimate that out of a total cut of £64m in legal help, over £50m will be cut from local NFP providers such as Citizens Advice Bureaux and Law Centres. These organisations are already experiencing deep cuts from other branches of government. For example, £46m is due to be cut from the Financial Inclusion Fund next March and individual local councils, which fund 50-70 per cent of the costs of running these organisations in total, are also cutting back. For example, Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council recently cut £180,000 from its grant to the Law Centre in the borough.

In addition to the cuts in scope, the government intends to introduce a ten per cent reduction in fees in both criminal and civil cases. It has also announced its intention to introduce a competitive process for the allocation of legal aid work. A further consultation paper on introducing this for criminal work will be published next year. According to the green paper, a pilot of a competitive bid round for criminal legal aid work could commence in April 2012 and the government’s intention is to introduce a similar process for civil contracts sometime after 2013.

The MoJ has published a set of impact assessments on the proposals for legal aid. The paper on the impact of the scope changes shows that there would be a reduction in legal help cases of 502,000. The equalities impact assessment acknowledges the difficulties in breaking down the available data into gender, race and disability categories.

A green paper on Lord Justice Jackson’s recommendations on reform of the rules for funding civil litigation was published at the same time as the green paper on legal aid. Success fees and after the event insurance costs would no longer be recoverable from the losers. To compensate claimants, a ten per cent uplift in damages awards is proposed. LAG’s annual lecture next week is to be given by Lord Justice Jackson (see our website for full details).

The green papers are available to downoad at the MoJ website. Responses to the consultations have to be returned to the MoJ by noon on 14 February 2011. LAG is urging everyone with an interest in legal aid and access to justice to submit a response to the consultations.