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Legal Aid Reform

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan), I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) on obtaining this debate. We debated the main thrust of our proposals for legal aid in this Chamber a short time ago and I shall not retread old ground. However, today is the first day of the new Ministry of Justice and it is important to reiterate our commitment to a legal aid system that serves 21st century Britain in all its diversity. It is central to a properly functioning justice system in this country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington said, we have the best funded legal aid system in the world. Running closely behind us—we pay about £100 a head while they pay about £30—are the continental systems that have an inquisitorial process. All the other adversarial systems are further behind again. Without doubt, we have a well-funded system. My hon. Friend is right to say that there is an odd mixture of pride that the cost of legal aid has gone up and of difficulty, and that the drivers are complex. I do not change a word of what I said in the debate that she quoted from, and I am grateful for her use of the word ““distinguished”” to refer to me. The drivers are complex, of course, but it is necessary to manage costs in the ever-spiralling legal aid fund, and in particular to manage them as they relate to crime. My hon. Friend talks as though it were totally a cost issue, but it is not. At least part of the reform involves changing the way in which lawyers are paid so that we can guarantee that we get appropriate value for money for a quality service, moving from hourly rates, which are likely to support inefficiency rather than efficiency, to fixed fees. That is part of the structural changes, and such measures are necessary in areas where there is not a huge overspend. That means that when we move money across we are sure that we are getting value for money in the places where we locate the new funds. The changes have a number of purposes. We are looking for a system that is fair to clients, defendants, practitioners and the taxpayer. Since this is day one of the Ministry for Justice, I stress again the Government’s commitment, and my own, to diversity in the legal profession. In the judiciary, at the Bar, or in the front-line offices of solicitors’ firms across the country, a diverse legal profession is essential for a quality legal service for all the clients who will and must be served by our justice system. I am well aware of the kinds of concerns that my hon. Friend has raised. One of my earliest meetings when I got this aspect of my ministerial portfolio was to meet the Black Solicitors Network and the Society of Asian Lawyers with the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). I told them then that the reforms will not be discriminatory; I say that again today. When I delivered the third annual lecture to the Black Solicitors Network, I said that I was impressed that its members had come to see me straight away and that they do not mince words any more than I do. I emphasised that I was their ally in making the legal profession one that represents Britain in the 21st century, and I reiterate that today.