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Access to Justice: Wales

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Moon, and I will be brief. I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on raising this issue. She talks about the emergence of a two-tier system, and there will be a very strong divide between rural and urban communities.

Mercifully, there is one courthouse left in my constituency, in Aberystwyth. That is the only one, as our courthouse in Cardigan was shut down five years ago. I reiterate what the hon. Lady said about the challenges of geography and distance. In the debate that I secured when we tried to stop the closure of Cardigan courthouse, we heard that as Cardigan was only 38 miles from Aberystwyth, all would be well, because there would be ease of access to our court in Aberystwyth, but that is not so. It might be quick and easy to travel 38 miles down the A55 or the M4—or perhaps not—but the situation is a different kettle of fish for people living in rural communities. As she said, the problem is compounded by my constituents’ experience of trying to access public transport in rural areas where no such system exists.

Access to our courts is a very real issue. If I were being parochial, I might say that my underused courthouse in Aberystwyth will gain more work when the courthouse in Dolgellau is shut, but I do not say that because, from experience, I believe that the situation goes to the heart of access to justice for many of our constituents.

Let me talk specifically about the point regarding which I intervened on the hon. Lady. She alluded to the limitations of legal aid, and I want to talk about the number of practitioners out there in the country. When the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), who is now Leader of the House, was Secretary of State for Justice, he proposed a two-tier system for delivering criminal legal aid. That proposal has continued under the current Secretary of State. The scheme involves a bidding process for the limited number of contracts within each bid zone, and I repeat what I said in my intervention. My vast constituency of Ceredigion falls

into the Dyfed Powys 2 zone, which includes Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire and the whole of Powys, including the towns of Brecon, Llandrindod Wells, Newtown, Welshpool, Machynlleth, Aberystwyth and Cardigan. Incredibly, the Ministry of Justice decided that only four contracts would be made available in that vast area, which is dangerous nonsense.

When I talked to solicitors’ practices about the prospect of bidding, the reality soon emerged that no single firm in Dyfed-Powys would be able to service such a contract because the volume of legal aid work in mid and west Wales is so low that it could not sustain a business undertaking such an endeavour. The characteristic of our model for delivering criminal legal aid in Ceredigion, which is not dissimilar to that in other places in rural Wales, is of one or two solicitors within a high street mixed practice effectively subsidising legal aid work. When the Government made their proposal, the fact that there was no plan B suggested that it was doomed to fail. As of July 2015, there are only five firms undertaking legal aid work in Ceredigion, which suggests that many firms have already decided that such work is not profitable. None of the firms in my constituency felt able to bid for the duty contracts, either on their own or collaboratively. The Government suggested at the time of the announcement that small practices would come together, but that was not going to happen. Such an arrangement is fraught with difficulties.

We are where we are, but I am not quite sure where that is. The hon. Member for Swansea East said that we were led to believe that the bidding process would be concluded in January 2016, but it is now suggested that it will be concluded in April. There are contingency contracts around, which suggests that the situation might not be resolved until 2017. That is causing great concern among solicitors’ practices and a lot of uncertainty. When can we expect a resolution? The spectacle of there being only three or four providers across mid and west Wales makes one shudder, which is why a renewed number of legal aid concerns have been raised in all our surgeries. It is also why there is huge pressure on the very limited citizens advice bureaux across our constituencies, to which I pay tribute.

The other thing that needs to be mentioned is the Welsh language, which is spoken by more than half my constituency’s population. I am concerned about whether the providers, especially if they come from outside my area, or outside the broad expanse of mid and west Wales, will still be able to present their services through the medium of Welsh. That remains a great worry, whatever the Legal Aid Agency suggests, because when these services were being delivered by small solicitors’ practices in high streets throughout the country, we had a guarantee. As those practices were based in Welsh-speaking communities, their services could be provided in the mother tongue, whatever that mother tongue may be. Again, I sadly reflect that the situation illustrates how the Ministry of Justice has scant knowledge of and regard for rurality and, I believe, scant regard for the Welsh language, too.