Legal Aid Appeal Committees (Hansard, 10 July 1995)

§ 29. Mr. Ainger
To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department how many cases have been placed before legal aid appeal committees in each of the past five years. [31467]

Mr. John M. Taylor
In the categories for which figures are available for each of the last five years, the number of appeals to the Legal Aid Board in round numbers to the nearest thousand were 25,000, 26,000, 34,000, 47,000 and 53,000 respectively.

§ Mr. Ainger
Is not the fact that the number of appeal tribunals has doubled over the past five years indicative of concerns that not necessarily poor people are being excluded from our system of justice because they do not qualify for legal aid? As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) rightly explained, rich individuals can afford by some unknown means to pay lawyers to ensure that they receive legal aid. Is it not time to address those issues?

Mr. Taylor
It is time for us all to address those issues, which is why the Green Paper is before the House. The main reason for the sudden jump in the number of appeals to which the hon. Gentleman referred was the board's introduction of a quality management system designed to secure greater consistency of approach in the application of existing criteria on legal merits. That led to a higher number of refusals and therefore appeals.

§ Mr. Jacques Arnold
Has not the current legal aid system far too many characteristics typical of providing outdoor relief for the legal classes? If legal aid funding is to be increased, would it not be far better to invest money in simpler and faster justice for people?

Mr. Taylor
Despite all the criticisms, it must surely remain a benign and civilised intention to assist poor 621 people and people of modest means with their legal difficulties. Complaints are made about the legal aid system but in general its operation remains generous and helpful.

§ Mr. Boateng
rose—

§ Mr. Arnold
The hon. Gentleman should declare his interest.

§ Mr. Boateng
My interest as a legal practitioner is well known, but that does not blind me for one moment to a question of concern to hon. Members in all parts of the House. Is not justice delayed justice denied? Does that not apply to the activities of the Legal Aid Board as well as to the courts? Is it not time that the Parliamentary Secretary investigated why so many applications to the board and so many appeals from its decisions take so long as to cause manifest injustice to applicants? Is it not time that the Parliamentary Secretary examined that matter? Will he take on board the case of young Emma Van de Velde, a dyslexic whose appeal against the finding that she was not entitled to special help took the board so long to process that the time limit for the appeal was passed before the board finally sanctioned that help? Should not the consumer of legal services come before the bureaucrats who run the Legal Aid Board?

Mr. Taylor
The hon. Gentleman asked me to agree that the old adage can be affirmed, that justice delayed is justice denied. I oblige him, for that is certainly true. The House and the wider interested community are witnessing uniquely the convergence of the Green Paper on legal aid and Lord Woolf' s paper on access to justice. The whole civil legal system is available for our criticism and for radical improvement. We should not lose that opportunity.