COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 14 July 1999)

§ The Lord Chancellor

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 32. I wish to speak also to Amendments Nos. 33 to 36 and 49. This group of amendments amends Clause 15 which establishes the duty of the commission to fund representation, sets out the means by which it may do so and provides powers to limit the extent to which the defendant may choose his or her representative. Amendment No. 33 splits this now lengthy clause in two: the first clause to deal with the provision of representation, the second choice of representative. The other amendments all concern choice.

It is desirable that defendants should be able to choose their representative, not least to promote their confidence in the criminal justice system. Clause 15(7) enshrines this principle. However, a completely unrestricted choice would undermine our ability to achieve value for money. Therefore subsection (8) contains powers to limit that choice.

Clause 15(8)(c) is the key provision. It will allow the defendant's choice to be limited to any lawyer with a current contract with the Legal Services Commission (or, had that provision prevailed, a salaried defender). Our intention is to ensure that suspects and defendants generally have a choice between several contracted firms and, were salaried defenders to be permitted, with them too.

425 One of the major weaknesses of the system of legal aid in its present form is its fragmentation. This can lead to help being given under several different parts of the scheme in a single case: for green form advice, advice and assistance at the police station, assistance from the duty solicitor at the magistrates' court, and a full legal aid order. We would have been concerned to ensure the elimination of duplication, delay and unnecessary cost. We would have been concerned to ensure that individuals would stay with the same lawyer throughout the case unless there was good reason to change.

I shall explain how we envisage the system working in practice. A person being questioned by the police will be able to select his or her adviser from any firm holding a contract with the Legal Services Commission. Suspects would be shown a list of all firms based in the area and be informed of the implication of their choice. If the chosen adviser were not available, the individual would use the duty solicitor for the time being. But the duty solicitor would not be considered to have been selected, as a preference had been expressed for someone else.

In dealing with the element of the client's choice we intend to create a criminal legal service which would avoid imbalance. We have already argued that the purpose of the provision which the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, was concerned to maintain was to eliminate choice. However as regards Amendment No. 32 there are some categories of very complex case, for example fraud trials, where specialist panels of lawyers may be set up to promote value for money. Regulations under Clause 15(8)(c) will limit choice in these cases to firms on the panel; that is, firms which had demonstrated both the necessary competence and administrative systems to deal with these specialised and weighty cases. However, it may not be self-evident from the outset that a particular case was of such complexity that it required the services of a panel member. Amendment No. 32 deals with this situation by providing in effect for the individual to choose again from among those lawyers competent to handle a case of this complexity. Amendment No. 49 makes regulations under this subsection subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.