Legal aid bill: government suffers defeats in the Lords
The government has been defeated in six key votes during the first two days of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Bill’s report stage, and has been forced into offering concessions in several other important areas.
During the first day of debate on Monday 5 March, peers voted three times against the government. First, to insist that the legislation state that people ‘must have access to legal services that effectively meet their needs’; second, to insert amendments intended to protect victims of domestic violence by, among other things, setting out a comprehensive list of eligibility criteria for obtaining legal aid on the face of the bill; and finally, inserting a sub-clause ensuring the independence of the new post of director of legal aid casework from political interference.
Three further defeats were inflicted on Wednesday with peers voting to retain legal aid for welfare benefits appeals, with respect to both reviews and lower tribunal appeals and also with respect to appeals to the higher courts. In the third defeat peers voted to retain legal aid for the cost of obtaining medical reports in clinical negligence cases.
The defeats come on top of several government concessions – in the face of widespread cross-party criticism during earlier stages of deliberation – on clinical negligence for severely injured children, the bill’s definition of domestic violence, the power to means-test police station advice, the retained power only to omit further services from legal aid in the future, on domestic child abduction and for victims of human trafficking.
There are also promising signs of movement from the government on providing legal aid for appellants in cases which are certified as complex or are of substantial public interest.
The report stage is scheduled to continue for a further two weeks, with several more government defeats expected.