Lord Bach[/caption]

 

Last week, members of the House of Lords delivered a rare defeat to the government on secondary legislation to implement the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act 2012.

 

The government had proposed that a First-tier Tribunal would identify the areas of law in its own decisions which could be the subject of an appeal. Welfare rights experts had warned that this would lead to very few cases being supported by legal aid (see October 2012 Legal Action 4).  Labour’s Lord Bach argued that the government’s proposal did not meet the undertaking which had been given by ministers when the primary legislation was originally debated in both the House of Commons and the Lords. He said ministers had promised a system of independent review to decide if cases should be backed by legal aid in an appeal.

 

Liberal Democrat Baroness Doocey supported the little-used 'fatal' amendment which Lord Bach proposed, warning that the government’s current proposals 'will be catastrophic for many thousands of people'. She went on to add that 'the government is effectively denying legal help to a significant proportion of disabled people whose appeal cases could nevertheless be considered to raise a point of law'.

 

Baroness Doocey had proposed an amendment on allowing benefits cases back into scope when the LASPO Bill was debated in the House of Lords. The amendment, which was proposed at the report stage of the bill, had been won by 39 votes and put pressure on the government to come up with the compromise on allowing legal aid in welfare benefits appeal cases.

 

Replying to the debate on Lord Bach’s amendment, the justice minister Lord McNally said that while it had listened to the points which were being made, the government had no intention of making a further concession on welfare benefits cases and that it had to stick with the planned cuts of £350m already announced.

 

After the debate Lord Bach told Legal Action: 'The government should accept this defeat and come back with a plan to properly implement what it agreed to do, which is to grant legal aid to assist the many disabled and other vulnerable people who are forced into bringing tribunal claims.'

 

The government was defeated by 201 to 191 votes in the House of Lords on Monday 3 December 2012. LAG understands that this means the rules cannot be introduced and the government needs to draft fresh legislation if it wishes to implement the undertaking to parliament which it originally gave.