On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I briefly gave notice yesterday of this point of order, which relates to the answer given to a question from me by the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety, the right hon. Member for Salford (Hazel Blears). It appeared in 29 November, and on 8 December, she wrote to me to point out that it was inaccurate—through, I am sure, no fault of hers—in two substantive respects. She then wrote to me to correct the two inaccuracies and has confirmed that a copy of the letter has been placed in the Library. As you know, Mr. Speaker, the inaccurate answer remains on the record in Hansard on Hansard. May I ask you to use your good offices to ensure that the record is reprinted with the full text of the amended written answer, including the corrections to those two inaccuracies?

I am pleased that the Minister has clarified and rectified the situation. If the hon. Lady is very keen to ensure that the content of the reply that she received is on the record, she can table an identical question and the answer to it will tie in with that reply. That is the way to do it.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether you can advise Ministers on the correct procedure when answers given in this House are not correct. If I may, I draw your attention to the differing practices of the Treasury and the Foreign Office in this regard. When I asked a question during Treasury questions on 10 November, the answer given was incorrect and a letter was then placed in the Library of the House. However, I noted from yesterday's Order Paper that when the same thing happens in the Foreign Office, it is good enough to include a written ministerial statement on the Order Paper. Given these differing practices, can you advise Ministers on the manner in which you expect inaccurate answers to be corrected?

May I say to the hon. Gentleman that that would be a matter for consideration by a Committee of the House? It is not one for me to intervene in.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Today, I have read on a BBC website that a £100-million contract for new coastguard helicopters has been awarded. One of the coastguard bases that will benefit is at Stornoway, in my constituency. I raised this matter in a point of order last Thursday, when I asked whether the relevant Minister would come to the House and make a statement about the contract. Will hon. Members have an opportunity to question that Minister about the matter?

The hon. Gentleman can put down questions for the appropriate Question Time. He can also submit written parliamentary questions to find the information that he seeks.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require all road traffic signs which show the routes where enforcement cameras are from time to time in use to include information on the speed limit in force on such routes.

The Bill is very simple, and I do not expect to detain the House for my full 10 minutes. My proposal would mean that signs indicating the location of a speed camera would also include information about the speed limit that drivers are expected to observe. So, a sign might say, "Speed camera 30", when 30 mph is the limit at that spot or, "Speed camera 40", when the limit is 40 mph.

In many places—and there are some in my constituency—drivers joining a larger road from a side road will pass a speed camera before being informed about the relevant speed limit. I am not at all opposed to the use of speed cameras to enforce reasonable speed limits, and I speak as one who has been fined. Cameras have the effect of restraining those of us who might be tempted to go beyond the appropriate limit, and certainly I am always especially careful when I see a camera.

I think that speed cameras work, but surely it is in the interests of law enforcement and common sense to require camera signs to inform drivers about what they are expected to do. That would be in drivers' interests, too: on seeing a camera sign, all they would have to do is glance down at their speedometers to make sure that they were within the limit displayed on the sign, and then proceed.

Really, that is all that there is to the Bill. It has widespread, all-party support, for which I am very grateful. Its implementation costs would be negligible, as existing signs would merely have to be amended. The hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) has asked me to stress his view that there are too many signs already, and that he would like efforts to be made to reduce other signage if the Bill were passed. I accept that that is a reasonable point.

In this House, the tradition is that Bills that merely offer practical improvements are given a fair wind. I hope that hon. Members present today will give it that fair wind, and that it meets the same treatment if approval is given for its Second Reading on 14 July.

Full speed ahead!

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his encouragement, and I hope that the House will allow me to bring in the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Dr. Nick Palmer, Mr. Andrew Tyrie, David Lepper, Mr. Fabian Hamilton, Andrew George, Dr. Howard Stoate, Mr. Rob Wilson, Mr. Andy Reed and Mr. Paul Truswell.

Road Traffic Signs (Enforcement Cameras)

Dr. Palmer accordingly presented a Bill to require all road traffic signs which show the routes where enforcement cameras are from time to time in use to include information on the speed limit in force on such routes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 14 July, and to be printed [Bill 102].

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The Bill seeks to establish a legal aid system that balances fairness with administrative simplicity and that is based on affordability yet is sensitive to an applicant's individual circumstances. In order to achieve that, we will transfer the power to grant legal aid representation from the courts to the Legal Services Commission, and we will introduce a test of financial eligibility.

The Bill and the scheme that it seeks to deliver are a straightforward evolution of the founding principles of legal aid as they were first expressed by the Rushcliffe report in 1945 and by the subsequent Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949—introduced by a Labour Government. From its earliest design, legal aid was intended to be a wider expression of the beliefs that lay at the heart of the welfare state. A "judicare system" was to be established whereby the services of lawyers could be made available to the poor as well as the rich. The Bill reasserts those founding principles, as well as creating a robust and sustainable legal aid system that is not only capable of responding to the demands of the modern justice system, but of enhancing and supporting it. It also builds on an existing raft of reforms that have already had a significant impact in the area. The Access to Justice Act 1999 modernised the legal aid system and, since then, we have continued to improve and refine the performance of legal aid.

But costs have continued to rise: as indeed they have throughout the history of legal aid. In 2004–05, spending on legal aid as a whole exceeded £2 billion, a rise of £513 million since 1997–98. To put it simply, year on year, the cost of legal aid has risen, on average, at almost twice the rate of inflation. That trend cannot be allowed to continue.

Since 1997, there has been a large growth in criminal legal aid where expenditure has risen by £458 million. There is little doubt that a good proportion of that spending has proved invaluable in protecting the rights of the vulnerable, ensuring access to justice and maintaining the efficiency of the criminal justice system, but the Government also have a wider responsibility to protect the interests of the poor, the socially excluded and, ultimately, the law-abiding members of society. Legal aid resources are finite and only one part of our social agenda, which includes health and education.

I have listened with great interest to what the Minister has said, but is not she saying—in a roundabout way—that the Government got it all wrong a few years ago and that they are now making a gigantic U-turn?

The system that was in force before we came into government was decrepit, convoluted, complex and overly bureaucratic. We introduced a system that swept all that away, but we were not aware how many people would take advantage of the new system. That is why we need to look again at the issue. We have an obligation to live within our means and to ensure that the available funds are targeted in the fairest and most strategically beneficial way.

We must make our money work for us and the Bill seeks to do just that by rebalancing and refocusing legal aid expenditure to ensure that we not only protect the rights of those who find themselves prosecuted under the criminal law, but we fund law-abiding citizens who may find that they need to protect or enforce a civil right.

Despite the refinements to the proposed scheme that the Bill empowers, the core principles of the policy, and the Bill itself, remain largely unaltered from the draft that the House saw originally.

The Government refer to the fact that they are focusing funds. Although the Bill seeks to make further savings of £35 million in respect of the lower courts, has not the Legal Services Commission already accepted that those costs are under control? Indeed, the Department for Constitutional Affairs has predicted that they are on the decrease. One respects the fact that legal aid costs in general have increased, but the budgets of lower courts are under control, so should not the true target for cost-cutting be high-cost cases?

The hon. Gentleman may have been in the Chamber during Constitutional Affairs questions, in which case he would have heard me say that we are targeting high-cost cases. The Bill tries to ensure that we have a much fairer system in both the lower and higher courts. The Bill will also cover the Crown Court.

There are two key enabling powers: first, the power to grant representation is to be transferred from the courts to the Legal Services Commission and, secondly, a test of financial eligibility is to be reintroduced. Clauses 1 and 2 confer those powers by amending schedule 3 to the Access to Justice Act 1999. Clause 3 creates a power to require defendants to make contributions towards the cost of their legal aid, which will be a central component of the Crown court scheme. Clause 4 makes consequential amendments to other legislation.

The scheme to be developed through those powers will consist of three distinct elements: transfer of the power to grant; means-testing in the magistrates court; and means-testing in the Crown court.

Will the Minister explain to the House why she had to sign a certificate to ensure that the legislation complies with the European convention on human rights?

We all sign certificates to ensure that we comply with the convention. It is a good thing to do and that is why we do it. Every Bill that comes before the House has to have such a certificate. That is part of the law that we introduced and I am puzzled about why the hon. Gentleman is asking that question. Perhaps he would like to explain.

I am grateful to the Minister for allowing me to intervene again.

I understand from the helpful explanatory notes that there are particular difficulties with clauses 2 and 3, such that the Minister had to sign a certificate under section 19(1)(a) of the Human Rights Act 1998. I am not aware that that has been necessary with other recent legislation.

I can only reiterate that it is part of the law of our country that we comply with the Human Rights Act, and we are ensuring that the Bill does so. I am happy to have signed up to the Act according to those provisions—[Interruption.] I am informed that all Ministers taking Bills through the House sign according to the same provisions in the Act. There is nothing unusual about the Bill in that respect.

I want to explain some of the things that the Bill will not do. I must emphasise that it will not affect the existing interests of justice test, which will remain an important feature of the legal aid system and all applicants will need to satisfy it. The test allows for several factors to be taken into account; for instance, whether the applicant is likely to lose his liberty when determining if it is in the interests of justice for legal aid to be granted.

It is an inescapable fact, however, that, as matters stand, every Member of the House would qualify for legal aid provided they passed the interests of justice test. I doubt that I need to remind Members about the unfortunate stream of well-publicised cases in which apparently wealthy individuals are able to claim legal aid under the current scheme. Few would disagree that such a perverse system needs to be tackled and that is precisely what the Bill sets out to do.

Surely, we made those points four or five years ago, when the hon. Lady's Administration changed the rules and brought an end to means-testing.

I am not aware that the hon. Gentleman was making any of those points four or five years ago, but if some of his colleagues were doing so, I was not aware of it. When the scheme was introduced four or five years ago, it was seen to be much simpler and more straightforward than what had gone before. We recognise that we made it much easier for people to obtain legal aid when they would not otherwise have chosen to do so. We are trying to get the balance right.

Under the Bill, the grant of legal aid will cease to be a largely judicial function administered by court staff and, instead, become an administrative function with judicial oversight. Responsibility for the grant will be given to the Legal Services Commission. However, the Government's intention is that court staff will remain responsible for the scheme's day-to-day operation. That arrangement will be regulated by a service level agreement between Her Majesty's Courts Service and the Legal Services Commission. A right of appeal to the court on the interests of justice test will still remain.

The Minister has made it perfectly clear that the Government's intention is to reduce the demands on the criminal legal aid budget, but I am sure that she will accept that delay in the criminal justice system is a problem. What measures will the Government take to ensure that means-testing, and all that goes with it, does not delay the bringing to court of criminal cases?

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which I shall come to later in my speech if he is prepared to bear with me.

The transfer of grant will allow the Legal Services Commission to exercise greater control over legal aid expenditure, as well as ensuring consistency and certainty for applicants. The proposed means test in the magistrates court will be quick and simple to administer. A simple initial filter that consists of upper and lower thresholds will be applied. Applicants whose income falls below the lower threshold will automatically qualify for legal aid, while those who exceed the upper threshold will not be eligible.

To enhance the scheme's sensitivity, however, those thresholds will not be set at a single level; they will be weighted to take account of household composition. For instance, for a childless couple, the upper threshold would be set at £34,000 and the lower one at £19,000. However, a couple with a three-year-old child would have an upper threshold of £40,120 and a lower threshold of £22,420.

For applicants whose income falls between the two thresholds, a more detailed assessment would be carried out to determine disposable income by incorporating a system of allowances covering actual housing, child care and maintenance costs. Applicants whose disposable income, when so calculated, is below a set level would be eligible for legal aid. At the moment, we believe that the disposable income threshold should be in the region of £3,156—close to that used in the civil legal aid scheme.

To place that in context, under that two-tier model for the means test, a couple with a three-year-old child and a joint gross income of £24,000 would probably be granted legal aid after completion of the detailed assessment, but a childless couple, with a similar income and therefore a far higher disposable income, would be unlikely to pass the detailed assessment and therefore would not receive legal aid.

The means test will include assets held by the applicant's partner. Since the test makes allowance for the increased cost of a two-person household, it is fair to recognise not only the full cost, but the full income of the household. However, we acknowledge the concerns of those who argue that unfairness may arise in cases where the partner has a clear contrary interest—for example, in a domestic violence case. For that reason, we will build safeguards into the new scheme to deal with such situations. Once legal aid has been granted, it will cover the entire cost of the defence.

We are aware that such a system can never take account of all possibilities. It has long been a central objective of the scheme that it is sensitive to individual circumstances and considers not only an individual's income, but his capacity to pay. To achieve that, tightly drafted regulations will detail when an applicant can request that special consideration be given to his circumstances. For example, account would be taken of the circumstances of applicants who had especially high outgoings and were genuinely unable to pay for their defence, perhaps because they cared for a disabled relative.

It is also a prime objective that the scheme causes minimal disruption to the justice system. Information on a defendant's means will be collected at the earliest opportunity after entry into the criminal justice system. In some cases, that will be as soon as an applicant is charged with a criminal offence.

Will the Minister give way?

I am just about to respond to the point made by the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright).

In a second measure to reduce delay, defendants will be able to apply for legal aid under an extended advice and assistance scheme running up to, and including, the first hearing, when a means-tested representation order will come into force. Qualification for the scheme will be determined on the interests of justice alone. That will ensure that the new system does not introduce any delay and that full advantage is taken of the natural pauses that already exist in the criminal justice process. For example, if a defendant who is charged with a relatively serious criminal offence for which he faces imprisonment is held on remand, he will appear in court immediately for a bail hearing. Should the defendant intend to plead not guilty, his trial will be adjourned to allow the defence and prosecution to prepare fully for the trial. Legal aid could then be sought in the period before the full trial started.

Given that it is likely that the Bill will increase the burden on magistrates courts' staff, does it not highlight the present damaging pay dispute involving such staff? Magistrates courts have great difficulty recruiting and retaining high-quality staff, which has a profound effect on the quality of justice. Such staff will be considering the interests of justice test and implementing the Bill. Unless the Government try to resolve the problem of the pay dispute, there is a worry that there will be a profound effect on local justice.

I hope that the pay dispute does not result in industrial action and that there will be an opportunity before the time at which that action is supposed to take place for all parties to come together to find a constructive solution. I am well aware of the situation that magistrates courts' staff face.

Magistrates courts' staff do the administration for the scheme, and their jobs will be enhanced by giving them responsibility. They perform their roles under judicial supervision at the moment. It is important for us to say to them, "Here is an administrative job that you are doing very well, and we want you to continue to do so."

The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes) is wrong to suggest that the Bill is likely to increase the administrative burden on magistrates courts' staff. Although they will have more calculating to do, which is a skill that they are used to using—despite what the hon. Gentleman said, staff in magistrates courts are actually of a high calibre—it is expected that there will be between 10 and 20 per cent. fewer applications because the means test will screen out an awful lot of people. The Bill is thus administratively neutral.

My hon. and learned Friend makes an important point. We think that the Bill might well screen out more than 10 to 20 per cent. of applications—perhaps up to 30 per cent. of applications. I am happy to reiterate her important point that the calibre of magistrates courts' staff is high. As I said, they already carry out similar work at the moment and that is likely to continue.

The proposed Crown court scheme will use a combination of powers within existing legislation and new powers under the Bill. Applicants for legal aid in the Crown court will be assessed on financial eligibility as well as the interests of justice. In contrast to the magistrates court scheme, individuals who fail the means test will still be eligible for legal aid. However, they will be expected to contribute towards the cost of their defence. Another notable difference between the magistrates court and Crown court schemes is the proposed capital test, under which liquid assets in excess of £8,000 held in cash accounts at bank and building societies are the subject of a single, one-off contribution. As with the magistrates court scheme, aggregation of means is a feature of that model. The Government propose a phased introduction in which the magistrates court scheme is introduced first and allowed to bed in before the Crown court scheme is launched.

What is the reference date for that assessment? It would be all too easy for someone to ensure that they do not have liquid capital assets available for means-testing at a Crown court hearing if they knew that that would be a sensible thing to do in preparation for such an appearance.

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid and important point. We will ensure that the assessment is made at the earliest opportunity, possibly at the point of arrest, before people have a chance to try to disperse their assets. I am happy to hold further discussions, however, about the best time for assessment.

We are right to be concerned that people with limited financial means should have access to advice and legal aid, but what measures has the hon. Lady considered introducing, especially in complex criminal trials involving large assets, to deal with someone from a wealthy family who may have an offshore trust or who may be the beneficiary of another trust with assets that are not necessarily visible in the UK?

As I said, we will look at liquid assets in an individual's personal bank and building society accounts. We should think carefully about whether we want to introduce a more complex system to assess assets, as the aim of the Bill is to try to keep things as simple and straightforward as possible. In the regulations we will make sure that we can identify those assets as easily and simply as possible. As the hon. Gentleman will know, there are other laws to deal with the proceeds of crime and so on if someone is found guilty.

The new scheme is outlined in greater detail in the supplement to the framework document accompanying the Bill. In developing the Bill, the Government have not only listened to, and acted on, the findings and recommendations of the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs on an earlier draft, but we have taken into account the considered opinions of a wide range of stakeholders. We have worked particularly closely with the Law Society to refine the means test model and produce a scheme that is both fair and sensitive to the circumstances of individual applicants without placing an undue burden on those responsible for administering the system.

We have addressed and, we believe, satisfied, early concerns voiced by the judiciary about the original appeals process. We firmly believe that there should not be an appeal to the court on the basis of financial eligibility, but we are satisfied that the case has been made that there may be an appeal to the court based on the interests of justice. However, an amendment accepted in the Lords removed the power to review decisions on financial eligibility from the Bill. Those decisions will now be subject to a full appeal to the court. That is unacceptable. Not only is it a misdirection of the courts' resources, but members of the senior judiciary agree that the means test is a wholly administrative assessment that does not require judicial oversight, apart, of course, from judicial review. We will seek to overturn the amendment in the Commons.

The Government believe that the Criminal Defence Service Bill is both innovative and practical. While we have placed a high value on measures to develop an administratively simple scheme, we have given equal importance to measures to ensure that defendants are treated fairly and consistently. The scheme will be transparent and measures will be taken so that it can be easily understood by defendants, solicitors and the court-based teams responsible for its administration. By streamlining legal aid and cutting bureaucracy we have created a strong, flexible legal aid system able to withstand the rigours of the modern criminal justice system. The new scheme will allow legal aid to continue to safeguard the rights of the vulnerable, but will also achieve maximum value for the taxpayer. I therefore commend the Bill to the House.

I begin by declaring any interests that I may have as a practising solicitor.

The Bill allows for the power to grant rights to representation to be transferred from the courts to the Legal Services Commission, introduces a means test for the grant of such funding and, where the test is met, provides for contribution orders based on means. Several amendments were made to the Bill in another place, and I pay tribute to the significant progress that was made there.

We, the Conservative Opposition, feel that access to justice is a serious matter that requires full and detailed consideration. Through the determined efforts of our noble Friends, such detailed consideration has already been possible. We welcome the restoration—by amendment in the other place—of responsibility for legal aid matters to the Lord Chancellor, as we welcome the amendments that have been made relating to appeals. I was sorry to hear the Minister say that she will attempt to overturn those at a later stage.

I am interested to know the views of the Opposition. It is undoubtedly mostly a matter of arithmetic to establish whether somebody is in or outside the financial eligibility criteria. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that judicial time could be appropriately used on an appeal against that, or does he have some alternative model in mind?

I intend to discuss that in greater detail, so if the hon. and learned Lady will wait, I shall come on to it. It is important that the court should be able to hear appeals on the interests of justice test, as well as on the eligibility test, and should be able to consider those matters afresh.

The Conservative party has long been in favour of many of the measures in the Bill, in particular means-testing for those who can afford it, which the Government abolished in 2001. We opposed the abolition of the means test during the passage of the Access to Justice Act 1999, which the Bill amends. Now, after four years' experience, the Government wish to bring back means-testing. It has taken them eight years to bring back the NHS internal market and eight years to bring back grant-maintained schools, so perhaps we should be impressed that it has taken them only four years to do a U-turn on legal aid and means-testing.

The measure is basically right. Those who can make a contribution to their own defence costs ought to do so. However, we need to ensure that those who cannot make such a contribution are still properly represented and not disadvantaged within the criminal justice system. That second aspect is conspicuously missing from the Bill. The proposed means test involves a calculation to derive an adjusted level of income for the purposes of considering eligibility. Various deductions are made on a proportional basis from overall household income to reflect a client's costs. As the Minister explained, if a client's adjusted income falls between a higher and a lower threshold, a more detailed assessment is required to establish whether the client qualifies. Clients will not qualify for public funding in the magistrates court if their calculated disposable income is above £3,156 a year.

The Department has suggested that the abolition of the means test has contributed to the rising costs of criminal legal aid. As the draft Bill and consultation paper put it in 2004,

"Since the abolition of the means test many who previously would have been privately represented or who choose to represent themselves have applied for public funding."

It stated that the

"re-introduction of the means test will focus the resources on those that need help the most."

All that led the Constitutional Affairs Committee—rightly, in our view—to question whether there is enough joined-up thinking, principally between the Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Home Office, in the overall approach to criminal justice policy. It concluded at paragraph 46:

"We recommend that the Department should ensure that initiatives rolled out by other Departments, especially the Home Office, are properly costed so that their impact on the Criminal Defence Service budget can be taken into account. This is an essential feature of 'joined up Government' and needs to be done so that the Government can consider the causes of rising costs, rather than merely relying on the Department to tackle the symptoms".

It would be helpful if the Minister could give us a progress report on how that recommendation is being carried forward.

I am happy to give the hon. Gentleman a progress report: we have introduced a legal aid impact assessment test, which is part of the regulatory impact assessment that every Department conducts when it introduces legislation. If any legislation introduced in this House impacts on legal aid, it must be funded or another way must be found to deal with it.

I thank the Minister for explaining that all legislation requires a regulatory impact assessment, which I shall discuss later in my speech.

The press briefing that the Government published in May at the time of the Queen's Speech estimated that the Bill would lead to annual savings of more than £35 million. We sincerely hope that it will, but it would be useful to hear more about how the Government reached that conclusion. After all, the original justifications for abolishing means-testing back in 1999 were that the system was too bureaucratic, which led to delays in cases being brought to trial and added significantly higher costs, and that it applied to less than 1 per cent. of applicants. It would be interesting for the House to hear how the Labour party, which abolished means-testing as a cost-saving measure, is going to reintroduce means-testing as a cost-saving measure.

In its response to the draft Bill in 2004, the Constitutional Affairs Committee concluded:

"We do not think these proposals have been properly costed. The Department has produced no convincing evidence demonstrating that reintroducing means testing would result in substantial cost savings".

We support the Bill in principle, but we want to see more convincing evidence that it will have the desired effect. Will the Minister provide more detail on the projected savings?

We want to address several other issues in Committee. For instance, concern remains about the perverse incentive for defendants to choose the Crown court in cases that may be tried either way in order to ensure a more favourable position on legal aid. That serves only to increase costs, and the matter requires further review. We are still concerned about a related aspect of the Bill, which seeks to translate the magistrates court regime in a modified form to the Crown court simply by delegated legislation. We are of the opinion that separate regimes should be introduced simultaneously for magistrates courts and for Crown courts through primary legislation to avoid uncertainty in the drafting of the regulations and the perverse incentives that I have just mentioned. We believe that those points outweigh the benefits of first appraising the magistrates court scheme.

Despite our welcoming the Bill in principle, it is a very small step towards the desperately needed reform of the legal aid system, which the Government have allowed to fall into disrepair, and much more remains to be done. The Minister's speech was short on detail on the Bill's impact—for instance, what percentage of the population will have their access to legal aid restricted by the Bill? That is why I want to address some of the broader legal issues.

The soaring cost of legal aid in England and Wales forms the background to the Bill and this debate. The problem is not new, and I concede that it is not exclusive to the current Administration, because Governments of both parties have grappled with the cost of legal aid over the past three decades or more. It is clear that the problem has become acute since this Government entered office: in 1997, the total legal aid budget stood at around £1.5 billion; this year, it is more than £2 billion, which is an increase of some 35 per cent. while this Government have been in office.

More than half of that £2 billion is spent on criminal legal aid, the cost of which has risen dramatically. Since 2000–01, there has been a significant rise in the cost to the criminal defence service of criminal legal representation in the magistrates courts. By contrast, spending on civil legal aid, excluding the cost of asylum, has fallen in real terms by 24 per cent. since 1997. That in turn has forced many high street solicitors to go to the wall, restricting access to justice for many of the most vulnerable in our society. For example, as I found out through a written question earlier this year, the number of high street solicitor firms offering representation for legal aid and family cases has decreased by more than one third in the past five years.

That is despite the Government's ambition, as set out in the 1997 manifesto, to reform legal aid and achieve value for money for the taxpayer and the consumer. Meanwhile, at this year's election the Government promised to reform legal aid better to help the vulnerable. Their predicament seems to have led to a state of paralysis, and regrettably the vulnerable are being hit the hardest due to their inability to access lawyers who take on legal aid cases.

We agree that the growth in spending on the criminal defence service has to be checked. In the words of Lord Justice Judge in his evidence to the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs, which reported on the draft Criminal Defence Service Bill in 2004, and to which the whole House is indebted for its work in this area,

"we simply cannot work on the basis . . . that there is a tree at the bottom of the garden full of ten pound notes. There is not, and therefore there has to be some control exercised."

As the Magistrates Association put it,

"there is a large and continued increase in the amount of money spent on legal aid, and we accept that the amount available is not infinite."

We agree.

The fundamental legal aid review was announced by the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy) in May 2004. On 19 July this year, I made a request to the Department of Constitutional Affairs under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in relation to the review. The relevant DCA press release stated that the review would be

"a far-reaching study into the underlying legal aid system, which will focus on how best to provide legal help to those who need it in the longer term."

Some of its conclusions were set out in the July 2005 paper, "A fairer deal for legal aid", but the Minister decided on the basis of public interest to withhold the detailed responses and conclusions contained in an internal report. I called for an internal review of that decision, which resulted in certain limited material being made available. Nevertheless, the contents of the internal report remain elusive. That is entirely unsatisfactory, and one has to query why such information is being withheld. It seems only to add further weight to the concern that the legal aid system is in a state of crisis. The fact that fewer than two fifths of the population now qualify for legal aid sits rather uncomfortably with the concept that everyone is entitled to access to justice so that they can enforce and defend their legal rights and so that the Government and other powerful bodies can be held to account or contested where necessary.

The ridiculous extremes of bureaucracy involved in the legal aid process must continue to be broken down, and where savings measures are introduced, the savings must be real. The Government give in to the ever-present pressure to come up with short-term reforms designed to control the budget, but what is needed is a long-term strategy, particularly to reduce the amount spent on high-cost cases. The following figures represent the crux of the problem, which the Government are not adequately addressing. The half dozen most expensive criminal legal aid cases in 2003 amounted to no less than 25 per cent. of the total criminal legal aid budget. One per cent. of the highest cost cases amounted to between 40 and 50 per cent. of the total criminal legal aid budget.

The problem is not that the Government are spending too little money but that cases need to be managed more efficiently. There needs to be clarity about what legal aid is spent on. The Crown Prosecution Service needs to manage cases more effectively, as do judges. Dealing with the management issues at an early stage will help to avoid even bigger problems and spiralling costs later on. Yet the Government seem utterly unable to get to grips with the problem, which is not new.

The hon. Gentleman is making a very poor point. He said that very high-cost cases accounted for between 40 and 50 per cent. of all criminal legal aid spending. That is so, as it was in 1996, when the Conservatives were in office. Since then, it has gone up from 42 per cent. to 49 per cent., but we are tackling it, whereas the hon. Gentleman's Government did nothing whatever.

Eight years later, here we are talking about what needs to be done, and the best that the hon. and learned Lady can say is that the last Conservative Government did not get it right.

Would the hon. Gentleman like me to tell him over what period of time the same proportion of high-cost cases took up criminal legal aid? It was for many years while the Conservative Government were in office. We are trying to tackle that. I repeat that the Conservative Government did nothing about the problem for 18 years. We are trying to do something. How can he accuse us?

With barristers and magistrates going on strike, law firms closing down week after week—

rose—

No, I shall not give way to the hon. and learned Lady again.

Order. We cannot have two hon. Members on their feet at the same time. The hon. and learned Lady must know whether the hon. Gentleman who has the Floor is giving way to her.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I shall not. The hon. and learned Lady has already intervened several times. The fact that the Government have to have a Home Office Parliamentary Private Secretary as the only Labour Back Bencher in the Chamber reflects the Labour party's attitude to legal aid and the crisis in the system.

rose—

I shall not give way.

I repeat that the Government appear unable to get to grips with the problem. It represents a significant failure on the part of the Department for Constitutional Affairs. It must know that the reintroduction of means-testing will not solve the problem or make significant savings in relative terms.

The Law Society said in its submission to the fundamental legal aid review of January this year that early skilled diagnosis would have the most benefit in controlling the budget and prevent straightforward issues from becoming more significant and therefore a greater burden. It recommended the early identification of problems, and access by clients to appropriate services through a single point of entry offering legal aid services at different levels, or planned referrals. That will enable firms and advice agencies that already exist to take on extra rolls and expand their business. Does the Under-Secretary agree that that is a sensible way forward? If so, will she assure us that something will be done to implement it?

Work needs to be done on proposals for competitive price tendering. If such proposals are to succeed, we cannot have a system that runs a high risk of being no more than a cost-cutting exercise, which will inevitably reduce access to justice and the quality of advice and representation that is available to legally aided clients. Given the range of quality accredited suppliers already in existence, where is the justification for jeopardising quality purely to save costs? Representations have been made to us that small, often ethnic, inner-city firms will have to close shop because of the proposals. The high street criminal practice could become almost defunct.

The graduated fee scheme could have the perverse effect of encouraging barristers to drag out cases so that the longer they last, the more money they receive. It is also worth pointing out that, although civil and criminal legal aid constitute different pots, the Government appear to want to examine the whole. Losing control of criminal legal aid budgets has meant a collapse in civil legal aid, excluding asylum, by 24 per cent. in real terms since 1997 as criminal expenditure has risen by 37 per cent. We need imaginative solutions to achieve a sustainable legal aid system and an application of basic management skills to criminal case management.

Another concern is the falling number of solicitors who choose criminal law defence work as a career. Work needs to be done to increase participation. The number of solicitors' offices that provide criminal defence services has fallen by 25 per cent. from 3,500 in April 2001 to 2,651 in September this year. Legal aid practitioners should be of a high quality and receive proper compensation. In a survey that the Law Society conducted, 50 per cent. of trainee solicitors said that, all things being equal, they were likely to pursue a career in legal aid work. However, the practical reality is that only 8 per cent. said that they were indeed likely to pursue a career in legal aid. Financial uncertainty is a particular problem for young barristers, who have not even the guarantee of a meagre salary.

Given that legal aid rates have not increased for approximately eight years, the idea of attaching the tag of "fat cat" to the average criminal lawyer is perverse. Indeed, the problem is so bad that criminal practitioners tell me that very few wish to practise criminal law. Of those who do, many want to become prosecutors, who get a decent salary.

Perhaps the Under-Secretary could describe the pilots for state defenders. I understand that they are even more expensive than private defence solicitors. Firms also need some predictability in their businesses. Many face immense pressure as they try to deal with new proposals and the complexities of the current system in a hostile environment.

In relation specifically to criminal law, the increased complexity of the law as well as trial length must be taken into account, as the Bar Council has argued that those are the central drivers in increasing costs. It has cited annual criminal justice Bills and other legislation, which, over the past decade, have produced major changes in almost every area of legal practice and procedure. Two important examples are the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

Changes to sentencing guidelines and the increase in the number of offences that carry a prison sentence are further factors. In cases in which imprisonment is the likely consequence of a conviction, the interests of justice test in assessing entitlement to legal aid is more likely to be satisfied, causing more frequent grants of rights to representation. Imprisonment is increasing; indeed, the prison population today stands at about 77,000, an increase of 28 per cent. since 1997.

The effects of the Government's overall criminal justice policy must also be taken into account. For example, targets to increase arrest rates and the creation of a vast number of new criminal offences are contributory factors. That point was made by the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) in her very worthwhile comments in a recent Westminster Hall debate. Surely the message is that, if we are going to charge more people, send more people to Crown court trials and lock more people up, the costs of processing the accused—including legal aid costs—will rise.

Criminal solicitors are threatening to close up shop and criminal barristers have gone on strike, yet the Government seem unable to see that we need provisions to address the legal aid problems that are handicapping some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people in our society. What is needed is not simply to restrict the number of people being helped by the legal aid system, as the Bill proposes, but what was proposed in the Government's own report, "A Fairer Deal for Legal Aid", which was published in July this year. That is, a legal aid system that will be

"fair and effective, providing access to justice for all who need it".

Why can the Government not respond to their own message? If the Minister thinks that we, or the legal profession, will accept the Bill as the answer to the legal aid crisis, she will have to think again.

I congratulate the Government on the Bill, which I welcome. I also congratulate those in another place who did a very good job of teasing out the Bill's problems and giving them a good airing so that they could be addressed. It is not appropriate to arrogate that activity to just one side, which the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) sought to do. It is perfectly clear that the Liberal Democrats played a role, and that the hon. Gentleman's colleague and the Liberal Democrats in the other place were very complimentary about my noble colleague, Baroness Ashton. It seemed to have been a job well done all round.

It is a pity, therefore, that the atmosphere of trying to bring the Bill to fruition in everyone's interests cannot be maintained in this House, and that there has to be inaccurate cat-calling from the Conservative Front Bench. That is utterly unnecessary, and the hon. Member for Huntingdon really does get a great deal wrong. It is odd to hear him talk about the virtues of means-testing—the Conservatives usually speak of its evils—when its purpose is to get people out of poverty. The Tories took the extraordinary line only a few years ago of criticising the Government when they were doing their best to improve bureaucracy by abolishing a means test.

I also want to put the hon. Gentleman right on another point. There are plenty of applicants for the criminal Bar. My own chambers has hundreds of applicants per year.

Will the hon. and learned Lady give way?

I will in a moment. I know that the hon. Gentleman has an interest in this matter.

My chambers has hundreds of applicants every year, and I am aware of a number of young people who have now done all their training for the criminal bar and who would desperately like to get into it. They also have an ethic of public service, which helps. I wonder whether the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) is aware of that.

I certainly am. The hon. and learned Lady is right to say that I have an interest in these matters. I practise, as she did, at the criminal Bar. I understand that plenty of people might apply to chambers such as hers, to be at the criminal Bar. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) said, the issue is how many people are going to be able to afford to practise at the criminal Bar, when there are many more lucrative options elsewhere in the legal profession. Does not the hon. and learned Lady agree that we should be attracting the brightest and best to criminal law, rather than allowing them to go elsewhere?

If the Bar, made up as it is almost totally of white, upper-middle-class males, had some years ago paid attention to attracting the best, from whatever sector of society, the current imbalance in the Bar and judiciary would not prevail. The hon. Gentleman's point is not without foundation, however. There has been an understanding that because the rewards at the top of the Bar are good—as he knows—women and men together should just tolerate what there is at the bottom. That is not really a practical picture any more, but the Government have their eyes on that. In my debate in Westminster Hall, on which the hon. Member for Huntingdon commented and which the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth attended, there was a clear understanding on all sides, particularly in the Minister's response, that what she called the "baby Bar" should, in the eyes of the Government, be given improved circumstances. That, of course, is what we all want.

There is a certain amount of agreement, and it is false to sow, as the hon. Member for Huntingdon did over the preceding 20 minutes, some sort of queer animosity about matters that are not in the Bill. That causes a fair amount of concern. He talked, for instance, about it being the Government's fault that there is a perverse incentive for barristers, who are paid a refresher for every day longer that a case continues, and who therefore have no interest in shortening it. Of course, that is not the Government's fault; it is the basis on which barristers have been paid for a long time. I recall it from when I went into business as a barrister, roughly at the time, in an unfortunate coincidence, that Lady Thatcher became Prime Minister. I noted then that it was a curious way of paying people at the Bar. It needs to be attacked, but it is nothing to do with this Government.

The hon. Member for Huntingdon must face the fact that many of the things that he highlighted, such as the way in which barristers are paid and the excessive amount that very high-cost cases take from the criminal legal aid budget, go back many years. It is not sufficient for him to say that the Government have not tackled those issues over the past eight years when his Government did not even try to tackle any of them. He shakes his head, but I am willing to sit down and listen to him tell me in an intervention exactly what his Government did about very high-cost cases, recruiting people of all classes to the Bar and trying to remove the perverse incentives about which he now complains. I am waiting for his intervention.

It is not a question of what this or that Government did, but of how we can move things forward. The hon. and learned Lady misrepresents what I said in my speech. I did attack the Government where they needed attacking, but I also provided a series of pointers to how the position can be improved. I think that she agreed with me to that extent. Perhaps we can move forward now.

If the hon. Gentleman reads his speech he will realise that he said that magistrates are on strike, which is utter rubbish, and that the Bar is on strike, which is utter rubbish—strike action was threatened for a very few days but it was accepted that Lord Carter of Coles understood their interests. The hon. Gentleman misrepresented that. He also blamed the Government for the way in which those at the Bar are paid. It was a lot of rubbish and it was quite unnecessary. I do not know why he cannot focus on the issues, which are that the Bill will promote some savings but a good deal more fairness. He ought, like his colleagues in the other place, to welcome and try to include it.

The Bill provides a reasonably simple formula, which, in magistrates courts, where costs are quite low, will exclude from legal aid those whose income is above a particular level. The hon. Gentleman did not appear to have digested the fact that there is a separate system for the Crown court, which is now in a supplement to the framework document. That different model will allow for the much higher costs in a Crown court, with a barrier over which one cannot get legal aid and a barrier under which one gets it whatever, with those in the middle being dealt with through a refined and fairly reasonable, on the face of it, basis of means-testing. That comes with the important proviso, on which everyone should be able to focus, that someone who is acquitted, all other things being equal, should be entitled to a defence costs order. That is also subject to the proviso that there must be an interests of justice override where the sheer mathematics are such that the interests of justice are not represented in giving a grant of representation.

There is also the issue of fairness—fairness to us all because we all pay in the end, and legal aid must be well organised, and also an element of fairness in the establishment of equivalence with civil legal aid. There have always been contributions on a means-tested basis for the purpose of civil legal aid, but that has not always applied to criminal legal aid, which seems slightly odd. The theory may be that because criminal defendants have no option but to be in that position, they should not be required to contribute, but defendants in civil cases often have no option either. It is odd that both groups have not always been subject to means-testing.

The other important aspect of fairness is clear: no one who needs representation should not be given it. I am very pleased that in the House of Lords everyone coalesced around the interests of justice test, and that it is to stay.

The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) levelled a criticism at the change of heart, but I do not think that it should have been a criticism. The idea behind the scrapping of the means test was pretty simple. The costs in magistrates courts are very low. The state probably pays less if it bears them than if it must engage people to calculate a means test on a very complex basis in order to recover a small amount at a rate of perhaps a pound or two a week. That must have seemed a very reasonable position to take. Moreover, there was a huge increase in legal aid certificates that could not rationally be linked to the changes, almost as if there had been carte blanche for everyone to receive a certificate. That has led to anomalies. No one could possibly cheer when well-paid footballers receive legal aid for antisocial behaviour without making a contribution, and there is clearly a need for change.

When I was practising as a criminal solicitor, it was proposed that means-testing should be abolished. Solicitors did not propose its abolition; they, indeed all practitioners, were saying "Let us deal with the implementation and administration of the scheme." It was the Government who went ahead and abolished it. We, or anyone else, could have told them that applications would increase. It does not require sophisticated judgment to conclude that once those accused of drink-driving offences, for instance, are allowed legal aid there will be an increase in the number of certificates.

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. The notion that the Government made the change without consulting the professions and other stakeholders widely is totally incorrect.

Did they listen?

Of course they listened. I cannot comment on whether members of the hon. Gentleman's branch of the profession said what he tells us they said, but I was active in the magistrates court at the time.

It was made clear to me, as a member of the London Courts Solicitors Association, that the problem related to the practical implementation. The position is improving greatly, but the Government seemed to decide, no doubt in the interests of finance, to abolish means-testing without considering what the effects might be. That is symptomatic of their tendency to pigeonhole decisions—to make them at one end without seeing the probable outcomes at the other.

It really was not as clear as that. If the hon. Gentleman shows me some brilliant document from the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association suggesting a better mechanism for means-testing, I shall be very surprised. There was undoubtedly wide stakeholder consultation on the proposal, and it was a realistic possibility that it would be cheaper not to means-test than to means-test. However, there was inconsistency in the ways in which various magistrates courts were granting certificates. In some areas, it was seen as an invitation to open the floodgates; in others, that did not apply to the same extent. A number of certificates were issued that would not have been issued before, but there was no match between the change and the increase.

Surely at the time there was a trade-off between increasing the speed of legal proceedings by removing what was seen as an obstacle and a potential increase in costs. The view taken at the time was that removing the means test was likely to involve more benefit than disbenefit. Now it appears that the opposite view has been taken.

Yes, that played a significant role but, in addition, removing that layer of bureaucracy was intended to be cheaper. Clearly, there are unacceptable occasions when someone who is very well to do receives legal aid, which has pointed to the need for a new look at the whole system. I hope that we will end up with a smarter, slicker, neater means test. It should not hold back justice significantly, especially given the high calibre of the people who will implement it through the service level agreement. The scheme should be coherent and consistent. The LSC has the background responsibility, but it will be delegated to those on the front line who have the practical skills. Therefore, one hopes for consistency and simplicity of application, so that we can get the best out of it.

I said that I thought that the scheme was a combination of fairness and savings. The savings are estimated to be around £35 million. Of course, they are well worth having. I guess that they will come from exclusions, from 10 to 20 per cent. fewer applications and from contributions. I do not know whether there will be any administrative savings as well, but it is key that, essentially, the same people will be involved, who will have the knowledge. I know that the Bar was worried about handing over the decisions on merits to the LSC when it was not front-line, court experienced. I think that that has been managed sensibly through the scheme.

As I have mentioned, it is imperative that we use legal aid in the civil system to ensure that we attack social exclusion. We have to disperse our available legal advice and other advice about debt and so on, and ensure that the poor, who cannot in another way obtain such advice, are resourced to get it. Many poor people do not know their rights. They are at the bottom economically, with no power of that kind to fight back. They can be pushed around by authorities, those who have better resources, organisations, Government and local government, because they do not have that power. Their rights can and will be abused if they are not given sufficient resources to have, as it were, a friend on their side who can advance their case. That imbalance must be addressed and legal aid in the civil sector is an important part of that.

It is also important that there should not be any lessening in the adequacy of support in the criminal sector. We are getting more cases to court. Surely everyone welcomes that. The conviction rate is getting better. We have better investigation, charging and review of charging. There is support for witnesses under the no witness, no justice scheme, so that witnesses have more confidence to come to court. That is what we all want—to catch more criminals, to bring them to court and, we hope, to play a role in reducing crime and the fear of crime.

That is all very good. It will inevitably increase legal aid costs, but we must keep the matter in proportion. There must not be any diminution of input into legal aid. I fear that, occasionally in these discussions, we lose sight of the fact that often people who come to court are not guilty and they need support to make their case. They can be found not guilty for a range of reasons, from mistaken identity or scientific evidence to having a legal defence. They may have been put into the frame by some criminal to get himself out of it. I have defended innumerable people who, on the face of the papers, I did not think would be easy to defend. I have found that I have been right to fight very hard for their cause because, in truth, they were not guilty. One cannot always see from the papers that that is the case. Therefore, do not let the savings be automatically allocated to civil legal aid if that is going to mean that there is inadequate resourcing of people on the criminal side.

The Longford lecture was recently delivered by Baroness Hale, the first Law Lady. She made another point that emphasises the importance of adequate criminal legal aid. She drew attention—her lecture was about women in the criminal justice system—to the fact that about 30 per cent. of women in prison have suffered from long-term domestic violence. About a quarter have been raped or have suffered sexual abuse—conviction rates for both offences are low—and they are highly unlikely to have received any justice. About half had either psychiatric or addictive behaviours in the year before they were taken into custody.

It is reasonably clear from that—though it would be a great jump if one were doing a research thesis—that trauma and chaos have been thrown into these women's lives and that they often turn to crime as a way of dealing with their poverty or with other problems. They have already been failed once—society has let the abuse be inflicted on them and given them no justice—so it is important that they are not failed again by not being provided with enough money to defend themselves.

rose—

That was my last word, but I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. and learned Lady is extremely generous in giving way on her last word. I share her concern about the levels of domestic violence, but is she aware that the statistics show that married couples are a quarter less likely to be involved in domestic violence than those who are either co-habiting or single? Does that not suggest that the Government should offer more support to the institution of marriage?

The hon. Gentleman is incorrect. The figures show that there is more reporting of cases by non-married than by married people. He cannot rightly draw the conclusion that he has drawn. One worries that people hold on to marriages longer than they should because of the institution of marriage, but that is a very different debate.

I want to end by saying that the new fairness is very welcome, that the savings are very welcome and that I look forward to them being used even-handedly and wisely across the range of legal aid.

It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. and learned Lady. As is also very often the case, I agree with a great part of what she said. In particular, I agree that we should not be ashamed of legal aid; rather, we should rejoice in it. I am one of the few non-lawyers—either practising or non-practising—who is contributing to this evening's debate, but I want to make it absolutely plain that legal aid is unequivocally one of the most important pillars of the welfare state. It is as important in its way as provisions for education, health or social security, because allowing people access to justice is the mark of a civilised society—and that means ensuring that they are properly represented if they find themselves before a court of law.

Our debate has encompassed the whole of legal aid rather than the specifics of the Bill on Second Reading—I think that that is entirely appropriate in the present circumstances. It is important that we say how important both the criminal and civil legal aid systems are. It is right to acknowledge how the criminal legal aid budget has unfortunately squeezed the civil legal aid budget to an unacceptable degree. We should recognise the Government's difficulties in controlling the budget. Of course we recognise that dealing with it presents a problem for them, but it is not unreasonable also to say that we do not entirely agree with the way in which they have addressed the problem, notwithstanding what is contained in the Bill.

What I have found particularly distressing about Government propaganda recently is the constant concentration on so-called fat-cat lawyers to the exclusion of those who provide day-to-day services throughout the country to people who truly need the support of a solicitor or junior barrister in the courts. The more the attention of the press, the media and the public is drawn to a very small number of QCs operating at the Old Bailey or elsewhere to the exclusion of the rest of the profession, the more we do a disservice to the totality of the profession and the legal aid that is provided. It is a diversionary tactic that is intended to provide a hate figure for more easily led colleagues. They say, "We have got to do something about these very rich lawyers," without recognising that there is a very thin dividing line between reducing the excesses of some and reducing the effectiveness of the whole.

Legal aid is incredibly important to the least well-off and most vulnerable in society, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that an absence of legal aid practising solicitors is equally iniquitous?

The hon. Gentleman is right and I will deal with that point in a moment. We rightly always draw attention to the most vulnerable and the least financially able to make a point, but this issue affects a much wider swathe of individuals. It is a truism to say that nobody—and certainly not the articulate middle classes—thinks about legal aid until they themselves are in a court and have no access to a solicitor at the point of need. One of the difficulties in arguing the case for legal aid effectively is perhaps that so many people assume that they will never be in that position until they are. Then they realise just how important its provision is.

Much has been made of the idea that fees to lawyers are a substantial part of the problem, but in fact the evidence suggests the reverse. Remuneration for the large bulk of those providing legal aid is not excessive by any means and fees have been frozen for some time. The legal aid budget has risen inexorably simply because of the volume of business being pushed through, which is largely the result of the huge number of prosecutable offences that have been put on to the statute book. I do not know the precise figure, but the last time that I looked, this Government had created some 700 new offences. I suspect that the figure is now approaching 800. The legal aid impact test is now being applied to new legislation, but it is 800 offences too late: the damage has already been done.

New offences are included in Bills with monotonous regularity; sometimes, they are included before the offences that they are replacing have even been implemented. That provides work for lawyers but is of no advantage to anybody else. We must ask ourselves what the consequences are of such an approach. One way to reduce the legal aid budget is to have a sensible prosecuting policy and not to prosecute such absurd offences as reading out a list of names by the Cenotaph. In the first instance, we need sensible laws and offences that do not unnecessarily restrict free speech.

The attempt to get other Departments to share the legal aid costs associated with the offences that they put on the statute book is laudable, but I shall believe it when I see it happen. I fear that the Department for Constitutional Affairs does not have the clout within Government and the Cabinet to make this idea work. It could have worked, had my and others' proposal come to fruition to replace the DCA with a full-blown ministry of justice that takes significant powers from the Home Office. If we had that big player in government, perhaps more account might be taken of this idea. When I see the Home Office divesting itself of a significant part of its budget and handing it over to the DCA to pay for the consequences of the offences that it has put on to the statute book in this year's criminal justice legislation, this year's asylum and immigration legislation or this year's anti-terrorism legislation, perhaps I will believe it. Until that happens, I fear that this is a fruitless endeavour.

We have also heard about the management of cases, but that cannot be swept aside as irrelevant, as it is critical to the amount of costs incurred. If we managed prosecutions better, we could manage defence cases better. At present, the evidence is that the management of cases, and of high-cost cases in particular, is lamentably poor in many instances, with the result that costs are higher.

The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) mentioned early intervention. Although he was speaking more about civil cases than criminal ones, I agree that early intervention can prevent matters going to court that otherwise would have to and that the effect is to reduce costs overall.

I shall give some examples of how not to deal with the expanding legal aid budget. First, we must be very careful about the thresholds that are applied. I pay tribute to the Government for having listened to the Liberal Democrats' departmental committee on this subject, and to the views of my noble Friends in another place. The system that has emerged has a built-in sensitivity that might not have been expected. A steep or sharp threshold would mean that there was a point at which a person's income would suddenly require him or her to pay the full costs of defence, even though that person had not had to pay anything before that point was reached. That would be inappropriate, whereas the tapering that is in place is entirely appropriate. However, the test is whether people are denied access to justice by their means, and that is a test that we cannot yet apply.

The second way not to deal with the matter is to reduce the service that lawyers can provide to clients. An example of that is evident in the immigration service, where the whole thrust of previous immigration legislation has been to cut costs by reducing what lawyers can do for their clients. The effect has been to drive good practitioners out, and to allow poorer practitioners to be the sole defence resource for those who need it.

We must also be careful about reducing fees. The Government have chosen a very arbitrary way to reduce fees, especially for junior counsel, but the number of people practising at the Bar and as solicitors is falling. It is very difficult to find legal aid solicitors in large parts of the country and, if we are not careful, the result will be that some places will become advice deserts. Often, the most deprived areas are not the worst affected: perversely, people in the most affluent areas are less likely to have legal aid practitioners. It is probably the worst thing of all to be poor in an affluent area, as such people have no access to services that they have a right to expect.

The House needs to be aware of how few practitioners there are in the less affluent and rural parts of Britain. As I have said many times, my town of Frome has a magistrates court but only one practitioner in one practice providing criminal legal aid. He can do so because he is cross-subsidised by the rest of the practice, but his colleagues' patience about that cross-subsidy may not last for ever. It is often reported that Frome magistrates court will close and that it will move to a new location 35 miles away. If that happens, I am sure that the patience of the other partners in the practice will be exhausted, as they will not want their colleague to be out of the office all day, every day, on visits to faraway magistrates courts. The result will be that there will be no one to represent people who require criminal legal aid in the magistrates courts in my area.

That is a huge concern. It is bad enough to have only one practitioner, given the obvious potential for a conflict of interest to arise. For example, the practitioner in Frome often represents interesting young gentlemen—I shall not say "thugs"—and in their defence makes a familiar speech, telling the court about the extraordinary behaviour that a break-up with a girlfriend occasioned, and about the remorse that the young gentleman in question has expressed. However, that might coincide with his client having a fight with another young gentleman, whose story is suspiciously similar. That could involve a conflict of interests. If we do not have such practitioners, how will we provide the service?

I am dubious about having a public defender service as a matter of course, which seems to me to be the direction in which we are inexorably headed. If that happened, the state would investigate the crime, mount the prosecution, try the crime and defend the defendant. I am not sure that that is how criminal justice should work in this country, and we need to be cautious about reaching that situation.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that not only would a criminal defence service be not necessarily better for the defendant, but—on the evidence we have so far—it would be no cheaper either?

It would almost certainly be more expensive, because we would no longer have the cross-subsidy that I mentioned earlier. It is more and more difficult to maintain that cross-subsidy anyway, as aspects of solicitors' general practice are hived off to other professions. The conveyancing that used to provide a large part of practices' income is now done by others, and other parts of the job are being done by other professions. That means that many towns do not have general practices providing all the services. That may not be a problem in a large city, which will have a variety of practices specialising in different areas, but it is certainly a problem in market towns and rural areas, which have a limited number of solicitors who have to provide a wide range of services.

The hon. Gentleman makes the point well about the lack of cross-subsidy and the possibility that heavier costs will follow as a consequence. I am interested in his notion that because the state finances a criminal defence it might not be so good. I have done a case in which the criminal defence representatives were able to mobilise the Criminal Cases Review Commission to order the police to seize some evidence in a way that I am convinced that no high street firm would have been able to mobilise an organ of state to do. That may have been because the defence representatives were funded by the state, albeit at arm's length, and had some extra clout in some situations. They certainly did in that case. Is the hon. Gentleman interested in that as a counter-argument?

I am certainly always interested in counter-arguments and I do not wish to cast aspersions on the professionalism of lawyers employed in that capacity. Indeed, the source of funding is the same in either case. The question is whether a person is under contract directly to the state—as barristers are not—in a way that would be an innovation in our legal system.

The point that the hon. and learned Lady makes gives me cause for concern in the other direction, because I would not want us to have an elite defender system any more than I would wish us to have a substandard defender system. If it is true that a state defender would have more clout with the prosecuting authorities than other defenders, something would need to be done to prevent that from happening.