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Written Ministerial Statements
Wednesday 2 March 2005
CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
Civil Legal Aid Reforms
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs (Mr. David Lammy): With the agreement of the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, I am pleased to announce a package of measures, some of which come into effect from 1 April 2005, that will encourage early and effective resolution in civil dispute cases, including family cases.
These measures give effect to proposals for reform of civil legal aid set out in the July 2004 Legal Services Commission (LSC) consultation paper "A New Focus for Civil Legal Aid—Encouraging Early Resolution; Discouraging Unnecessary Litigation". The main theme of the paper was to refocus the civil legal aid scheme to encourage early resolution and the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) measures such as negotiation or mediation and away from contested litigation.
We have taken account of detailed and considered representations received during the consultation in finalising the measures announced today to deliver a reform package that acknowledges and addresses the key concerns expressed in consultation. I believe this represents a positive move forward for civil legal aid that we can build on in future years.
Following the consultation, I confirm that we will not be making reductions in financial eligibility except the aligning of levels described below or reducing the scope of services covered, save for minor amendments to the personal injury exclusion.
The upper disposable income limit for legal representation will be reduced from £707 per month to £632 per month, in line with the new legal help limit below. This will produce uniform upper income limits for all levels of service, different services differing only in terms of the different contribution regimes. Only those applicants who would previously have had to pay high levels of contribution under their legal aid certificates will be affected by this change.
In addition, the LSC will be given discretion to waive the upper disposable income limit for legal representation for the benefit of victims of domestic violence seeking protection from the court. This will extend eligibility for such clients by allowing the upper limit to be increased beyond the previous upper limit of £707 per month. However the gross income cap and contribution rules will remain unchanged.
We will increase financial eligibility for legal help, which covers vital front line advice services. The disposable income limit for legal help will rise to £632 per month. The capital limit for legal help will be raised substantially from £3,000 to £8,000 to match the upper capital limit for legal representation.
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Further, we will extend the current "passporting" rules under which recipients of certain benefits are deemed financially eligible for services. Such benefit recipients will be passported on both income and capital for all levels of service (previously legal help was only passported on income and capital had to be assessed in every case). This will also simplify the means assessment process for suppliers.
We will modify the existing "subject matter of the dispute" rule under which assets in dispute are automatically excluded from means assessment. In future, if the client's interest in the disputed assets is worth over £100,000, the excess over £100,000 will be taken into account.
In family cases, the package includes measures to redesign the structure of family legal aid to place emphasis on early resolution out of court, in line with the Green Paper on parental separation published in July 2004. A pilot to test the new structure is scheduled to commence in June 2005 and is expected to run in four locations. The final details are currently being agreed.
We will also remove cost protection in family cases to deter unreasonable conduct by publicly funded clients, and introduce stricter controls over multiple and repeat applications in private law family cases. These controls will be enforced through improvements to processing systems that provide a reliable means of identifying previous legal aid applicants.
The consultation paper proposed significant changes to the funding of cases concerning financial provision in divorce (ancillary relief), including a power for the LSC to refuse legal aid for legal representation if private funding, by means of a loan or otherwise, is available and affordable in an individual case.
In principle, we believe that such a power would be appropriate, but we will only introduce it if satisfied that a good range of private funding arrangements is accessible to clients currently within legal aid eligibility limits. We will undertake further work on the availability and conditions of finance, in conjunction with our key stakeholders. I should emphasise that any new funding arrangements along these lines would only apply to those cases that do not reach any resolution during the financial dispute resolution hearing, but continue to full contested court proceedings.
To discourage unnecessary litigation, in clinical negligence cases and actions against the police most applicants will be expected to pursue any available complaints system before they are funded to take proceedings. This will give the potential defendant public body the opportunity to respond to the matters raised and provide an explanation or apology if appropriate before it is decided whether litigation is the appropriate remedy for the client. The LSC will consult further on when such an approach would not be appropriate and on guidance to further encourage the use of mediation in non-family disputes.
As urged by many respondents, we will also be improving the operation of the statutory charge, to encourage early repayment of legal aid costs. Our reforms package includes increasing the interest rates as an incentive to pay off the charge as soon as practicable. We also intend to introduce a discretion for the LSC to be able to decide whether the statutory charge should be postponed, subject to assessing the client's means. This
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will also include the power to review postponed charges at regular intervals. The LSC will also adopt a firmer approach when deciding whether a charge can be transferred to a new property. Finally, we propose to remove the exemption for the first £3,000 of money or value from property recovered, from the statutory charge.
We propose to strengthen the cost benefit criterion when assessing applications for funding in claims against the police to ensure that the benefits obtained from a case are proportionate to the costs involved, and to improve general handling of police cases. We will also raise the minimum cost benefit requirements for clinical negligence damages claims to match those for other categories of case.
We will also be restricting the very high cost civil cases budget to ensure that disproportionately expensive cases do not preclude access to justice for smaller cases. In terms of the overall legal aid budget, the need to achieve substantial savings remains. If the community legal service does not remain in budget there is a very real risk that funding will have to be reduced in future, and consequently that the most deserving cases may not receive the assistance they need. With a limited budget, we need to ensure that legal aid funding is targeted on the most needy cases and to the priority areas.
These proposals are fully consistent with the fundamental legal aid review (FLAR) and represent the first phase of a co-ordinated continuing legal aid reform programme to achieve an appropriate long term settlement for legal aid.
We propose to implement the eligibility changes in April and the remaining changes in July. A copy of the consultation response paper and the final regulatory and equalities impact assessment will be available shortly on the DCA website at www.dca.gov.uk
DEFENCE
Defence Information Infrastructure (Future)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr. Adam Ingram): I am pleased to announce that the preferred bidder for the defence information infrastructure (future) contract is the Atlas consortium. This group of companies have international experience of delivering first class IT systems and we look forward to working in partnership with them over the coming years. We have conducted a rigorous competition and are confident that provision of an effective, efficient and value for money service, vital to the modernisation of defence, has begun today.
EDUCATION AND SKILLS
Adoption and Children Act 2002
The Minister for Children, Young People and Families (Margaret Hodge):
I am pleased to set out the Government's detailed plans for full implementation of the adoption and special guardianship provisions in the Adoption and Children Act 2002.
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The Adoption and Children Act 2002 received Royal Assent in November 2002 and modernises the whole existing legal framework for domestic and intercountry adoption. It also introduces a new legal order, special guardianship, which offers legal permanence for children for whom adoption is not suitable.
We have already implemented some key provisions of the Act. These include:
1 December 2003—giving parental responsibility to unmarried fathers who jointly register the birth of their child with the mother;
1 April 2004—advocacy services for children and young people making a complaint under the Children Act 1989;
30 April 2004—the first phase of the Independent Review Mechanism, which will cover prospective adopters whose adoption agency is minded not to approve them;
31 January 2005—Amendment to the definition of "harm" in the Children Act 1989 to make clear that harm includes any impairment of the child's health or development as a result of witnessing the ill treatment of another person.
During 2003 and 2004 we consulted extensively on a range of draft regulations, court rules and guidance and ran over 25 workshops, seminars and focus groups to ensure that we had heard from all those with an interest in this fundamental reform of adoption law. We have reviewed the consultation drafts and the implementation timetable in great detail in the light of the comments received.
We will be laying all the core sets of regulations to implement the adoption and special guardianship provisions in the next few weeks, starting today with the Adoption Agencies Regulations, the Adoptions with a Foreign Element Regulations and two statutory instruments which are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. These are the Suitability Regulations and the Restriction on the Preparation of Adoption Reports Regulations. The regulations covering access to information, adoption support services and special guardianship will follow this month. The court rules are being considered by the Family Procedure Rule Committee and will be in place and available to support training well in advance of implementation.
We planned for the legislation to come fully into force in September 2005. However, following concerns expressed by those who will be required to put these important changes for children and their families into effect about the need to allow sufficient time for training and preparation once the regulations, court rules and guidance are in place, we now intend to bring the legislation fully into force on 30 December 2005. This will allow a nine month preparation period for the field from the laying of the core regulations and will enable training to take place in the autumn, after the summer holidays and immediately prior to implementation.
We remain committed to providing an extensive communication and training programme to ensure that those working in the adoption field and more widely in children's services are fully up to speed with the new legislation. The DfES is currently developing this programme, and is continuing to involve stakeholders
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closely through an Advisory Group representing the interests of those in the adoption field. The Department for Constitutional Affairs is separately organising training for the judiciary and courts service staff which will be closely aligned with the DfES training programme.
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