Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
BRIAN HARVEY,
CRISPIN PASSMORE
AND AMANDA
FINLAY
14 FEBRUARY 2006
Q60 Keith Vaz: Mr Harvey, you are
the Acting Chief Executive.
Brian Harvey: I cannot remember.
Q61 Keith Vaz: If you cannot remember,
how do you expect the public to know how to get access to these
services?
Brian Harvey: Because in the places
that you describe all the information is available as to where,
what to phone. It is advertised in the Yellow Pages. All the agencies
have the number and will advise their clients that is the number
to phone.
Keith Vaz: It is just that you do not
know what it is.
Q62 Jeremy Wright: When that phone
number is called, the service which it is replacing is the Specialist
Support Service which, and you will correct me if I am wrong about
this, is there in order to help lawyers who do not have the particular
expertise in a particular area of law. In other words, it is advanced
further understanding of a particular area of law they are not
expert in. Is that right? That is what the Specialist Support
Service does?
Crispin Passmore: It is part of
it, yes.
Q63 Jeremy Wright: CLS Direct is
designed to replace the Specialist Support Service?
Crispin Passmore: It is an alternative
way of accessing the advice generally. It is not face-to-face
in some cases.
Q64 Jeremy Wright: Following on from
Mr Vaz's question, assuming that someone can remember the number,
are you confident that what comes at them from the other end of
the phone line is going to be comprehensible and useful to them?
Crispin Passmore: All the evidence
we have supports that proposition where we analyse, on an on-going
basis, the perception of the service by clients, and ratings in
excess of 95% in terms of quality advice, resolving problems are
what we are seeing reported. We are contracting with organisations
that are meeting the specialist standard. The way the system works
is that calls come into a call centre and then, on a rota basis,
they are passed to senior case-workers who meet the standards
and can deliver the specialist quality standard.
Q65 Chairman: You are measuring the
current success of CLS Direct in the situation where the support
services exist and are therefore used on behalf of a significant
number of those who go to the other providers, whether it is the
CAB or whether it is another solicitor, and even CLS Direct itself
can make use of that service if it wants to do so. So you are
taking measurements from a period where the service exists and
assuming that they will be as good when the service is not there.
Is that not a bit risky?
Crispin Passmore: As I said a
moment ago, we have no evidence of CLS Direct advisers seeking
specialist support advice services. Obviously, it if there is
any information, that will be of interest, because the contract
with those providers is that they should be providing that service.
They should not need to go to a specialist support contract holder
to provide the service that they are contracted to provide. On
the basis that we believe that is the situation, we are confident
that the quality of the service will continue and, hopefully,
will continue to improve.
Q66 Barbara Keeley: I think we have
ascertained that CLS Direct actually use specialist support themselves.
With these contracts being cancelled, presumably the staff in
the 19 organisations will move away to do other things. How will
CLS Direct manage without the support once the support collapses
through the contracts not being there? You have admitted that
this process was flawed, you did not consult well. Organisations
do seem to us to be outraged at the way you have behaved over
this. You use part of this service yourselves. You are saying
the solution is switching funding to CLS Direct. How is CLS Direct
going to manage without the specialist support if the specialist
support just vanishes?
Crispin Passmore: CLS Direct contracts
with broadly the same providers as are delivering fact-to-face
services. It is not provided in-house. It is us contracting with
CABs, law centres, and private solicitors, who are broadly the
same people as those delivering face-to-face services. They have
to meet the same quality standards. They have to have a supervisor
who has to rate their competence.
Q67 Barbara Keeley: That is not the
question I am asking. You are admitting to a flawed process in
which you are cancelling contracts to 19 organisations and yet
you rely in part for CLS Direct on that same support?
Crispin Passmore: What I am saying
to you is that our service provider facility should not be relying
upon the Specialist Support Service. They are contracted to deliver
that specialist service in that particular area of law, and I
would quite like to see the information on that—I was not
aware of it—and we will go away and look at that and discuss
it with CLS Direct. We want to make sure that CLS Direct is able
to look at the specialist advice it is contracted to deliver.
Q68 Julie Morgan: If people get advice
from CLS Direct on very complex situations—asylum applications
have been mentioned, complex housing situations—how do you
have confidence that they would then be able to go away and implement
the advice given by CLS Direct, whereas we know the specialist
support services have played a very valuable role in supporting
on-going casework and taking things forward?
Brian Harvey: They will be subject
to exactly the same quality assessment process the specialist
support contracts were assessed under, which is peer review, which
is the principal process, but supported by other on-going quality
assessment processes that we have. That is the mechanism.
Q69 Julie Morgan: I wanted to ask
another question about consultation. Why did you not consult the
Welsh Assembly Governments about the proposals to end the Specialist
Support Service in Wales? I think you know there is a particular
service that is provided in Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government
has specific advice strategies?
Crispin Passmore: We engaged in
quite a long dialogue with the Welsh Assembly Government as we
looked to develop an appropriate way to take forward the CLS strategy
for England and Wales within Wales which recognises the unique
environment of Wales—that is an on-going discussion. We
look at how we pilot new ways forward, how we make sure that services
are appropriate to the particular context of Wales, for example,
ensuring that CLS Direct services are provided in the Welsh language
in a way that is comprehensive and in a way that we have not been
able to deliver face-to-face in specialist support services. From
April we will be tendering to expand Welsh language CLS Direct
and we will be continuing to work with the Welsh Assembly Government
in taking that forward. We consult with them on a broad strategic
level rather than at an individual level on issues that are not
devolved.
Q70 Julie Morgan: You do not think
you should have consulted with the Welsh Assembly Government,
who you are working in partnership with, about ending these specific
services?
Crispin Passmore: I think it is
important that we work with the Welsh Assembly Government and
with local government in Wales, the same as we work with local
government in England, to make sure that services that we commission
are relevant to local communities. I think we do that on a strategic
level and, in terms of particular services where we can work most
appropriately, jointly with the funding that they put in, I think
we have been very good at that with the Welsh Assembly Government
best of all. I do not think it is necessary for us to consult
on each contract decision with every single stakeholder.
Q71 Julie Morgan: This on specific
strategic decision you did not think it was necessary to consult
the Welsh Assembly Government?
Crispin Passmore: No.
Q72 James Brokenshire: How much have
you allocated in your budget for promoting awareness of CLS Direct
in the current financial year and the next financial year?
Crispin Passmore: I do not have
the numbers
Q73 James Brokenshire: Obviously,
I think, from discussions today, promoting awareness of CLS Direct
is quite a good factor in terms of knowing that the availability
of the service is there and I would hope to see a reasonable figure
allocated to it.
Brian Harvey: I have not got the
figures in my head, but it is a relatively small amount because
it is largely done through Yellow Pages, the reason being that
the rate of demand is accelerating for longer and we do not want
to be in a position where we cannot meet demand.
Q74 James Brokenshire: Therefore,
it is your intention not to promote awareness of it too much in
case the department thinks it is too great?
Brian Harvey: No, we have promoted
it, but if you had an expectation for spending vast sums of money
on promoting it, I am saying that is not what we need to do because
the demand is there and the usage is increasing. The big problem,
which we are managing at the present time, is to make sure the
capacity that we are putting in place on a progressive basis is
meeting the demand as it emerges.
Q75 James Brokenshire: You made one
central issue in terms of advocating the use of CLS Direct: that
you measured on the basis that you would help more people and
yet, from what you have said, you do not want to help too many
people?
Brian Harvey: We can only help
as many people as our budget allows?
Chairman: We have some other business
to do this afternoon, and I therefore do not propose to go into
things that we can discuss with you later, like Carter, but there
are a couple of specific questions that relate to two bits of
work we are doing currently which I think we could very quickly
deal with.
Q76 James Brokenshire: One other
issue that we have been looking at is the NHS redress scheme,
and, in particular, if it is established, how that fits into the
legal aid framework. Do you envisage that claimants would have
to pass through the scheme first before they would be entitled
to legal aid?
Crispin Passmore: I think what
we have said is we will wait to see the full details of the NHS
redress scheme and then consider them before we decide how that
best plays into civil legal help and civil representation.
Q77 James Brokenshire: To be very
clear on this, obviously there are some indications as to what
the format of the approach would be. You are unclear and uncertain,
as yet, as to whether you would require people to go through that
first before being able to obtain legal aid?
Crispin Passmore: It is very difficult
for us to make a final decision until we have seen the final proposals.
Q78 James Brokenshire: You have not
ruled that option out?
Crispin Passmore: No, but we have
not made the decision until we have seen the final scheme.
Q79 Dr Whitehead: I would like to
ask a question about legal aid for asylum appeals. That arises
from the inquiry that this Committee did a little while ago when
we expressed concerns about the Government's funding mechanism
for legal aid. Subsequently it transpired that the LSC had also,
in its meeting minutes of 26 January 2005, expressed concern particularly
at the conditional nature of subsequent legal aid after initial
hearing. You stated that you had highlighted the serious risk
associated with the policy but the proposal had met with the agreement
of ministers. What were your reservations and do you think they
have come to be justified in the light of experience?
Brian Harvey: As a general comment,
the difficulty we have in responding to the question about where
we are at is not sufficient cases pass through the system to be
able to evaluate what is going on. Most of the cases going through
at the moment are under the transitional previous arrangements.
In terms of concern, the major concern was cost, whether or not
costs would be higher under such an arrangement. I do not know
whether Crispin has anything to add to that.
Crispin Passmore: We are working
with the Department to undertake a review of the commitment that
was made. I think the position of the review, which is yet to
report, is that there are simply not enough cases, given the nature
and the length of this process, for us to come to any findings.
I think most of the cases that have come through since April 2005
are cases that were transitional, in that they started through
the process under the old scheme, and so it is very difficult
to make conclusions about incentives and disincentives and overall
costs until we have seen a significant cohort of cases come through
that started and went to conclusion under the new scheme. We are
very keen to continue that evaluation when we get that cohort
of cases.
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