Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
169-201)
Campbell Robb, Simon Pugh
7 February 2011
Chair: Mr Robb and Mr
Pugh, welcome. We are very glad to have you giving evidence. You
are respectively Chief Executive and Head of Legal Services at
Shelter. Mr Gummer is going to start.
Q169 Ben Gummer:
I will ask a general question. Most people who appear in front
of this Committee and most people whose doors I knock on at weekends
accept that there have to be cuts of some description in most
budgets. With that in mind, how do you view the Government's proposals
on legal aid?
Campbell Robb:
Thank you. Just to start from our perspective, it is worth pointing
out that the civil legal aid budget has fallen year-on-year for
nearly the last seven or eight years. We are not in an area where
there has been a growth in the amount of money that is spent.
In fact over the years the rights and support for legal aid in
the areas in which we work have been salami sliced. It is not
our place to comment on other areas of law particularly. We can
only really comment on the ones where we are. Certainly from our
perspective, we do not believe that there is much scope for cutting
further in housing because it is a hugely complicated area and
the type of legal support that many people need to avoid repossession,
eviction or to get decent repairs is very, very important.
Q170 Chair: Repossession
stays in, does it not?
Campbell Robb:
Yes. We have just had some clarification about the evidence we
gave to the Committee. The original proposals of the Government
had been somewhat opaque and uncertain about what would and would
not stay in. In fact we met the Minister earlier today and he
gave us some more clarification. Quite a lot of the housing stuff
now would stay in, so we are very pleased about that. There are
other areas, clearly, where maybe some work could be done but
we believe that in housing there is hardly any room for further
cuts.
Q171 Ben Gummer:
I don't know if my experience is universal amongst colleagues,
but certainly I should think two-thirds of my constituency inquiries
are about housing benefit.
Campbell Robb:
Yes.
Q172 Ben Gummer: Will
the introduction of the universal credit and the simplification
of the benefits system have a collateral effect on what you do?
Campbell Robb:
We would hope so. In principle, we are very supportive of the
universal credit. Until we have seen the detail of it, we would
first of all have to see how well that works and whether housing
costs are within the universal credit or not. There is some discussion
about whether or not that will be the case. In effect, you would
not need to cut the legal aid bill in advance of that because
there should be a natural reduction in the number of cases because
many of the cases in that area are about clarification or administrative
error due to the complexity of it. We would definitely argue that
you would have to wait to get through the transition of the universal
credit before double-checking that, if you see what I mean, because
you would naturally have that. We are worried that in that transition
period you will get a lot of people wanting to challenge and understand
what their legal rights are. We would want to be in a position
to be able to help them.
Ben Gummer: Yes, that
is a very important point.
Simon Pugh: If
there is going to be a substantial change in the benefits system,
there are always going to be issues with that change, even if
the change is ultimately successful. There is going to be a transitional
period where there is going to be uncertainty about how things
are applied. People are not going to be sure of their rights and
they are going to require advice. In the longer term, if the universal
credit does work, then the demand will drop off and it will not
be necessary to cut the scope.
Q173 Ben Gummer:
Perhaps I could ask you one final, obvious question to which I
am sure you will know the answer but it would be good to have
it in black and white. The Government claims that of course there
are lots of other organisations that can provide help and legal
support to people free of legal aid.
Campbell Robb: Indeed.
Q174 Ben Gummer:
What do you judge the capacity now to deliver that, and what could
be done to increase that capacity so that at least the Government's
aims, if not the reality, can be realised?
Campbell Robb:
That is a very good question. The first thing to say is that we
do not give legal aid support to anyone who is not liable to get
legal aid support. It is not funding a whole series of things
that are not currently in scope. We are under intense scrutiny
from the Legal Services Commission and others to make sure that
we provide only that which exists. We provide a wrap-around service
at Shelter that supports that legally-aided work with other advice
and support for ineligible clients and people like that. Generally,
I am quite fearful that if the Government was to go through with
all of its proposals—the combination of the things taken
out of scope and the introduction of a mandatory helpline—you
would see a massive reduction in small localised providers. Shelter
is a reasonably big organisation. We can maybe move things around
and we are very lucky to be supported by public donations. We
might be able to survive, but we would not be able to give the
size and scope of face-to-face front-line advice that we currently
give. That would be the impact on us.
Simon Pugh: There
are just a couple of points that I would add to that. First, the
consultation paper's own impact assessments say that something
like 77% of the funding of the not-for-profit sector—and
we are very much a part of the not-for-profit sector—would
go under these proposals. In addition to that, if the telephone
gateway comes in, something like 80% of cases would be diverted
to that. There would be very little left to us. We believe that
a substantial proportion of our funding will go from that, and
it will be very difficult for us to sustain the holistic services
that we provide without the legal aid income that forms an important
part of the funding of our services.
The second point I would say as a solicitor
is that Shelter has a number of solicitors who provide advice
to the public. The advice that we give in terms of court representation
we really can't do in any other way other than under legal aid.
Without legal aid, clients don't have costs protection. Conditional
fee agreements are very difficult to come by in the sort of work
that we do, and with pro bono work there is no costs protection
for clients. It is very difficult to advise people to take cases
to court without legal aid because they are at risk of costs if
they lose.
Q175 Chair: I understand
that 1 million people seek your help in one way or another in
the course of a year.
Campbell Robb:
They do.
Q176 Chair: But
of those only 25,000 are people you can deal with under your legal
aid contract.
Campbell Robb:
Indeed.
Q177 Chair: So
it represents a very small part of the total value of what you
do for society.
Campbell Robb:
Indeed, but it is a massively important one for a number of reasons.
I should point out that 1 million people come to us for everything
just from the very basic saying, "I'm a little bit worried."
The vast majority of those people are through our website. We
get hundreds of thousands of people a month who come to our website
for a bit of advice on a tenancy, a landlord or deposits and a
whole range of stuff like that.
Q178 Chair: I send
people to see you.
Campbell Robb:
Indeed, and most of your colleagues do. We are grateful for them,
but some of the most vulnerable clients that we work with, who
are those that are most in danger of being evicted, repossessed
or made homeless, are supported by this core bit of work, which
is the legally-aided work. That legally-aided work is the most
expensive part of what we do, and those people who need the most
help are those that walk into our service and say, "I'm just
about to be made homeless," "I'm about to be thrown
out," or, "My landlord is evicting me and I think it
might be illegal." To work through the complexity of that
case and the Government support to do that is such a significant
part, and we can build offices and support around that, but, if
you take that out, then our ability to do anything other than
telephone and web becomes much more difficult for us. That is
the issue. Some people absolutely need that sustained face-to-face
legal advice. Many of the people you may have referred to us may
end up getting legal aid because of the nature of their case,
and we just wouldn't be able to help them in the same way without
it.
Simon Pugh: Year-on-year,
about 60% of the people we see in our face-to-face advice services
are funded by legal aid. We help a lot more through our website,
through information and through our helpline, but face-to-face
advice services are about 60% legal aid funding.
Campbell Robb:
To make another point, for many of those the legal aid allows
us to stop that getting to court or stop that getting worse. A
bit of early legal advice which says, "You've actually got
a very good case. We will get in touch with your landlord or we'll
talk to the local authority," or whatever, stops that getting
to the point where it gets even worse. If we get to this point,
we could see many more people ending up in court or being dispossessed
and the cost to the state will be far greater. Even though it
is a relatively small number against the total number we help,
they are the most vulnerable and sometimes have the most multiple
needs.
Q179 Chair: Do
you have areas of the country where you do not have LSC contracts?
Campbell Robb:
Indeed.
Q180 Chair: But
you continue to provide advice.
Campbell Robb:
Not in all areas; in some areas we do. Generally speaking, certainly
since the Legal Services Commission started about four or five
years ago, there have been, as I am sure you are aware, contracting
processes. In the recent round of contracting, we lost contracts
in some areas and other people won them. Shelter definitely tries
not to leave any deserts, and the LSC has tried hard to make sure
there are contracts in other areas. However, not just us but a
number of providers are now the sole providers in one area. For
example, in Cornwall and in Kent, we are effectively the monopoly
supplier of advice. The changes over a number of years have meant
that other suppliers have just not been able to stay viable. If
we were then to be forced out of business in those areas, you
begin to create deserts and that is one of our fears about these
proposals.
Q181 Chair: Presumably
there will be a smaller legal aid contract for the areas that
are still in scope.
Simon Pugh: But
the issue there is that a small legal aid contract is very unlikely
to be viable. If only a very few matters are left per area per
year, then it is very difficult to see how anybody could deliver
that in any kind of sustainable way.
Campbell Robb:
We already underwrite our Legal Services Commission with voluntary
funding to make it viable in those areas where we work. We will
put in donated income to underwrite the cost of the contracts.
Q182 Chair: That
is really why I am trying to establish what you do in those areas
where you don't have an LSC contract. Are you continuing to help?
Campbell Robb:
Yes. We might not have an open service where you can just walk
in. We might be providing some local authority funded work to
do support work, but there will be other providers in that area.
We work very closely with Citizens Advice and other types of providers
who may have won the contract in that area. There certainly are
some citizens advice bureaux. If we are not operating in an area,
we will almost certainly refer them to the citizens advice service
in that area. We try to make sure that we are doing that.
Q183 Ben Gummer:
Can I ask one supplementary on that? You say that conditional
fee agreements are difficult to find. If I can play devil's advocate,
if you were to withdraw from the scene, would there be a growing
business opportunity for those organisations that could provide
them?
Simon Pugh: Not
in the sort of cases that we deal with, no. A lot of the cases
that we deal with are not money related, and the value of the
ones that are—the disrepair claims and so on—is relatively
small. The difficulty of getting insurance to cover the costs
risk is quite high, and the costs that would be required to fund
that insurance are quite high. We don't think there is going to
be a market that develops in the kind of work that we do.
Campbell Robb:
Most of our clients do not, in effect, want to end up in court.
They come to us as a measure of last resort, in effect, to save
their home in one way or the other. The disrepair cases are different,
but, generally speaking, our clients are quite desperate when
they get to us in terms of seeking legal aid.
Q184 Yasmin Qureshi:
The Green Paper says that it is going to keep legal aid for housing
cases if somebody is at risk of becoming homeless, but you have
said in your papers that you think their definition of who is
going to become homeless is very narrow. Can you explain why you
think their definition is narrow and perhaps give us an example
of some cases where somebody may be facing homelessness but would
not be eligible for legal aid under these proposed reforms?
Simon Pugh: There
are two aspects to that. The first is that, on the face of the
consultation paper, in terms of homelessness advice, the Government
only refers to retaining in the County Court appeal stage of homelessness
advice. There was a parliamentary answer last week and we have
had a meeting with the Minister today at which it has been clarified
that their intention is to retain in scope all homelessness, including
the application and the review stage. We are very grateful for
that, but our evidence to the Committee was on the basis of what
is on the face of the Paper, which is only that the County Court
appeal stage would stay in.
There are other areas where we think that people
who are at risk of homelessness, even if not actually homeless,
would no longer get advice under these provisions. An obvious
example would be people who are suffering from illegal eviction.
Again, the cause of action for that, which is breach of covenant
for quiet enjoyment, is expressly stated as going out in the consultation
paper.
We are very keen to stress as well that a fundamental
part of what we do is advice as well as court representation.
We help people at the early stages. We help them resolve their
housing benefit problems. We help them if they have arrears problems
in dealing with debts. We stop cases getting to court. Those people
are at risk of homelessness even if they are not at immediate
risk of homelessness. If we can't provide that early advice and
intervention, which is legal advice but is not advice in court
yet, then more cases will get through to the court stage. More
people will be at immediate risk of homelessness and, in many
cases, it will be too late.
Q185 Yasmin Qureshi:
Can you give us some examples of where you think early intervention
in housing problems could save funds in the longer term? Are you
aware of any hard evidence which backs these assertions that by
intervening at early stages, public savings can be made?
Simon Pugh: In
terms of hard evidence, Citizens Advice produced a paper last
year which said that, in housing and debt cases, for every £1
the state spends on legal aid it saves about £3 and it is
about £9 on welfare benefit cases.
Q186 Chair: Yes;
they have given us that advice. We wondered if you had a similar
perspective.
Simon Pugh: Yes,
I am sure they have.
Campbell Robb:
We do, but we agree with Citizens Advice on that particular one.
Simon Pugh: There
are a number of examples. There is the one I just gave about resolving
problems with housing benefit, for example, which enables arrears
to be cleared without the case having to go to court. There is
negotiating with landlords. It happens relatively frequently that
landlords want tenants out of the properties and they don't necessarily
know what their obligations are so they just tell them that they
have to leave. Obviously that is not the proper process. If we
get involved and we negotiate with the landlord at that stage
and say, "This is not the way it is supposed to happen",
then we can prevent people being unlawfully evicted and having
to go back to court to seek reinstatement to their property. There
are a number of examples.
Campbell Robb:
On occasion we also stop people going to court, in a sense. We
can also advise people. People will come and say, "I want
to take my landlord to court", and we can advise them that
they don't have a good case. It is not always about taking people
to end up in court: we can stop people getting there as well.
It is both sides of the coin, if you see what I mean.
Q187 Yasmin Qureshi:
Do you think there are any areas in the housing case scenario
that could quite properly be taken out of the scope of the system?
Campbell Robb:
As I said at the beginning, I am afraid one of the unfortunate
things about housing is that it is an extraordinarily complicated
part of the law.
Q188 Chair: So
is everything else, everyone tells us.
Campbell Robb:
Indeed. There are some that are slightly simpler but not many.
The scope in housing has been reduced. We were genuinely having
this as a discussion before we came here because we knew we would
be asked this question in the inevitability of, "You must
accept bad things are going to happen."
On the housing front, I am afraid that, for us, the
work we do in supporting people in housing need in terms of legal
aid is as close as it gets to keeping people in their houses.
For us as well, with the cumulative effects of everything else
that is happening—there are very significant reforms from
CLG on housing reform, on tenure, on dispersal of homeless people
into the private rental sector, changes to housing benefit reform—all
of those combined means that, if you add in a significant change
to the housing rights funded through legal aid, we would be really
worried that we wouldn't be able to protect some of the most vulnerable
people in this country. We absolutely understand that savings
have to be made and we are happy to discuss those, but on housing
in particular I am afraid we feel that, even when pushed, there
is very little that could be taken out. It is a tiny percentage.
It is less than 3% of the total legal aid budget; it is not a
huge area in terms of total amount of spend.
Q189 Chair: How
much of the legal advice that you give at Shelter to people with
housing issues is provided by professional lawyers?
Simon Pugh: We
employ about 40 solicitors who give advice. We have solicitors
in not all but in most of our advice services around the country.
We also employ advisers who are not necessarily qualified lawyers;
sometimes they are. But that doesn't meant that the quality of
the advice that they provide is any the worse for that. They are
all experts.
Campbell Robb:
And all paid for by the legal services. They are money funded
through—
Q190 Chair: Forget
the large number of people who don't come under the legal services
contract. There must be quite of lot of those to whom you are
giving advice which has a legal context to it. Who gives them
the advice?
Campbell Robb:
What we will try to do, for example, on our website and helpline
is create crib sheets and advice sheets which our legal team will
support and advise, so you will get what is effectively supported
by the knowledge and expertise that they get on the ground from
doing that. Part of Simon's job is to help our web team, our advisers
and others to put in place advice which has a legal basis, but
it is not the same as getting advice from a lawyer. For all the
people that come to the website, we work very closely to ensure
that that is right but we wouldn't ever say that you had had good
legal advice.
Simon Pugh: We
have advice services that are funded substantially by legal aid,
and we do supplement that funding with our charitable income.
We can use that charitable income to give advice to people who
are not eligible for legal aid, and we do do that.
Q191 Chair: It
prompts the question, because I know a lot of people donate to
Shelter, what it is that your charitable income mainly gets used
for.
Campbell Robb:
A variety of other things. It pays for some of our campaigning
work. Many people support Shelter ultimately to campaign for better
housing across the board. We do a lot of work on that. A lot of
our funding also goes to some support services. The Keys to the
Future campaign, which we ran a number of years ago, worked substantially
with young people, children and families around the country and
has been a massive contribution in helping them. It is a variety
of different things. Most of our donors accept that some of the
money is used, in effect, to make sure that Shelter is giving
the best possible advice and support. On occasions we have to
use some of our money to help to get that done.
Q192 Chair: Sometimes,
presumably, it is information about where they should go for alternative
resolution of their problem.
Campbell Robb:
Absolutely. We have a helpline, free to use, which is almost entirely
funded by voluntary funding. The Government has supported certain
specialist parts of it, on mortgage support or other support.
That helpline is effectively funded by donated income as well.
Simon Pugh: And
open to anybody.
Q193 Mr Buckland:
At the back of the Green Paper we have the box chart with various
pros and cons. I am sure you are very familiar with it. One of
the arguments inserted into one of those boxes is the ability
of clients, it is claimed, to be able to represent themselves
in many cases or find alternative sources of support. What proportion
of people who are in need of advice and representation on housing
cases do you think that would cover?
Campbell Robb:
I will make a broad point, but the honest answer is that it is
very hard to tell. The number of people we help, i.e. the number
of people that we are currently funded to do through the Legal
Services Commission, are the people who are due and under the
current legislation are able to get legal aid, so that is the
amount that we help. In terms of self-representation, Simon will
definitely have something to say on that.
Simon Pugh: Many
of the people that we help are very vulnerable for one reason
or another. They have physical or mental health problems. They
have difficulties with various other issues. The people that we
help tend to be the most vulnerable in society, and it is very
difficult to see that they would be able to help themselves or
represent themselves. The legal process, the court process, the
tribunal process in the case of welfare benefits is extremely
complex and difficult. The law is complex and difficult and has
become more so over the years. So it is very difficult to see
that people could navigate that and certainly in a way that enables
them to present their case in the best possible way.
As Campbell says, it is very difficult to quantify
what sort of numbers of people would be able to do that, but very
few of the clients that we represent would be able to do that
in a way that would achieve the same degree of success that we
would be able to if we were representing them on their behalf.
Campbell Robb:
The core of this is, what is legal and what isn't? This is the
crux of this matter, in a sense, is it not? We would argue, yes,
we can continue to give advice and support. That is part of our
raison d'être and our donations will continue to fund that.
We will always have a website and a helpline that offers advice
and support to people. No matter what income range they are and
whatever their housing need, we will continue to get in touch
with them and we will try and advise them.
However, we believe absolutely and utterly that there
is a role for the Government to pay for legal aid to support some
people, not just the most vulnerable but whoever needs it the
most, to help them take housing issues when their home is threatened,
when they are threatened with repossession or made homeless or
to be evicted, or their home is in such a state of disrepair that
they have no other recourse to get it funded than through the
law. We believe that you should keep a substantial part of what
already is in in scope to allow organisations, not just Shelter
but others, to do that. We believe that, if you don't do that,
then you will be substantially letting down, particularly over
the next coming years, some of the most vulnerable people in the
community at risk of really significant loss of their housing
rights.
Q194 Mr Buckland:
Because a person will come to you not as a legal case but as an
individual.
Campbell Robb:
Exactly.
Q195 Mr Buckland:
Initially you may not know the nature of the problem.
Campbell Robb:
No, we don't, and they present with different problems. Quite
often people come with a debt problem, but the problem is not
a debt problem; it is a housing problem. Sometimes people move
from our helpdesk to our face-to-face and things like that. You
are absolutely right. What we try and do is to sort out all of
the problems of the individual. It is not just solving that. Stopping
them being evicted would be the first part of our potential work
with that client, which they may transfer from a legal aid thing.
Just to give an example—it is not really relevant—we
do a lot of work at the court desk. Many of you will be aware
that at the court desk people will turn up about to be evicted
or repossessed and they have had no legal advice at all. They
will turn up at the desk and it will be a Shelter solicitor who
is the duty clerk. We will argue against the thing. We will stop
the repossession order and the judge will give them eight or 10
weeks to come back with a plan. We will then work with that person
to get them decent debt advice so they can talk to their lender
and come up with something else. That is legal advice leading
into better—
Q196 Ben Gummer:
It sounds like making an argument for public funding rather than
for legal aid funding.
Campbell Robb:
That is the question about what is legal and what isn't, in that
sense. I think, yes, there is a case for legal funding because
there is a case very specifically in housing and some of the other
areas where you need to take legal representation, where you need
to go to the court to seek justice for what is going on.
Simon Pugh: Our
legal aid funding does not fund general advice, help or support.
What it funds is specialist legal advice on complex legal problems.
That is what we need the legal aid funding to do.
Q197 Mr Buckland:
In other words, the client would come in through the door, you
do your assessment, work out whether it was an advice case or
something more complex and then, if it was a complex situation,
the legal aid funding would kick in.
Campbell Robb:
The first series of questions we would ask any client, if they
are coming through, is, are they eligible for legal aid? If they
are not eligible for legal aid, then we have to work out another
way through other Shelter mechanisms whether we can afford to
support them, whether somebody else can support them in their
local area if there is another provider.
Q198 Mr Buckland:
That is important. You apply the same criteria as any practitioner
would in the marketplace.
Campbell Robb:
We have to, absolutely.
Simon Pugh: Because
we are subject to exactly the same contracts and exactly the same
terms in those contracts as anybody else. We are subject to exactly
the same rules about the merit of cases, the scope of what can
be funded and that it must be a matter of law and a legal problem
and so on.
Q199 Chair: Isn't
some of the advice that we are talking about here advice which
ought to be given—and in my experience sometimes is given—by
local authorities? If somebody goes along, they go and complain
to the local authority about the state of the property or the
landlord, and the local authority is supposed to take appropriate
action. In other cases they might go to the local authority and
say, "You've got to house me because I've had this notice
to quit." The local authority says, "That notice to
quit has no effect whatsoever. If the landlord wants you to leave,
he is going to have to get in front of the court and secure your
eviction."
Simon Pugh: There
is a degree to which that is true, but there is funding pressure
on local authorities as well and they are unable to continue providing
that service to the same degree. There is also the issue that
in some cases, not all cases, what we are challenging are decisions
of the local authority and people cannot get independent legal
advice from the local authority in that sense.
Campbell Robb:
Our picture is a very mixed one of different local authorities.
Again, as Simon said, we would worry about what we are hearing
about some of the changes in cuts that are happening in local
authorities. It is bound to have an impact on their capacity to
support and advise. There is a double-whammy going on as well.
Q200 Chair: In
some cases the advice has an interest behind it. They do not want
to be advised to rehouse someone tomorrow who has not gone through
the legal processes that are available to them.
Campbell Robb:
Indeed, and part of our challenge as an organisation as well is
maintaining relationships with local authorities where we are
constantly challenging them on some of these issues.
Q201 Chair: Thank
you very much. We are very grateful to you for your help this
afternoon, for the interesting evidence you have given us and
for the written evidence.
Campbell Robb:
We should just apologise. We will update it but our evidence was
based on the presumption in the Green Paper which was suggested
on housing. We will send you an addendum to that which makes it
clear now that we have had that clarity.
Chair: And for good reason.
Thank you very much indeed.
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