Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. When I first accused the Government of not having accepted the Jackson package, I was very careful to say that whatever Government were in power would probably not have accepted every word of such a major report. However, it is interesting what this Government have accepted and what they have left out. In short, they have left out any defence of legal aid, whereas Lord Justice Jackson was very concerned that there should be no more cutting in civil legal aid. That is also very much the view around the Committee on Part 1 of the Bill as well as, in relation to Part 2, in the case of clinical negligence if nothing else. We think that the Government have picked the wrong bits of Jackson to support, and they have left the best bits out, which is rather careless of them. Three senior costs judges, who deal with some of these issues daily, said in their submission on the Jackson report: "““we do not agree with the proposals set out in the Report ... The CFA regime has undergone many changes and improvements since implementation. Having taken a decade for these to have been achieved, now is not the time to made radical changes which give no guarantee that access to justice at reduced costs will be delivered under Jackson””—" they go on, perhaps rather unfairly, to say— "““where it failed under Woolf””." That was their view. So there is a difference—a justifiable difference—of opinion, both in this Committee and outside this Committee among those who have to decide these cases. The Government should be warned that they should not just stick so rigidly to their formula for changing without looking at individual areas of the law. Flexibility is important, as well as having rules. If the Government are just going to say no to every exception to Jackson, I fear that, certainly in some areas, the reforms that will then go through, if the Government get their way, will be disastrous for civil justice in this country because they will mean that so many people will not be able to get justice who are currently able to do so. This is a probing amendment, but it also has some real feeling behind it. However, of course I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 125 withdrawn. Amendments 126 and 127 not moved. Amendment 128 Moved by