The legal aid bill is a disaster for both clients and providers

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill went through the usual stages in the House of Commons and House of Lords and was due to finish the ping pong stage in the Commons yesterday. I used to put those words in quotation marks for LAPG members in our updates but now these have gone: ping pong is part of our vocabulary.

What does it mean? The Lords made amendments to the bill and the Commons rejected most of them, so the bill goes back and forth while votes and negotiations take place. The government made some concessions. On 25 April the last vote took place in the Lords '“ Baroness Scotland's amendment on domestic violence ended in a draw, so the government overturned the amendment. Lord Pannick had not forced his amendment to a vote and the government had made a concession on the only other issue outstanding (mesothelioma cases).

The main scope changes remain. Most private family, immigration and debt cases are out. There have been huge efforts to bring welfare benefits work back into scope but this will be limited to appeals on points of law. Attempts to bring more housing cases back into scope were unsuccessful at an earlier stage but much housing remains in scope. There will be no employment cases and only special educational needs (SEN) cases in education will be covered '“ but only by accessing the new mandatory telephone gateway.

Lady Tanni Grey-Thompson argued extremely coherently against the imposition of the telephone gateway but lost the vote on her amendment. That will be brought in for debt (where there is a housing issue), discrimination and SEN cases. The fear among providers is that this will be a first step. It will be hard to assess the effect of the gateway. Whereas now people might drop into an agency or a firm they know or that has been recommended, in these areas they will have to ring the phone line even if a face-to-face adviser could take on the case. How will the government assess the impact? It will be important to research whether or not people use this service or are deterred from doing so. The government did agree to take community care out of the gateway proposals.

Baroness Scotland managed in the Lords to extend the evidential basis to obtain legal aid for those suffering domestic abuse. While the government has limited the evidential requirements, Baroness Scotland and others have worked with groups such as the Women's Institute and Rights of Women, taking on board the reality that not everyone presses for or gets a police conviction against their perpetrator; not everyone goes into a refuge. (There will be legal aid for a domestic violence case '“ what we are talking about here is legal aid to pursue other family cases for those who have faced domestic abuse.)

The timescale increased from one year as in the original bill to two years as in the government concession.

So, where does this leave clients? And providers?

Hit hard

This bill is an attack on clients. The government identified that hundreds of thousands will be affected by these proposals. The organisations the government originally said would be able to help those previously advised under the legal aid scheme have made it clear that they face cuts from several directions: the legal aid cuts, local authority cuts and grants possibly drying up because of the numbers now applying for them. While the government offers £20m this year and next for the not-for-profit sector, it goes hardly any way towards matching the cuts imposed.

Private practice providers will be reviewing their staffing levels, their business models and what products are on the market. While funding for family ancillary relief funding is available it is harder to see how families will fund immigration, welfare benefits or child contact advice and representation. Or employment. Or the excluded education, debt and housing work.

It will be tough for providers. Most are incensed about Ken Clarke's comment about lawyers hiding behind women and children when arguing against this bill.

After years of understanding that vulnerable people can be helped by early advice and that people with multiple problems (e.g. relationship breakdown, job loss and benefits problems) need joined-up services to help them cope, this government is ending that provision.

Providers will make the difficult decisions they have to make. But the government must realise that once the specialists are lost it will take a long time to train up others in future should an area of law be brought back into scope. And the government will be hoping that there will be enough providers willing to remain in this precarious area of law '“ dogged by low funding and bureaucracy that eats into each organisation's ability to deliver the service. But we fear that in a couple of years MPs will be sitting in their constituencies, surrounded by constituents who have nowhere else to go, wishing these cuts had not been so severe.