Labour justice spokesman and Bar Council challenge statistics quoted by ministry of justice to justify legal aid proposals
Ken Clarke's fervent admiration for the supposedly utopian state of legal practices down under is being subjected to a cold shower of scepticism.
Economy, reason and fairness, the justice secretary repeatedly implies, are the hallmarks of New Zealand's judicial system as exemplified by the fact that the country spends a mere �8 a year per head on legal aid.
In profligate, lawyer-ridden Britain, Clarke told the Commons again this week, the downtrodden citizenry fork out a world record �39 each to keep the onerous wheels of justice turning.
It is a powerful contrast but one now challenged by Labour's justice spokesman, Andy Slaughter, as well as the Bar Council who both dispute the accuracy of the Kiwi figures.
New Zealand, researchers have ascertained, spent NZ$172 million on legal aid in the year 2009/10. (That figure appears on a number of government press releases). According to the World Bank the country's population is 4.3 million residents.
Elementary long division results in 40 NZ dollars per head of population; translated into sterling it amounts to around �20 per person ? significantly larger than Clarke's oft-repeated �8.
The Ministry of Justice points to a 2009 report it published, written by two University of York academics entitled "International comparison of publicly funded legal services and justice systems," as the source of its comparative figures ? even though the document cautions that it did not "set out to be a full-scale comparative study".
The report draws its evidence of legal aid costs from a significantly earlier period (between 2003 and 2007) and notes that spending per capita on "legal aid related services" in New Zealand amounts to US$21.86; at today's rate that would convert into �13.65.
Clarke might take comfort from the fact that the justice minister in Wellington has expressed alarm at a 55% rise in legal aid costs over three years and branded the scheme "unaffordable". The 2009 comparative MoJ study also found that on "almost all of the components of the (legal aid) expenditure" more was spent in England and Wales than the other countries surveyed.
But Andy Slaughter said:
"The government is making policy on the basis of false figures. To justify destroying legal aid and our civil justice system they have seriously misrepresented the facts time and time again, including to the House of Commons and to the public.
In fact the cost of our justice system compares well with other jurisdictions. We completely reject the cuts to social welfare legal aid. Millions will suffer as a result of this poor analysis by a Department in chaos."
The Bar Council, representing barristers, similarly questions the ministry of justice's sums. "The government has continued to peddle the myth about the cost of our legal aid system," a spokesman said.
"Misleading statistics cannot be used as a cover to introduce DIY justice in place of access to justice by withdrawing whole areas of legal aid from scope.Labour claims the coalition has form in the conjuring of statistics and even alludes to "dodgy dossiers". Lord McNally, it notes, sent out a letter in March correcting figures given out about the cost of lawyers' fees to the NHS in 2008/9.
"On a like-for-like basis, as the justice select committee found, our expenditure is average across Europe. These cuts will put us below average. The government relies on 2004 figures for New Zealand and compares them with our figures in 2009. The real cost in New Zealand is over double what the government suggests."
The Liberal Democrat peer apologised that "the �456m I quoted as the spend on lawyers' fees is in fact the NHS's total spend on clinical negligence claims comprising �312m in damages, �104m in claimants' legal costs and �40m in their own legal costs".
The ministry of justice retaliated by challenging Labour to identify where it would make savings of �64 million to compensate for the cuts to social welfare and housing advice which the party said it would never have contemplated.
The Access to Justice Action Group (AJAG) has, furthermore, come up with fresh analysis based on recently published parliamentary answers to contest the government's claims that the NHS will save �50 million through planned changes to "no win, no fee" agreements.
"In fact," the group maintains, "the impact will be to cost the NHS an extra �105.55million, comprising legal fees, additional compensation and loss of income from recovered treatment charges from insurers.
Andrew Dismore, AJAG's coordinator, said:
"Even if we are only half right, the cost to the NHS of these ill thought out and hast measures is truly shocking. The government is determined to press ahead, despite all the evidence pointing to them heading for a legal services train wreck.
"Our figures do not even take into account the long term cost of caring for injured accident victims who will now no longer claim, so the cost of their care falls on hard pressed local councils and the NHS, rather than the insurance companies."
Opposition to the bill is intensifying. The Spinal Injuries Association, supported by the brain injury charity Headway and Action Against Medical Accidents, has announced that it has lodged an application for judicial review of Clarke's plans to alter "no win, no fee" agreements.
(Under the governments' proposals, claimants' lawyers will have to take their success fees out of any compensation awarded rather than from the defendant. The switch, it is alleged, will render many claims financially unattractive to pursue.)
"Ministers have failed to consider properly the devastating impact its proposals could have on disabled people," Dan Burden of the Spinal Injuries Association, said.
"For a great many people whose lives have been devastated through a catastrophic event such as a spinal cord injury, the "no win, no fee" system has opened up the opportunity, irrespective of means, to submit a legitimate claim.
A newly injured person who is facing up to a life of permanent disability and paralysis should be entitled to obtain good quality legal advice which is independent, without financial pressures impacting their decision to progress a claim."
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