Catherine Baksi's blogs

Next Tuesday the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders bill will be back in the Commons for MPs to consider amendments made by peers. It is likely that many of the amendments will be reversed and the bill, which removes huge areas of law from the scope of legal aid, will receive Royal Assent before the end of May.

If that happens, many law centres, including the 100-year-old Mary Ward Legal Centre (MWLC) say that they may be unable to survive. The centre, based in London, gives free legal advice to people on a low income living or working in the capital. It specialises in casework and representation in debt, employment and discrimination, housing and welfare benefits. It has published a report demonstrating the impact its work has had on the lives of some of the 3,000 people it has helped over the last year.

Once the legal aid cuts are implemented, here are some of the people who, the centre said, will lose out:

Brian’s story: Brian’s landlord got a court order awarding him possession of the flat that he had lived in for 30 years. Brian represented himself at court and was concerned he was going to be evicted. He saw a specialist housing solicitor at MWLC who talked to him about the case and pointed out some of the mistakes he’d made when representing himself. The solicitor submitted an appeal and arranged for Brian to get a barrister.

Brian says: ‘After MWLC contacted the landlord and he heard that we were appealing, and that I had engaged a barrister, he threw the towel in.

‘I’m still in my home and not on the street which is where I thought I would be when I lost the hearing. If the MWLC hadn’t helped me sort things out I could have been on the streets with a suitcase.’

Pablo’s story: has cancer and HIV. He was training as a dietician and nutritionist until funding cuts meant his course was cancelled. He had taken out bank loans to pay for his training and owed £14,000. He had tried unsuccessfully to negotiate with his bank. He was becoming unwell as he couldn’t afford to eat properly, his debts were getting him down and he says he thought about ‘bringing it all to an end’.

He was referred to the MWLC who helped him apply for a debt relief order and he is now debt free and has returned to work as a volunteer providing nutrition services for people with HIV.

He says: ‘I am now able to deal with my life again after getting out of debt. Thanks to Mary Ward Legal Centre I’ve had a real boost. I’ve been fighting cancer and HIV for years and can now feed myself properly again.’

Claudia’s story: 20-year-old Claudia had been living on the streets and with friends for 10 days after leaving home because of domestic violence. She approached the local authority next door to where she lived, but they told her she had to go to authority in the area where she had most recently lived. When she went to her own local authority, they also refused to help her and referred her back to the first authority. But when she went back there she was told that they would not provide her with accommodation.

She attended a drop in session at MWLC and a solicitor wrote to the second local authority telling them they would have to house her or they would make a judicial review challenge to the High Court.

Claudia was placed in interim accommodation by the local authority.

She says: ‘The solicitor made me understand what was going on, They lightened my spirits and made me feel that I could do more than I thought was possible.’

The services provided by the MWLC have helped many vulnerable people get their lives back on track - many say that the centre saved their lives. The help they received has led to clients being housed, getting training and jobs, improving their health, and given many the ability to help themselves and retain their self-respect.

Aside from the impact on the individuals, the advice and help given by the centre has undoubtedly saved huge expenses for the state - from the costs of NHS care, homelessness and unemployment.

The government claims its cuts will save £350m, but what will be the cost if centres like the Mary Ward close?

Until the government announced its plans to speed up adoptions this month, I confess I knew very little about the process.

When I looked into it, I was shocked both by how fragmented the system is and how long it takes.

Statistics in the government’s new action plan show there are over 65,000 children in England and Wales who are looked after by local authorities. Last year 3,050 were adopted - the lowest number since 2001. And so far this year only 60 babies have been adopted.

Those who were adopted spent an average of 21 months in care beforehand. Meaning that a child who enters care at the age of two and a half will be nearly five by they time they move to be with their adoptive family.

Time is so crucial for children. As the experts explain, babies’ brains develop rapidly in the first two years of life and it is crucial for their development that they form secure and stable attachments with one or two main carers during this time.

Children who are insecurely attached have more difficulties regulating their emotions, and showing empathy for others and may also have difficulties forming attachments later in life.

The government’s action plan cites research that suggests babies who are adopted before 12 months of age were as securely attached as their non-adopted peers, while those adopted after their first birthday showed less attachment security than non-adopted children.

So, if circumstances mean that a child is not able to remain safely in their birth family, it is vital that they are adopted in a timely manner for the best chance of avoiding future difficulties.

The government’s plans, spearheaded by education secretary Michael Gove - himself adopted as a baby - seek to speed up the process for children, overhaul the system for adoptive parents and strengthen local accountability for the timeliness of adoption services.

The plan and proposed adoption bill require local authorities to find adoptive parents within three months or place children on the national register. Local authorities will be prevented from delaying adoptions while they search for parents who match a child’s ethnicity. Legislation will also make it easier for prospective adopters to foster a child while the court considers the case for adoption - a practice known as concurrent planning.

When I read about the last point, I was astonished that that was not already what happened, and by how separate the two systems for fostering and adoption are.

From talking to solicitors it appears that the professionals involved in the two processes seem to work to keep them separate - those working with fosterers do not want them to adopt children because it means they will lose a trained and trusted foster family, while those working with prospective adopters do not want foster parents to be able to adopt the children they have looked after, seeing it as jumping the queue ahead of non-fostering parents who want to adopt.

Meanwhile there is a child in limbo who seems to be getting a bit lost and for who precious time is passing.

The lawyers I spoke to told me that while concurrent planning was hugely positive for the children involved, it encountered a lot of resistance. This, they said, was for two reasons - firstly because it is hard for prospective adopters, who face the difficulty of trying to bond with a child that may not remain with them, and secondly because birth families often felt that the outcome was predetermined and weighted against them.

Without denying how emotionally tough either scenario must be to deal with, it has to be right that the risks are borne by the adults involved in the process rather than the children, and anything that can be done to create greater certainty for them, should be.

The government’s pledge to put adoption reform as one of its key priorities has to be a hugely welcome, if somewhat belated move, if it remains focused and drives change quickly.

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The debate over the definition of domestic violence used in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill highlights the absence of joined-up thinking within the government.

Even as the bill appears to seek to adopt a narrower definition of domestic violence than that commonly used by the police and Crown Prosecution Service, the Home Office is consulting on widening it.

Definitions are important. The LASPO bill removes legal aid for most private family law cases, but allows for it to be granted in cases where there is evidenced domestic violence. Schedule 1 of the bill defines domestic violence as physical or mental abuse, including sexual abuse, and abuse in the form of violence, neglect, maltreatment and exploitation.

The shared Association of Police Officers, CPS and government definition of domestic violence covers: ‘any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse (psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional) between adults, aged 18 and over, who are or have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender and sexuality.’

The bill’s opponents fear that both the definition of domestic violence and the evidential requirements to establish it are too narrow and will leave many vulnerable families without advice and representation.

A striking aspect of the House of Lords debates on the bill is the expertise and experience of the peers calling for amendments on this issue. They included the former President of the Family Division Lady Butler-Sloss, former director of public prosecutions, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven and former attorney general Lady Scotland.

Their observations are stark and often hard-hitting.

Arguing for the bill to define domestic violence more widely, Butler-Sloss observed: ‘Some men drive their wives or their partners almost to suicide by never putting a finger on them; in many ways, psychological and threatening behaviour is even more dangerous and even more debilitating than the man who returns home drunk on Saturday night and knocks his wife around but does not ill-treat her from Sunday to Saturday.

‘Psychological abuse is usually daily and nightly and, therefore, it requires a rather broad interpretation,’ she said.

Macdonald noted the unhappy history of the justice system and domestic violence, where for many years, he said, crimes within the home had not been regarded as the business of the state. Parties were left to sort it out themselves, despite the inequality between then, often leaving any children the most damaged.

‘In all the years that I prosecuted, I saw the effects and consequences of that injustice. At its most brutal, I dealt with a startling number of women who had been murdered by their partners, and who had repeatedly been victims of persistent and escalating assault.’

Macdonald cited the national crime survey’s figure that 25% of women have experienced domestic violence, but said that the numbers coming forward were ‘far below’ that. Bar Council statistics, he said, indicated that only 16% of victims come forward.

Women, he said, will not always report incidents to the police, but will seek help form others, including doctors, support organisations and social services. He suggested that material from these other sources should be acceptable as evidence for the purposes of the legal aid ‘gateway’.

He questioned: ‘What possible justification can there be for this bill to contain a definition of domestic violence that offers less protection to the victims of domestic violence than the definition used successfully, day in day out, by our law enforcement agencies?’

‘In their understanding of domestic violence, the proposed legal aid reforms could have been written 10 or 15 years ago,’ he said and warned that the bill’s approach to domestic violence risked ‘rolling back decades of progress’ in understanding the crime that he called ‘an absolute scourge’.

He said: ‘We must have a bill with the modern definition of that crime and including provision for those who may be too scared or too desperate to call the police.’

Lady Scotland noted that before the bill, there was never any suggestion that the definition needed to be changed to prevent people making false allegations. Up until now, she said, the drive had been to encourage women to come forward and receive support and early intervention before problems escalated.

She said: ‘Look at the average case, such as when a woman has run from her home. She manages to go to her GP, who sees the injuries and notes them and then sends her to hospital because there are fears that she may have cracked a rib or another bone. She is seen by the medical staff and they verify that the injuries that she complains of are genuine. Her neighbours may have come in to rescue her from an assault. They may not have seen the assault taking place but have noted what was happening and taken her away. Social services may have come along and examined the children, spoken to them and heard what they had to say.

'All of that might have been used by the police who then came along and arrested the man. He may then acknowledge that he has indeed committed the offences that are alleged against him. Even if all those things had happened, under [the government’s current] provisions the woman would not be entitled to legal aid. That cannot be right.’ Responding for the government justice minister Lord McNally said the definition used in the bill would not exclude from scope any of the types of abuse covered by the ACPO definition, so amendment was unnecessary.

Meanwhile, in December home secretary Teresa May published a consultation seeking views on widening the definition of domestic violence used across government, to include ‘coercive control’ in its definition and extend its application to those under 18. Launching the consultation, May acknowledged: ‘Victims have often been subject to multiple incidents of abuse before they seek help.’

And in a Westminster Hall debate on legal aid, women and families last week, justice minister Jonathan Djanogly said the government is committed to ensuring the victims of domestic violence receive legal and other support.

The Home Office, he said, is spending more than £28m until 2015 for specialist local domestic and sexual violence support services and £900,000 to support national domestic violence helplines and the stalking helpline.

Yet again, this laudable aim is undermined by the government at the same time, closing 23 of the special domestic violence courts.

Ministers and government departments appear not to be working in concert on this issue, and it is the victims and their children who will suffer. For their sake, the government needs to adopt a more consistent and joined-up approach.

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The prison population has reached a record high of 87,120, according to figures released on Friday by the Ministry of Justice.

But does being tough on crime mean offenders have to go to prison, or are community sentences and reparation actually tougher? And are the latter more effective and less costly ways to reduce crime and reoffending?

A report published last week by independent campaign group Make Justice Work, Community or Custody, said that for persistent low level offending, the answer is yes.

The enquiry team spent a year examining community sentence regimes across the country. It was ‘astonished and impressed by the rigour and impact’ of the work it saw and concluded that alternatives to custody are not a soft option.

One project that it visited was the intensive alternative to custody pilot in Manchester. Available to offenders aged 18-25, the year-long programme mixes demanding community payback, including educational requirements.

A number of those on the programme told the report team that it would have been easier for them to go to prison for a few months and some actually dropped out and were sent to prison.

The programme reduced reoffending levels and cost roughly half the £11,000 cost of sending someone to prison for three months.

The review concluded: ‘Not only have we witnessed programmes delivering real reductions in reoffending. We learnt that in the right circumstances they are able to cut crime at a fraction of the cost of prison.’

Impressive indeed, given statistics from the Prison Reform Trust showing that nearly two-thirds of offenders serving short sentences are reconvicted within a year; and government figures which estimate that the cycle of reoffending costs the economy £7m-£10m a year.

But the Community or Custody report makes it clear that ‘significant upfront investment’ will be required to offer community sentencing regimes that are of sufficient rigour and effectiveness for the public to have confidence in them.

Contrary to what some politicians will have people believe, it seems the public does support the use of community sentences.

A telephone poll of 1,000 people, carried out for Victim Support and the Prison Reform Trust, revealed that 94% want those who have committed offences such as theft or vandalism to be required to do unpaid work in the community as part of their sentence.

Nearly nine out 10 felt that victims of theft and vandalism should be given the opportunity to tell offenders about the harm and distress they have caused.

In short then, Kenneth Clarke’s rehabilitation revolution may not be as unpopular with the voting public as he might fear (and the tabloid press would have you believe).

But as the Community or Custody report stresses: ‘If the government is serious about starting a rehabilitation revolution, corners cannot be cut.’

The questions that remains to be answered are whether the government will adequately fund alternative sentencing programmes and whether courts will use them.