Government proposals to slash legal aid have passed through the Commons, amid suggestions the legislation will wipe out specialist lawyers. The bill will now move to the Lords, following a heated debate during which opposition MPs also rejected the suggestion that lawyers are only interested in self-preservation.
Labour MP Valerie Vaz, who worked as a solicitor for more than 20 years in private practice and the public sector, said: ‘I am concerned by the removal of welfare benefit, education and debt recovery cases from the scope of legal aid.
‘Those are the kind of bread-and-butter issues that used to be dealt with under the green form scheme. I wish to reassure members who are concerned that lawyers are in it for the money that we often used to give advice for nothing to people who came through our doors: we went over the time limit but never claimed for it. So we can knock on the head the idea that lawyers are only in it for the money.’
Her brother and fellow Labour MP Keith Vaz added: ‘A whole generation of lawyers with expertise in welfare, immigration and education law will disappear. The only type of lawyers churned out of law colleges will be those who can do corporate litigation.’
Justice minister Jonathan Djanogly said he was happy for people with disputes or grievances to get general advice and ‘not necessarily the expertise of specialist lawyers’.
And justice secretary Kenneth Clarke accused the legal profession of exploiting vulnerable people to advance their own agenda for preserving legal aid income and no win, no fee agreements.
‘I am a lawyer, and I have the highest respect for lawyers and no intention of offending the legal profession, but in the lobbying of this house and the upper house we have had an army of lawyers advancing behind a front row of women and children - vulnerable claimants who say they would not be represented if they are not paid as much as they are now. I am afraid I do not believe that.’
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