Working Families response to legal aid reform proposals

Response to the Ministry of Justice consultation on reform of legal aid by Working Families

Introduction

 Working Families is the UK’s leading work life balance charity.  We run a free legal helpline for disadvantaged parents and carers who need help accessing their employment rights.  We have a caseworker dedicated to helping clients facing discrimination because of their sex, pregnancy or maternity status.  We also support a network of parents of disabled children who work or wish to work.  Our particular interest is in the proposal to exclude funding for legal aid in employment and welfare benefit cases.

We know from the thousands of callers to our helpline each year how difficult it is to access timely and appropriate free legal advice about employment matters.   We regularly receive referrals from other advice agencies but our helpline is underfunded and overstretched and we rely on charitable donations to support our work.  Reducing legal aid in the area of employment law will increase the demand on our free helpline but in the current economic climate it is unlikely that we will be able to meet the additional demand.  Parents and carers who, with the correct advice, could be helped to stay in work may lose their jobs and this will not only cause hardship and distress to families but also increase the burden on the welfare state.  The hoped for aim of reducing public funding may not be realised.

 We have only answered those questions about which we have relevant experience.   For more information on any aspect of this response, please contact Elizabeth Gardiner at elizabeth.gardiner@workingfamilies.org.uk

Scope

Question 1: Do you agree with the proposals to retain the types of case and proceedings listed in paragraphs 4.37 to 4.144 of the consultation document within the scope of the civil and family legal aid scheme? Please give reasons

We agree that it is essential at a minimum to retain legal aid for these types of cases, given the seriousness of the issues and the vulnerability of the people who need it.  We are pleased to see that there is to be no change to the legal help provided in discrimination employment cases.

Question 3: Do you agree with the proposals to exclude the types of case and proceedings listed in paragraphs 4.148 to 4.245 from the scope of the civil and family legal aid scheme?  Please give reasons.

No.

We disagree that the issues at stake in employment matters are insufficiently important to merit support from legal aid.  Many of our callers are disadvantaged parents or carers whose job is essential to their family finances and wellbeing.  Losing a job may lead to debt and, in some cases, to the loss of the family home.  Parents facing unfair or wrongful dismissal or breach of contract are under considerable stress which can impact on their health and their children’s wellbeing.

 Trade unions and other advisers – including Working Families legal team –  can offer support, but not all workers are in trade unions and not all vulnerable parents find Working Families free helpline or can access our support.  Low paid workers are unlikely to be able to rely on household legal insurance.

The balance of power between employer and employee is far from equal and low paid, low status workers are particularly vulnerable to poor treatment at work.   The Impact Assessments confirm our view that the proposals to remove legal aid will impact disproportionately on people from low income and vulnerable groups.  Migrant workers and those for whom English is not their first language may have a great deal of difficulty understanding their rights and representing themselves at tribunal.   While employment tribunals aim to be user-friendly so that many claimants may be able to represent themselves once the claim is heard, deciding the basis of the claim requires an understanding of employment law. Without access to legal aid vulnerable groups may face unequal access to the laws that are there to protect them.  

 Working Families is also dismayed to see the removal of legal aid from welfare benefits.  The consultation paper suggests that the presence of a number of voluntary organisations working in this field reduces the need for public funding of legal aid.  However, voluntary donations to charities have reduced in a time of recession and local authorities are significantly reducing their grants in this area.  A reliance on the voluntary sector to support people in their claims against Government decisions is particularly unfair.  Those that rely on benefits as income are amongst the most vulnerable in our society and find the benefits system complex and confusing.   The majority of benefit claimants do not have access to funds that can be used to buy legal advice. The numerous challenges to Government decisions demonstrate the ease with which officials can make mistakes.  Where benefits are wrongly denied or withdrawn clients quickly move into debt.  However, it may be more efficient to provide advice to challenge benefit decisions than to wait until the crisis point at which a family risk the loss of their house before support is provided.

Community Legal Advice Telephone Helpline

 Question 7: Do you agree that the Community Legal Advice helpline should be established as the single gateway to access civil legal aid advice? Please give reasons.  

Question 8: Do you agree that specialist advice should be offered through the Community Legal Advice helpline in all categories of law and that, in some categories, the majority of civil Legal Help clients and cases can be dealt with through this channel? Please give reasons.

Question 9: What factors should be taken into account when devising the criteria for determining when face to face advice will be required?

We have combined our answers to the three questions above.  Working Families has significant experience of running telephone helplines.  Both New Ways to Work and Parents at Work (the organisations merged to form Working Families) operated helplines for employees and our current free legal helpline has helped between 5000 and 7000 callers a year since 2003.  

 We do not agree that “the single gateway to access civil legal aid advice” should be by telephone for non-emergency cases. Not all clients have easy access to telephones which they can use in private.  Some mobile phone companies still charge clients to telephone 0800 numbers.  Other clients are not confident talking on the phone and would prefer to be able to approach legal advisers on a face-to-face basis.

We would like to ask for reassurance that a proposed telephone gateway (Q7) would not therefore be the only gateway to legal aid advice or the most significant in non-emergency cases.

Where the CLA helpline finds that a caller is not eligible for legal aid advice, we would ask that they refer callers to available voluntary sector support such as the free legal helpline on employment advice provided by Working Families.

Working Families February 2011