Councils to benefit as LASPO Bill receives Royal Assent, claim ministers

The controversial Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Bill was given Royal Assent this week, with ministers claiming that local authoriities are among those that stand to benefit from its reforms.

Measures in the Act include:

  • Removal of legal aid in a number of areas. The Ministry of Justice said legal aid would be focused on cases “where legal help is most needed, where people’s life or liberty is at stake or they are at risk of serious physical harm, face immediate loss of their home or their children may be taken into care”;
  • Reforms to civil litigation, including in relation to conditional fee agreements;
  • A ban on referral fees in personal injury cases;
  • Criminalising squatting in people’s homes;
  • A new offence of threatening people with a knife in public or at schools, which will have a mandatory prison sentence;
  • Tougher community sentences for offenders with longer curfews and bans on leaving the country;
  • Giving prosecutors the right to appeal against Crown Court bail decisions when they think the defendant could be dangerous, or might flee the country;
  • Reforming the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act;
  • Doubling to 30 years the starting point for sentences for murders motivated by hate on grounds of disability or transgender. This would bring it in line with other hate crime murders.

 

A number of the reforms will not come into force until 2013.

The MoJ argued that its reforms to no-win, no-fee deals would mean that the cost and risk of taking on cases was more evenly balanced between claimants and defendants.

“The Act aims to stop the symptoms of a compensation culture where the public are facing increased insurance costs, and local authorities and firms are scared to go about their business, due to the high legal costs that widely advertised no-win no-fee deals can ramp up,” it said.

Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke said: “These reforms will strengthen our work to cut crime, protect the public and ensure taxpayers’ money is being spent where it is most needed and most effective.

“The Act will fundamentally improve many areas of the justice system and start to tackle the shameful rate of reoffending in this country, as well as ensuring we have clear, tough prison sentences and suitable punishments for criminals who use knives to threaten others, ruin lives with dangerous driving or who squat in people’s homes.”

The MoJ insisted that England and Wales would still have have “one of the most generous systems in the world” despite the Act’s measures to cut the legal aid bill.

It said the legislation was designed to encourage people to take more responsibility for exploring the range of practical advice available to them to tackle problems early, rather than immediately taking legal action.

Justice Minister Jonathan Djanogly said:
”This Act will reduce lawyers’ fees, which we all end up paying for through increased prices and insurance premiums. It will make legal costs fairer between people suing for compensation and the defendants, so that the defendants are not denied access to justice through fear of high legal costs.”

But Law Society President John Wotton warned in the Law Society’s Gazette that the consequence of the Act would be that, in areas like housing and welfare benefits law, vulnerable members of society would find legal advice and representation in the courts, funded by legal aid, more difficult to obtain.