No laughing matter

Perhaps one shouldn’t be too surprised at a certain lack of empathy for the lot of the working man from legal aid minister and heir to a £300m family business Jonathan Djanogly (see here and also here). Even so he displayed a shocking lack of sensitivity during last week’s debate on the legal aid Bill. Ministers rejected all but three of the 11 of the amendments made by peers to their controversial Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill.

The incident arose during an angry debate about the government plans not to protect mesothelioma victims from the ‘no win, no fee’ reforms which would mean that lawyers’ fees coming out of any compensation aid out for the invariably fatal disease. Every year about 2,000 people die of mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung that arises from exposure to asbestos.

To set the scene, Djanogly, seemingly unembarrassed by his own ambulance-chasing connections, explained how his government’s reforms were all about fighting the ‘compensation culture’. He argued that the opposition’s amendments ‘rate one sort of claim above another’. ‘Somehow, a mesothelioma claim is automatically more worthy than a personal injury claim. The Government simply do not accept that,’ he argued.

It was a crass dismissal of a condition which leaves sufferers dead within on average 12 to 18 months of diagnosis. Anyhow, Blaydon Labour MP and former UNISON union president Dave Anderson, argued that it was very easy to stop our so called ‘compo culture’. ‘Tell employers to stop killing people at work and to stop poisoning people at work. Then people would not be able to claim compensation,’ he said.

Anderson spoke of employers who had contempt for workers. ‘They let workmen go home in dirty work clothes that their wives then washed, and became infected with mesothelioma through doing so. What happened was known by employers. We are talking about employers who were using young kids in Namibia to fill plastic sacks with raw asbestos. They put young kids of seven, eight or nine in the sacks to tamp the asbestos down. That is the type of people we are dealing with—people with no regard for human life.’

The MP reckoned that 42,000 people die in the past 40 years in this country and 60,000 more will die in the next 50. ‘That is more than 1,000 people a year and more than were being killed in the coal mines in this country in the disastrous years of the 1930s,’ said the former miner. ‘That is why this is a special issue.’

Was Djanogoly moved by such arguments? Apparently not. You can view it here (handily signposted at 21.59.45). It’s not an edifying sight. Labour MPs berate the minister for ‘smirking’ and inappropriate ‘body language’ and having ‘giggled and grinned through descriptions of people dying of mesothelioma’. ‘In almost 15 years in this house, I have never seen conduct which so demeans a minister of the crown and which is so damaging to the reputation of this house,’ said Labour MP Helen Jones.

Important concessions were made last week. Namely, ministers appeared to accept that there was a risk of political interference in the role of the director of legal aid casework work when determining exceptional funding provision. They also conceded that legal aid was necessary for welfare benefits appeals to the upper tribunal and senior courts although the justice secretary Ken Clarke rejected amendments to provide legal aid for reviews and appeals to the lower tribunal. However he did suggest that he was investigating with the DWP a system of providing legal aid in the lower tribunal where a point of law was at stake.

The government also backed down on another critical aspect of the LASPO debate. For many commentators the government’s overly prescriptive and baffling take on domestic violence has been indicative of its approach to the legal aid cuts. The Legal aid bill makes domestic violence a precondition for legal aid to access any private family law advice. It’s a massive cut to the scheme: there were 211,000 family cases last year where people received initial advice and assistance under the family ‘legal help’ scheme alone.

Most fair-minded people – and that includes the courts and the police - understand ‘domestic violence’ to encompass ‘emotional’ as well as ‘physical’ violence. Not so the coalition, who proposed that legal aid be restricted to physical violence and, then, only where there was ‘clear objective evidence’ of domestic violence. The good news is that the definition of ‘domestic violence’ has now been amended to reflect the ACPO one. Clarke has indicated that a broader range of evidence would be accepted (notes from a GP or social worker and entrance to a refuge). It’s a welcome change.