Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill — New Clause 17 — Extension of Scope of Legal Aid — 2 Nov 2011 at 17:00

Stewart Jackson MP, Peterborough voted against making legal aid available to cover the entirety of assistance required where people are deemed to have complex, interconnected needs, some of which do not usually attract aid.

The majority of MPs voted against making legal aid available to cover the entirety of assistance required where people are deemed to have complex, interconnected needs, some of which do not usually attract aid.

The MP who proposed the new clause rejected in this vote, Yvonne Fovargue, explained she would like to see legal aid funding advisors to assist people with their problems, holistically, at a "one-stop shop"[1]:

  • It is impossible to deal with one issue—for example, electricity disconnection—without dealing with problems such as tax credit underpayment and illegal deduction of wages. It is the natural state of affairs that one problem leads to another, and the merit of not-for-profit agencies dealing with that cluster is the availability of specialisms in a one-stop shop, and the ability to drill down to the root cause of the issue, which may be wrongful refusal of benefits or unfair dismissal leading to debt issues and potential homelessness.

MPs were considering the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill[2]. The text of the proposed new clause rejected by this vote was:

  • Extension of scope of legal aid in complex cases
  • ‘(1) Civil legal services other than services described in Part 1 of Schedule 1 are to be available to an individual under this Part if subsection (2) is satisfied.
  • (2) This subsection is satisfied where the Director—
  • (a) has made a complex case determination in relation to the individual and the services, and
  • (b) has determined that the individual qualifies for the services in accordance with this Part, (and has not withdrawn either determination).
  • (3) For the purposes of subsection (2), a complex case determination is a determination—
  • (a) that the individual has complex, interconnected needs in relation to which the individual requires comprehensive civil legal services, and
  • (b) not all of those civil legal services would otherwise be available to the individual because they do not all fall within the scope of Schedule 1.’.

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Debate in Parliament | Source |

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Party Summary

Votes by party, red entries are votes against the majority for that party.

What is Tell? '+1 tell' means that in addition one member of that party was a teller for that division lobby.

What are Boths? An MP can vote both aye and no in the same division. The boths page explains this.

What is Turnout? This is measured against the total membership of the party at the time of the vote.

PartyMajority (No)Minority (Aye)BothTurnout
Alliance0 10100.0%
Con261 (+1 tell) 0085.6%
DUP0 2025.0%
Green0 10100.0%
Lab0 221 (+2 tell)086.4%
LDem40 (+1 tell) 10089.5%
PC0 30100.0%
Total:301 238085.6%

Rebel Voters - sorted by party

MPs for which their vote in this division differed from the majority vote of their party. You can see all votes in this division, or every eligible MP who could have voted in this division

Sort by: Name | Constituency | Party | Vote

NameConstituencyPartyVote
Tom BrakeCarshalton and WallingtonLDemaye
Michael CrockartEdinburgh WestLDem (front bench)aye
Andrew GeorgeSt IvesLDem (front bench)aye
Mike HancockPortsmouth Southwhilst LDem (front bench)aye
Martin HorwoodCheltenhamLDem (front bench)aye
Simon HughesBermondsey and Old SouthwarkLDem (front bench)aye
Stephen LloydEastbourneLDem (front bench)aye
Greg MulhollandLeeds North WestLDem (front bench)aye
Ian SwalesRedcarLDem (front bench)aye
David WardBradford EastLDem (front bench)aye

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