Legal Aid, Sentencing & Punishment of Offenders Bill — Legal Aid for Social Welfare Law — 17 Apr 2012 at 20:16

Sylvia Hermon MP, North Down voted to make legal aid available in respect of social welfare decisions.

The majority of MPs voted against making legal aid available in respect of social welfare decisions.

MPs were considering the Legal Aid, Sentencing & Punishment of Offenders Bill[1]. The motion passed in this vote was:

  • That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 168

Lords amendment 168, which was rejected in this vote was[2][3]:

  • Page 115, line 5, at end insert—
  • "Social welfare law
  • (1) Civil legal services provided in respect of a social welfare decision relating to a benefit, allowance, payment, credit or pension under—
  • (a) the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992;
  • (b) the Jobseekers Act 1995;
  • (c) the State Pension Credit Act 2002;
  • (d) the Tax Credits Act 2002;
  • (e) the Welfare Reform Act 2007;
  • (f) the Welfare Reform Act 2012; or
  • (g) any other enactment relating to social security.
  • (2) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (1), “civil legal services” includes independent advice and assistance for a review, or appeal to a first-tier tribunal, of such a decision.”

The above would have been added to the start of Schedule 1 of the Bill where the civil legal services that can generally be made available under the arrangements for civil legal aid are described.

The explanatory notes[4] describe the effect of the rejected amendment, and related amendment 169 as being to:

  • "insert new paragraphs into Part 1 of Schedule 1 to bring within the scope of civil legal aid, civil legal services in respect of a social welfare decision relating to a benefit, allowance, payment, credit or pension under certain social security legislation. Sub-paragraph (2) of the new paragraph inserted by Lords Amendment 168 would provide that in this context civil legal services include independent advice and assistance for a review, or appeal to a first-tier tribunal, of such a decision. "

==

Debate in Parliament | Source |

Public Whip is run as a free not-for-profit service. If you'd like to support us, please consider switching your (UK) electricity and/or gas to Octopus Energy or tip us via Ko-Fi.

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 (Aye)Minority (No)BothTurnout
Alliance0 10100.0%
Con247 (+1 tell) 0181.4%
DUP8 00100.0%
Green0 10100.0%
Independent0 10100.0%
Lab0 235 (+2 tell)092.2%
LDem32 (+1 tell) 1059.6%
PC0 30100.0%
Respect0 10100.0%
SDLP0 2066.7%
Total:287 245184.2%

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
Andrew PercyBrigg and GooleCon (front bench)both
Mike HancockPortsmouth Southwhilst LDem (front bench)no

About the Project

The Public Whip is a not-for-profit, open source website created in 2003 by Francis Irving and Julian Todd and now run by Bairwell Ltd.

The Whip on the Web

Help keep PublicWhip alive