Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill — Clause 1 — Duty for Lord Chancellor to Consider Needs of Legal Aid Applicants — 24 Apr 2012 at 17:40

The majority of MPs voted against giving the Lord Chancellor a duty to exercise his powers in relation to Legal Aid with a view to securing that individuals have access to legal services that effectively meet their needs, subject to resources and the law.

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

  • That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1B.

Amendment 1B[2] stated:

Page 1, line 5, leave out subsection (1) and insert—

  • “(1) The Lord Chancellor shall exercise his powers under this Part with a view to securing that individuals have access to legal services that effectively meet their needs, subject to the resources which the Lord Chancellor decides, in his discretion, to make available, and subject to the provisions of this Part.”

Had the motion not been passed this text would have replaced subsection 1(1) of the Bill which, unamended, stated:

  • The Lord Chancellor must secure that legal aid is made available in accordance with this Part.

It was suggested during the debate that the rejected amendment introduced ambiguity as to in what circumstances, and for what purpose, there may be an eligibility for legal aid.

==

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%
Con255 (+2 tell) 0084.0%
DUP0 5062.5%
Green0 10100.0%
Lab0 211 (+2 tell)082.9%
LDem45 0078.9%
PC0 2066.7%
Respect0 10100.0%
SDLP0 1033.3%
Total:300 222082.6%

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
no rebellions

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