Baroness Ludford (LD)

My Lords, I enthusiastically support the amendment led by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, which I was pleased to co-sign. The noble Lord rightly spoke about the rule of law and the fundamental right of access to justice. He referred to the UK-France deal. I understand that, at Brook House, a large number of people were detained and notices of intent to remove them were served on 25 August this year, with a deadline of 1 September to respond. But no appointments under the detained duty advice scheme were available until at least 2 September—the day after they were supposed to respond. Previously, on the attempt to remove people to Rwanda, the Inspectorate of Prisons, during its 2022 inspection of Brook House—which of course is an immigration removal centre—noted that one detainee “understood that he needed to reply to the notice of intent within seven days but described his escalating panic as he could not speak to a lawyer as the window drew to a close”. The inspectorate said that, in the five cases it looked at, no detainees had replied to the notice within the seven-day window or before the decision to issue removal directions. As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, astutely argued, this is an “invest to save” amendment. It reminds me of the one I am backing from noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, on the right to interpreting and translation services—the noble Lord, Lord Katz, has been kind enough to meet with us—in that there might seem to be an upfront cost, but it will actually make the system work more efficiently and save money. At the moment, as the noble Lord, Lord Bach, pointed out, there will be costs to the Ministry of Justice and the courts and tribunal services, with unrepresented parties with longer hearings, more support at appeals, more adjournments, and so on. There will be costs for local authorities, with unresolved asylum claims meaning that they have to provide housing support for longer, et cetera. There is a cost to the NHS, given the mental stress and ill health of people who are not properly supported. This reminds me very much—I hope noble Lords do not think that I am going down a rabbit hole—of diabetes technology. It might seem absolutely nothing to do with this subject, and it is not, but my late husband was a type 1 diabetic. For a long time, the NHS was very reluctant to supply insulin-dependent people with diabetes with technology such as insulin pumps that enabled much better control of blood glucose. Better control means fewer hypos—hypoglycemic incidents—a severe one of which could require hospitalisation. The problem, as I understand it, is that the cost of the technology is on the GP budget but the cost of the hospital stay is on the hospital budget. There was no overall cost-benefit analysis, and you can see that all around the NHS, of course. Eventually, some bright spark realised that, with diabetes taking up 10% of the NHS budget, it made no sense not to invest in people having much better blood glucose control—but it took a very long time. There has to be someone who takes a holistic view of all this and sees that you do not actually save money in the longer term by failing to support, in this case, an effective legal aid scheme. As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, concluded, an effective legal aid scheme saves money; it makes economic sense.