Beaumont Carol: Legal Assistance Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Legal Assistance Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:10980. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour):It is a privilege to rise to speak on the Legal Assistance Amendment Bill. I have listened to all of the contributions made so far on this bill and I have to say that there have been some extremely interesting and very thoughtful contributions made by all of the speakers tonight on what was the Legal Assistance (Sustainability) Amendment Bill which is as others have noted now being renamed the Legal Assistance Amendment Bill.I guess I will start by saying that despite changes—and a number of people have commented that if you like this is being clawed back to something a little better—it still does not mean that this is a bill we can support. Labour does oppose this bill. We oppose it because its net effect is still a denial of access to justice. As others have put more eloquently than I will be able to I am sure representation is fundamental to access to justice in our system. Having access to legal representation is vital. So many people are not able to represent themselves and are for a range of reasons perhaps even unaware of their own rights. So having decent representation is fundamental especially when the consequences are potentially very significant. Whether they be financial penalties or loss of liberty the fact of the matter is that people can suffer very severeconsequences and they have the right to have access to justice and decent representation.We oppose this bill because it still places a number of limitations on New Zealanders’ rights to access to justice. It is part of a concern that we have about the general direction of the Government in relation to the justice system. In relation to the bill as originally introduced certainly the contributions from a variety of people on it have been very interesting in realising the full extent of what was proposed and how serious those changes were. My colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel does make the comment that the Minister of Justice rather than members of the Justice and Electoral Committee from the other side of the Chamber was probably most likely to be responsible for the improvements that were made. There is a significant number—pages in fact—of changes made under Supplementary Order Paper 134. But despite that—despite that—there are still a number of significant areas that we are concerned about and if we were to sum them up they are in four main areas.Firstly the application for legal assistance may be turned down if the applicant is in arrears for repaying any part of a previous grant of aid that he or she may have received. I think it is important that we look at this in the context that New Zealanders are currently living in which is that it is extremely difficult for many New Zealanders to make ends meet that actually the budget does not stack up for people with the income they have and the expenses they have and that frankly it is quite likely that people will be in situations of not being able to repay arrears because they are trying to live. If you talk to budgeting services they will tell you just how hard people are struggling. That is the first of the four main concerns. Also still of concern are secondly the reintroduction of a user charge although the figure has now been reduced; thirdly the provision that interest is to be charged on arrears of legal aid; and fourthly the provisions having retrospective effect. Those are the four main areas that we are concerned about.I would just like to say that the Minister talked about and somebody else has mentioned people being concerned about seeing white-collar criminals—you know the finance company rip-off merchants—using legal aid but the fact of the matter is that it is not they who overwhelmingly use the legal aid system.I want to also refer to the regulatory impact statement. The Hon Lianne Dalziel referred to it earlier but I want to particularly talk about how it is not white-collar criminals—it is not middle-aged white men—who are going to be hurt by restrictions and the denial of access to justice. Let me just reread those two sentences: “Restrictions to eligibility will disadvantage people on low incomes who have few options to find legal services elsewhere. Generally this includes young Māori men in the criminal jurisdiction and women and children in the family jurisdiction.” So even with the changes it will still disadvantage those people.