O'Rourke Denis: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5597. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I want to talk about legal aid because access to justice is becoming more and more difficult. Costs are very high even for relatively minor matters. Legal aid was of course designed to provide legal representation for people who could not afford it by themselves. It was never a grant except to parties who could not afford to repay a Legal Services Agency grant. Originally the qualifying criteria made it possible for people at the lower end of the socio-economic scale to access legal aid and that worked very well. But now the criteria are so tough that very few people actually qualify.I want to refer specifically to the Legal Services Regulations as they now are because they specify that the maximum levels of income for the purpose of determining an applicant’s eligibility for legal aid in respect of a civil matter are: “(a) $22366 per year for a single applicant: (b) $35420 per year for an applicant with—(i) a spouse or partner; or (ii) 1 dependent child: (c) $50934 per year for an applicant with—(i) a spouse or partner and 1 dependent child; or (ii) 2 dependent children:”. So that is a pretty low level. It is even tougher when it comes to the maximum levels of disposable capital for the purposes of eligibility for legal aid. It specifies for a civil matter that the maximum is $3500—an incredibly low figure in my view. However if the applicant has a spouse or partner or one or more dependent children the maximum level of disposable capital for that applicant is calculated by adding an allowance of another $1500 but even then it is an incredibly low total.The income and capital thresholds for qualification for legal aid are now so low that many people will simply go unrepresented. And these are not wealthy people. They are ordinary people who find it too tough to pay legal costs without some assistance. So the capital and income thresholds need urgent revision upwards so that people can get legal representation. Far too many are now forced for economic reasons to represent themselves. That leads of course to poor-quality justice. It leads to a greater burden of time on the courts it leads to greater use of appeals and it leads to more injustice than would be acceptable in a modern society.To make matters worse the Legal Services Commissioner now must refuse legal aid if the applicant is in arrears for repayments on previous legal aid grants subject to an interests of justice test. Nevertheless the commissioner’s assessment about what is in the interests of justice can be very difficult especially for unrepresented parties to argue successfully. In addition to that I actually do not personally trust the commissioner’s discretion on the interests of justice test in those circumstances.This provision concerning arrears is intended to encourage legally aided people to start repaying their debt. There is nothing wrong with that objective but there is actually very little evidence to show that it is likely to have any positive effect on that objective at all. The reason for that is perfectly obvious and it is simply that the people in that position actually do not have the money to do the repayment of debt that is required of them. So it cannot really have a positive effect in those circumstances. What it does do is cause injustice by making legal aid unavailable in far too many cases so that people either give up or have to represent themselves and I have already spoken about the results of that.The Legal Services Act saying that the amount owing is collectable as a debt and that that should be enough is not sufficient in my view. That needs to be reviewed as well. In addition we should be deleting the $50 user-charge. That is wrong. Many lawyers simply pay that on behalf of their client. It really is just penny-pinching on behalf of the State and really is not much more than a blatant attempt to try to suppress demand. That of course is wrong in terms of what the Act is all about and what legal aid should be for. The money lost by the Crown would be very small if that user-charge was abolished but the effect on low-income people would be disproportionately high and very positive.I would like to turn next to the issue of charging interest on legal aid debt. It is absolutely wrong in principle in New Zealand First’s view. It is true that interest could be written off under the existing provisions in the Act but it does require evidence of serious hardship and the definition of serious hardship shows that it is a very high bar to reach. As a result of course it will again be low-income people—not people at the very lowest rung but people just above it—who will suffer and be badly affected by this particular provision which I think is Draconian. The State should not be a banker in these matters seeking interest at the rate of 8 percent. It should be seen as a public service and there should be no interest charged on legal aid debt.The Government has lost its way as to what legal aid is really about. It is really about access to justice. That is what we are losing and it is a very bad trend. Legal aid must be fair for people unable to afford a lawyer so that they can get sufficient assistance to take legal proceedings that have a reasonable prospect of success and to ensure assistance to people who have no choice but to defend proceedings brought against them. Many of them simply cannot afford to do so because they cannot get legal aid. So in the end in its quest to move into surplus this Government through its Budget cuts over recent years has limited access to justice for lower-income people. The very people who need legal aid the most are the ones who are going to suffer.The restrictions in legal aid have gone far too far and combined with the increasing expense of the legal system and legal costs generally the result in far too many cases is that many many people will be effectively priced out of the justice system. I think that that must change. This is a very serious issue and I call on the Government to look at legal aid again especially those thresholds I referred to but also the whole system. It really is not working any more for low-income peopleand it is an urgent matter. It is an urgent matter that has not been addressed in this Budget and it needs to be looked at in the very near future.