Chauvel Charles: Legal Services Bill — In Committee 
Chauvel Charles: Legal Services Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:17682] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I will add my voice to the request made by my colleague Carol Beaumont. It would be very helpful to have the Minister of Justice take a short call about the transitional savings provisions and other repeals and amendments. As Carol Beaumont said the transitional and savings provisions in Part 4 of the Legal Services Bill in themselves are not comprehensively different from what we might expect in other similar legislation. Obviously the Legal Services Agency goes out of existence and is replaced as far as its functions are concerned by a core employee of the executive. But in respect of that transition there is one important disestablishment which is the public advisory committee to the old Legal Services Agency. 
When we had some questions earlier about the benefits of inserting a consultation provision in the statute the Minister’s reply was that consultation actually held up reform earlier and was not terribly useful but he was sure that officials will consult anyway. I am not sure that that reply is as reassuring as members on this side of the Chamber would have hoped. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister about the public advisory committee’s disestablishment and about what means will be in place for the Secretary for Justice and the commissioner to hear from the public about the sorts of access to justice issues there are out there and how they are truly to be met in what is obviously intended and envisaged by the Minister to be a more flexible situation. Instead of having just contracted legal aid providers there will be a mix of those types of providers and the public defence system as well as this notion of firms contracting to provide services to fill the gaps. 
On the statutory issues I think it would be helpful to hear about the extent to which there will be any obligation or expectation on consultation with the public over those access to justice needs and how they will be filled. On the matters of transition that are not legislative but none the less very relevant because they arise from the same sorts of questions I congratulate the Minister. I congratulate him on his announcements about the extension of the public defender scheme. I remember when the public defender scheme was set up under the previous Government the resistance encountered from the profession to not only setting it up but also having it properly evaluated and then having it expanded. I commend the desire to see the scheme extended to Hamilton Wellington and Christchurch. As Carol Beaumont said it would be helpful if the Minister were to update the Committee about his intentions. Public information about the extension is somewhat dated so it would be useful if the Committee could be told whether the intent is to extend the scheme especially to Hamilton and Christchurch. 
Obviously the benefit of extending the scheme is that it provides some contestability for those who are simply contracted providers. The evidence appears to be that where the public defender scheme has operated it has operated very efficiently and effectively it has used public money effectively and it has set up tension with the contracted providers so that there is something to benchmark performance with—one against the other. If the Minister can confirm that the public defender scheme is going to be extended as an effective part of the transition to the new regime in order to keep everything honest in the new system as well as to provide an alternative service it would be useful. 
I note that there have been two independent evaluations of the service. Both evaluations found that it offered savings in lawyers’ costs when compared with the estimated cost of equivalent private providers. In respect of the Auckland pilot the saving was nearly a million dollars. These savings were achieved with no reported difference as far as the clients’ experience of quality service was concerned and also as measured by overall conviction rates. Last April the Minister announced the extension to the other centres. Obviously we are nearly a year on from that announcement. Economic circumstances are not easy—we all recognise that—but we want to see excellent services. It would be very helpful to hear from the Minister in the chair on these matters. Thank you.