Brooking RachelThird ReadingHon RACHEL BROOKING (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I present a legislative statement on the Legal Services Amendment Bill. DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon RACHEL BROOKING: I move That the Legal Services Amendment Bill be now read a third time. The Legal Services Amendment Bill addresses two barriers to accessing legal aid. By removing the user charge and the payment of interest from the Legal Services Act it will give enduring certainty to users of the legal aid scheme that they will not have to pay a user charge to access the scheme designed to support them and that the amount that they are required to repay will not continue to increase as they pay it down.The user charge was designed to make people think carefully about whether to engage in legal aid. Not only is this unnecessary in that people who are eligible for legal aid are on low incomes therefore the decision to take on debt will be a serious one but also it's a financial barrier to people who want to or need to use the legal aid scheme to access the justice system. Sometimes to avoid this charge being applied legal aid providers—that is the lawyers are known to absorb the user charges themselves. This means that in some cases legal aid providers have to take a financial hit to provide their services. This is a workaround that shouldn't be needed. It's good to be removing this barrier to legal aid funding. Interest payments were introduced to encourage people to pay down their debt. What interest payments assume however is that people using the legal aid system actually have the money spare to make payments that pay their debt down faster. In reality legally aided people cannot afford to pay their debts down quickly. It will take time for them to pay the debt down especially if they owe other debts to Government that need to be paid down first. In the meantime the debt continues to grow as the interest continues to accrue. It can be demoralising.There are other options that encourage legal aid recipients to make efforts to pay down debt too. This includes placing caveats on property and issuing deduction notices so the payments are taken directly out of their bank account. Charging people more money is not a useful method to encourage payment of legal aid debt. Some people might call these changes tinkering" but for the people who need to use the legal aid scheme it is far from it.Let's not forget the positive difference that these changes will make to low-income New Zealanders who without Government support would be unable to access justice and assert their rights. We are committed to improving access to justice and this bill makes up just one part of the ongoing efforts to do so.The changes in this bill formed just one part of the Budget 2022 package to increase access to the legal aid scheme. In January this year we increased eligibility and repayment thresholds for legal aid recipients. Wage inflation has slowly eaten away at these thresholds meaning that people who meet the criteria for legal aid in 2008 would not qualify in 2022 despite having no material change in their circumstances. We increased eligibility thresholds by 15 percent making another 93000 New Zealanders eligible for legal aid. This goes some way to offset inflation and make sure that New Zealanders who should be able to access legal aid are eligible.We also increased repayment thresholds by 16.5 percent meaning people will be asked to pay back their debts at a level that more accurately reflects their income and ability to pay. Last year we increased legal aid provider remuneration by 12 percent in recognition of the important and essential work that legal aid providers do.In all these changes will ensure that more people are eligible for legal aid funding that more recipients won't be unnecessarily burdened with repayment obligation and that providers of legal aid services are more fairly compensated for the very important work they do. Lastly I want to acknowledge those who have contributed to the bill. I'd like to thank the Justice Committee for their consideration of the bill and also to acknowledge those who took the time to make a written oral submission on the bill when it was a select committee. Thank you to those submitters for your time and for sharing your views.We have a duty to provide accessible high quality legal advice to New Zealanders who otherwise couldn't afford it via the legal aid scheme. This bill is a step towards improving that accessibility and I commend this bill to the House.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to."