Chauvel Charles: Legal Services Bill — Third Reading 
Chauvel Charles: Legal Services Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:17772] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 Since the Minister of Justice first mooted reform of the legal aid system the Labour Party has supported in principle the need for reform. But it would have to be said that over the course of the debate on this matter in the hearing of evidence in the Justice and Electoral Committee and with subsequent developments in respect of the Government’s criminal justice policy the Labour Party’s concerns about the overall effect of this reform taken with others is leading to increasing concern and it is now with quite a degree of reluctance that the Opposition agrees to continue to support the Legal Services Bill at its third reading. 
I want to run through some of the serious concerns that we have increasingly held as the debate has gone forward. The Minister in his third reading speech just made reference to the Bazley report the report of Dame Margaret Bazley which kicked off this set of reforms. He said something along the lines that a public servant as experienced as Dame Margaret someone who is as proficient as she is in looking at the best ways in which to deliver public services should not be lightly ignored and it is true that Dame Margaret is somebody who has given great service to New Zealand and to its Public Service. But there are major issues with the Bazley report and those issues are ones that the House needs to take notice of because all the reforms we are debating today proceed from that report. 
The aspect that is of most concern in the Bazley report is the one that was drawn to the attention of the select committee by the New Zealand Law Society when this bill was before its members—that is the anecdotal nature of the concerns that Dame Margaret expressed. She did so in language that I hope she has had cause to reflect on because she looked in particular at the way in which legal services were delivered in South Auckland and in particular at the new Manukau District Court. 
I have been to that court. I have met practitioners who work there off and on in gruelling conditions some on legal aid assignments and some not. Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson knows as do other members in the House that that is one of the more difficult courts in the country in which to practise and in which to deliver access to justice for New Zealanders. But there are practitioners who do that day in and day out. They do it unselfishly and they do it often in the face of a system that does not seem to care very much about method or outcomes yet their professionalism keeps that system going. 
The greatest matter of regret that I have in this whole debate is that neither Dame Margaret nor the Minister has ever distanced themselves from the more extreme comments that occurred in the Bazley report about those practitioners. There may well be one or two whose work needs better quality control but the vast majority of those lawyers work very hard to provide access to justice. It is a crying shame not only that their efforts have not been properly acknowledged by the Government but also that the Minister has not chosen to acknowledge that professionalism on a fundamental basis because without it the entire system would grind to a halt. It is also questionable whether an entire set of reforms such as those we are seeing in this House today can be grounded in the Bazley report because of the anecdotal nature of the findings and because of some of the extreme language in that report. It is important I think to put on record in this speech those fundamental concerns. 
The other concern that I think it is fair to put on record that has developed on this side of the House as this bill has proceeded is the way in which it meshes with other matters of criminal justice policy being advanced as part of the Minister’s reform agenda. I think we need to say that in that category lie not only the restrictions on choice as to advocate which this bill will put into place in the legal aid system in respect of certain categories of offences but also the “three strikes” legislation which I note the Minister has distanced himself from but which will have the inevitable effect of increasing traffic—for want of a better way of putting it—through the system. Combine that with restrictions on choice of advocate in the legal aid system and inevitably we will see a deterioration in the ability of New Zealanders the people whom we represent in this House to access justice. 
Then there is the package of reforms currently under consideration in the Justice and Electoral Committee the Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill where as the Law Society has pointed out procedural reform is being put ahead of reform of the drivers of crime or the substantive criminal statute or even really the rules of evidence—an odd way to do it—and in the process we have some restrictions on the right to the presumption of innocence restrictions on the right to trial by jury and other major concerns being brought to the attention of the committee not only by the legal profession but by a number of people concerned about that fundamental right of access to justice. 
So we have some major concerns about this bill. I do not say that all parts of the bill are bad and I hope that members on this side of the House have been fair about its provisions as we have gone through the process of debating it. One of the very positive aspects of the legislation is the extent to which it provides some contestability in the provision of publicly funded legal services to those who cannot pay their own way. Not only will there be the continuation of a contracted legal aid provision system for some lawyers but there will be an extension of the Public Defence Service. That is an excellent system. It was introduced under the last Government and it is being extended as a result of the bill we are debating today. The bill empowers a reasonable extension of that scheme. 
Two things need to be said about the Public Defence Service. The first is that it provides some choice and contestability in the system. The Public Defence Service is a publicly funded publicly owned entity and it provides defence services for people who employ its services. The evaluations of the Public Defence System show that the way it provides services is very very effective and very very efficient. That provides good evidence that the State can deliver these sorts of services if the services are structured properly on an appropriate basis and if it can do so in a way that keeps a check on or a reference to contracted private providers. So that is a good thing. The other good thing is that there will be a third category of provider. In some places where it is just not possible to find legal aid providers on a contracted basis then firms will be contracted to provide the service. We support that. 
In summary although the reforms are not all bad we have some major concerns about them. We have decided we will continue to vote to support the legislation but it will be very much on the basis of waiting to see what the results are like. We are certainly not making any commitment to retain the system that will be brought into effect by this bill because of the major concerns I have listed in this speech—in particular the concern about the inability of people to make a choice about their representative or advocate especially in respect of some offences when the grant of legal aid is not even untrammelled but effectively a loan from the State. That is a matter for real concern. If it transpires that in the implementation of this legislation along with the other parts of the Government’s criminal justice reform agenda the right of access to justice for New Zealanders is significantly impaired then the watching brief that we are keeping on it will mean that when we have the next opportunity we will make significant changes to the legislation if they are required.