Finlayson Christopher: Legal Services Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Finlayson Christopher: Legal Services Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Volume:630;Page:2221] 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) 
: 
 There are two disappointments about this legislation. One point as my colleague Mrs te Heuheu said is that it is bad legislation because it fails to address the key point of access to justice. The second point that is something of a disappointment to me is that the Minister responsible Mark Burton is not in the chair. The Minister in the chair Pete Hodgson cannot reasonably be expected to comment on anything that the Opposition raises and indeed the Government MPs barely get involved in the debate and basically sit like zombies. 
Be that as it may let us turn to Part 2 which deals with the transitional provisions. The heart of the transitional provisions is of course subclause (2) of clause 43 which provides that the provisions of the amendment bill do not affect applications for legal aid or grants of legal aid made before the commencement of the legislation except as provided in certain circumstances. I will briefly look at those now. 
The first set of circumstances as set out in sections 40 and 41 of the principal Act as amended by subclause (3) of clause 43 deals with two situations: firstly the liability of the aided person for costs and secondly the costs of the successful opponent of the person who is on legal aid. In the second reading speech that I gave I said I regarded both of those provisions as practically useless because there will be very few if any occasions where an aided person will actually be made liable to pay costs. Indeed the changes made to the substituted section 40 in my view almost tighten up the situations where costs can be granted and make it harder for a person who has gone to the expense of opposing a plaintiff on legal aid to recover funds. Those transitional provisions are inserted in there but really they are of no moment because the provisions of the Act in relation to the liability of the aided person for costs and the costs of the successful opponent of an aided person have not been properly addressed. 
The only other part of clause 43 that needs to be referred to concerns the transitional arrangements in relation to the Legal Aid Act 1969. I would not have thought that in 2006 many of those charges would be left at all so that is almost a question of the law not being concerned with trifles. 
The next clause clause 44 deals with a number of transitional provisions in relation to the providers of legal services. I will say something about the first of those sections. Section 68 of the principal Act as substituted by clause 31 of the bill raises quite an important point. Under the previous Act listed providers had to protect the agency’s interests in relation to charges and the proceeds of proceedings and in many respects were almost like agents of the agency in terms of the information they had to provide. That was the subject of quite a lot of discussion in the Justice and Electoral Committee and members may note that the original subclause (3) of new section 68 was struck out and replaced by a new provision that states that an aided person is deemed to have waived any legal professional privilege that may otherwise prevent his or her lawyer from providing the required information to the agency. That is quite an important provision and clause 44 provides that the transitional arrangements are such that it will apply regardless of whether the grant was made before on or after the commencement date of the amendment legislation. 
Finally section 72A of the principal Act inserted by clause 32 deals with another set of amendments that make sense. They deal with the temporary suspension of the listing of providers of legal services and the cancellation of the listing of legal services. Those provisions apply whether the person was a listed provider on or after the commencement date.