Community Links has joined a large range of organisations, including Scope, Mind, Mencap, Shelter, the Law Society, Bar Council and over 20 others, in signing a letter calling on peers to seriously consider the impact of the Legal Aid Bill on vulnerable people, as it returns to the House of Lords today. Alice Forbess, a researcher from LSE, spent several weeks last year at our advice centre, and produced this short report. Below she explores in more depth the history of one particular individual, Henry, for whom advice has been a vital lifeline.
The Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill proposes to eliminate from the scope of civil legal aid most of ‘the law of everyday life’ (debt, employment, most housing cases, all welfare benefits help), and as a result the advice service at Community Links will lose most of its current funding. Although the Bill retains legal aid cover for people threatened with impending homelessness, the elimination of welfare and debt advice which is used in such cases to resolve the causes of the problem, means that advisers will only be able to carry out basic damage limitation. As numerous commentators have pointed out, this is penny wise and pound foolish: the human and financial costs of allowing problems easily addressed through timely intervention to escalate and compound far outweigh the savings.
The case of an advice centre client who faced eviction just before Christmas provides an apt illustration. Henry arrived in the UK aged 13 from Uganda and after being left behind by an ‘uncle’ (probably a human trafficker) grew up in foster care. “I was lucky to get this good foster carer … who was very strict… but because of my background I was very respectful of people and I knew she was strict in my favour. We are still in touch, very much so, but I haven’t told her about my problems. She is in her 70s now and it’s too much to bring to someone”. He left care aged 18, moving into the rented council accommodation from which he is being evicted after falling into rent arrears. “The transition was difficult… you spend all these years not being prepared for it and then [at 18] you realise it wasn’t your family after all. And then [I lost access to] my social worker because of the cuts”.
Ironically it was a desire to get off benefits that initiated the chain of events leading to the eviction. Having volunteered for seven years with the Children’s Society and enrolled in college to study studying motor mechanics and then management, Henry sought work experience, taking temporary employment on NHS health campaigns. A one month paid position meant that he stopped drawing Job Seeker’s Allowance but did not realise that his Housing Benefits would be suspended unless he made direct contact to explain his situation. Believing he was ineligible for legal aid, he tried to resolve the problem on his own but failed to obtain the documents required to reverse his benefits suspension. With rent arrears accumulating, he dropped out of college in the last year and succumbed to depression exacerbated by the break-up of a long term relationship. “I became extremely stressed so I stopped [opening my letters] because every time I checked there was something really bad … and I ended up missing court appearances. I had no idea that I could get advice… I tried solving everything on my own and ended up in the position in which I am now”.
Although only 22, Henry is far from ‘system illiterate’, having spent seven years pursuing a Home Office decision on his asylum application. “I went through lawyer after lawyer. At one time the law firm burnt down, the documents and everything, and they didn’t inform me, I was just walking past thinking I should make an appointment, and the building was gone– it had caught fire”. When he finally located them through his social worker, his lawyer had left the firm. A new lawyer and his own determination finally won through. “I wrote to the Home Office in my own handwriting with a pen, no typing, and told them everything, gave evidence of my voluntary work, my educational achievements, a few letters of support, and to my surprise, after a few weeks, my lawyer called to say I’ve got indefinite leave to remain. After all that time of no answer, no answer, no answer… I just got it! …No one taught me how to do it. I was doing for myself. I knew that the reality was I wasn’t British and they can send me back at any time. But where I come from you grow up really quickly. I was thinking more like a 20 year old… thinking big things, how to achieve. I started planning things and that’s what happened”.
The theme of time horizons recurs throughout the interview: Henry is well aware of the fact that poverty traps people in a hopeless present. “You stay up at night thinking, what am I going to do tomorrow? You wish tomorrow doesn’t come …I’d get to the point of thinking, I might as well get run over by a truck. That’s why I stopped checking my letterbox. I live next to a train station, and there are always delays because they say someone got run over by a train. It’s no surprise!… It’s gotten to the point where there is no point dreaming because you can not achieve your dream… Recently, I wrote on my facebook page: “We live in a third world inside the first world” … Because you don’t see what you are going to do tomorrow… you can not plan anything unless you have a source of income, some work. And I had plans”.
Last year, Henry applied for a prestigious unpaid internship inEthiopiawith human rights charity Global Exchange, and was one of only 24 applicants, out of several thousand, to be selected for an all expenses paid training trip. However, being served with an eviction warrant has meant he has to give up plans to go abroad or face the certain loss of his flat. The saddest part of all this is that had he sought advice earlier the problem would have been entirely reversible as he was actually eligible to receive Housing Benefit and need not have incurred any rent arrears. For now, he remains trapped in poverty’s permanent present – as his adviser put it, “you have to stay in the present to tackle this problem – forget about the past, forget about the future. Stay in the present”.
The LASPO bill would create perverse incentives for people to postpone addressing their problems until they become eligible for legal aid. Yet, once a possession order is taken out by the landlord nothing can be done except to await the eviction warrant and attempt to challenge it before a judge. Henry will have to take his chances representing himself, a prospect which is particularly distressing owing to a speech impediment which he has largely overcome, but which recurs under stress. To prepare his defence, his advisor restored his access to Housing Benefits and Job Seeker Allowance and set up a repayment schedule for his rent arrears in order to demonstrate to the judge that he is now “constant” and understands his responsibilities. In the future these underlying welfare benefits and debt issues will not be included in legally aided advice, making it difficult to see how such situations could be tackled effectively.
Last month, the Daily Mail’s You magazine published the story of a young woman who became homeless in circumstances similar to Henry’s, remaining on the street for 14 years and permanently damaging her health. With the help of a charity she recovered to become an award winning entrepreneur. Community Links started in 1978 in an old route master bus. Now located in the 19th century Town Hall which it lovingly restored from a derelict state, the charity offers specialist legal advice in addition to a host of programmes geared towards a holistic approach to community regeneration. It is troubling to think that in a year’s time access to the law may be too expensive to offer freely. The revolutionary new Universal Credit system which will replace the current social security structures may resolve the systemic knock-on effect that arises when one set of means tested benefits is suspended, triggering other suspensions and compounding ‘problem clusters’. However, weaknesses in the system are already foreseeable, implementation will take at least five years, and early ‘teething’ problems are expected to drive up the need for legal assistance for years to come, just as it is being cut out of the scope of legal aid, leaving vulnerable people without essential life-saving assistance. For the old, it is a failure of compassion, for the young, a sad waste of human potential.
TAKE ACTION: Email the Minister in charge via 38 Degrees, or join Scope’s Virtual House of Lords to protest the changes.
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