‘It’s completely wrong’: falsely accused Tory MP attacks legal aid cuts

This article is more than 8 months old

Nigel Evans backed policy in 2012, then spent life savings defending himself in court

Nigel Evans, the Tory MP for the Ribble Valley
Evans, the Tory MP for the Ribble Valley, spent about £130,000 in 2014 fighting false accusations of rape. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

The former Commons deputy speaker Nigel Evans, who spent his life savings defending himself against false accusations of rape and sexual abuse, has said he would now vote against the legal aid cuts brought in by the Conservative-led coalition.

His call to restore funding to its pre-2012 level comes as other prominent Conservative MPs including Bob Neill, the chair of the Commons justice select committee, say the savings were excessive and may have displaced costs on to other departments.

Neill, a barrister, has said the original impulse may have been to cut down “on some instances of needless expenditure” but the pendulum has swung too far. “The evidence is pretty compelling that changes are needed … We cannot expect people who often have multiple problems in their lives necessarily to be able to resolve such things on their own,” he said.

Evans, the Tory MP for the Ribble Valley in Lancashire, spent about £130,000 in 2014 fighting charges that he raped a university student and sexually assaulted six other men over a 10-year period.

He supported the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (Laspo) when it was passed by parliament in 2012, but says his experience since then has proved to him the act was wrong and that the legal system needs an injection of cash.

“If I had my time again I would stand up and argue against the implementation of Laspo,” said Evans, a former shadow secretary of state for Wales. “It’s wrong, completely wrong, to remove people’s right to have expert legal representation, and now I’ve gone through it I can see that clearly. We’re definitely talking about justice being denied as a result of Laspo.

Quick guide

Legal aid cuts

What are the legal aid cuts affecting England and Wales?

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (Laspo) Act of 2012 was not just a bureaucratic mouthful: it was a huge piece of austerity that many thousands of people in England and Wales have found hard to swallow.

The cuts in central government funding have amounted to about  £950m a year in real terms. As a result, the number of people receiving legal assistance in civil (not criminal) cases has fallen by more than 80%.

As a result half of all law centres and not-for-profit legal advice services in England and Wales have closed over the past six years. In 2013-14 there were 94 local areas with law centres or agencies offering free legal services, the Ministry of Justice has confirmed. By this year, 2019-20, the number had fallen to just 47.

The figures also reveal that, between 2010-11 and 2018-19, MoJ funding for law centres through legal aid contracts dropped from £12.1m to £7.1m. The impact was caused by a double blow because removal of legal aid eligibility for many types of cases coincided with a financial crisis among local authorities, which have been forced to withdraw support for local law centres.

Who qualifies for legal aid now?

Anyone earning as little as £23,000 a year is no longer entitled to any legal aid in lower court cases. For more serious Crown Court cases, the threshold is £37,000.

Even if you get legal aid, you may have to pay 'contributions', which can escalate over the course of a case. For those who get no legal aid at all, private legal fees can run to tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Around 140,000 people received legal aid in 2017/18, compared to 785,000 in 2010/11.

What is the impact of this?

More than half of all magistrates courts in England and Wales have closed since 2010, and they are now full of large numbers of people who have to defend themselves. They are known as 'litigants in person' and many find the byzantine system and procedures disconcerting and unfamiliar at best, and impenetrable and stressful at worst.

Some may lose their case because they are inadequately represented. Some may even get longer jail terms because they have no lawyer to advise them how to plea. Antagonists in domestic disputes, divorce or custody battles often have to confront each other directly in court, rather than through their lawyers. 

The department suggests that the figures may reflect consolidation where law centres have closed offices but continue to deal with large volumes of legal aid work.

Mark Rice-Oxley and Owen Bowcott

Photograph: Matthew Cooper/PA

“My experience of being falsely accused, and losing my life savings to defend myself proving that, was a road to Damascus moment for me. I’m a changed person now, in terms of Laspo and sympathy for all those who now have to go through the legal system without expert help, support and advice.”

He added: “I’m not just talking about those accused in the criminal courts like me, but everyone affected by Laspo. Parents going through the family courts, tenants fighting landlords, patients fighting hospitals and so on. Laspo is clearly not working. It needs to be overhauled.”

Evans, who was in the Speaker’s chair when the legislation was debated, was caught out on costs because Laspo changed the rules for acquitted defendants. Previously, they were eligible to claim for “reasonable costs”. After Laspo they were allowed to claim only a modest contribution towards the costs they had incurred.

“Laspo financially punishes innocent people for the crime of being wrongly accused,” Evans said.

The case against Evans fell apart as his accusers took their turns in the witness box during the five-week trial. Several of the young men told the judge at Preston crown court that they did not consider themselves to be victims of a criminal offence and had not wanted to complain to police.

Evans now believes that people who are taken to court by the Crown Prosecution Service and acquitted should get back their reasonable costs. Prior to Laspo, defendant’s costs orders (DCOs) ensured this was available to all who had paid privately. Those rights were abolished by schedule 7 of Laspo.

“You have no choice, when you’re accused of a crime and risk going to prison and losing everything, than to pay whatever you can to defend yourself,” Evans said. “I was fortunate that I had my grandfather’s business in Swansea that I could sell and a house that I could remortgage. But if you don’t have life savings that you can drain, it makes a mockery of the whole idea of justice.

“Thanks to Laspo, you can be taken to court through no fault of your own and even when you walk away without a stain on your character, your bank account is completely drained. They call it the ‘innocent tax’ but what it is is innocent people subsidising the judiciary … We should go back to the pre-Laspo rules.”

He initially supported Laspo for the same reasons he thinks the public have not protested against the legislation: “People don’t see people like me as victims, and there’s a sense that it could not happen to them.

“That’s what I thought too, but it’s completely wrong. There’s nothing easier than someone falsely accusing you of a crime. Maybe only a relatively small number of people are affected, but part of the problem is that there’s a randomness to being falsely accused, it could literally happen to everyone.

“I was lucky, in that I had life savings to lose, but for those who don’t, Laspo can bring them to the point of suicide.”

He is calling for an independent commission to investigate equality in the legal system. “We must have equality for those who are now forced to go to court and represent themselves,” he said.

Defendants who do apply for legal aid representation find themselves relying on a desperately underfunded service. Christina Blacklaws, the president of the Law Society, which represents solicitors in England and Wales, said: “Defence solicitors have had no pay rises for over 20 years and this is driving more and more of them away from criminal defence work.

“There is a desperate need to increase fees for all of this other work [including visits to police stations] if we are to have any hope of avoiding the imminent extinction of the criminal defence solicitor in some parts of the country.”

A report by Donald Hirsch, professor of social policy at Loughborough University, for the Law Society highlighted the fact that some of the poorest people were being denied legal aid because they could not afford the financial contributions they were required to make, which can be up to £8,000.

Mark Smith, a duty solicitor at the law firm DJMS, said: “If they [are deemed to be] over the contribution threshold, the amount they have to pay is astronomical. If you paid for it privately, it would cost far less. Sometimes people on benefits are told they have to pay. We are seeing more people unrepresented in crown court cases.”