LSC announces tender for welfare benefits contracts

As per rightsnet news story earlier this week, the Government has announced the legal aid position on welfare benefits advice. After April 2013, the following welfare benefits casework will be within the scope of legal aid:

* Appeals to the First-tier Tribunal in Social Security and Child Support for all welfare benefits cases (including housing benefits, war pensions, State pensions, vaccine damage payments or similar benefits) where the Tribunal reviews its own decision because there has been an error in law; and
* Appeals on a point of law to the Upper Tribunal and onwards appeals on a point of law to the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court.

All other welfare benefits work, previously delivered under the 2010 Civil Standard Contract, will not be covered by legal aid from 1 April 2013.

They say that due to the timing of this amendment to welfare benefits advice, there is not enough time to run a full tender for new face-to-face welfare benefits contracts to start from 1 April 2013 - and the volume of welfare benefits work remaining in scope will be small. The Legal Services Commission (LSC) will run a tender for face-to-face welfare benefits contracts that will start on 1 October 2013.

The LSC will also adopt an interim approach to ensure that there is continued service provision of welfare benefits advice from 1 April 2013 until the start of the new face-to-face welfare benefits contracts.

For more information, see Amendment to the Legal Aid: Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act

in its response to the consultation on proposals for mandatory consideration of revision before appeal, published today, the government says that whilst several respondents also raised the impact of funding cuts and legal aid reform in relation to the ability of claimant representative groups to act on behalf of claimants for the purposes of making an appeal ...

‘The appeal process is designed to be accessible, inquisitorial, and user-friendly which means that appellants can generally present their case without assistance. For appeals to the First-tier Tribunal with respect to welfare benefits, the appellant is required only to provide reasons for disagreeing with the decision in plain language.’

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/news/story/mandatory-consideration-of-revision-before-appeal/

It is absolutely clear that the government do not want people to win their appeals and that we are too good at our jobs.

So they (the government) remove legal aid for welfare benefits in the most part so we do not have a job. Ergo the appellant gets no help, they save money in the DWP budget.

The key word in the statement is “designed”.

The simple fact that the FtT is designed to be user-friendly etc etc, doesn’t actually mean that understanding how to proceed with pursuing an appeal is at all perceived in that way by the most important person in the whole process i.e. the claimant themselves.

This may simply be due to a lack of confidence, it can be down to poor literacy, it may be due to language barriers, it could be due to impairment, there are myriad reasons as to why the actuality of properly preparing and presenting an appeal case may not be suitable for someone without appropriate assistance.

I agree that one aspect of the more or less wholesale removal of welfare benefits from the scope of legal aid is precisely because there is an intention to reduce the numbers of appeals in general, and the number of successful appeals overall, no matter how good the intentions and the approach of any particular appeal tribunal. The remainder of welfare benefits that is in scope is, to your average man on the street, of absolutely no use whatsoever.

Do you mean

“The man on the Clapham omnibus”

:)

He was on the bus, but they threw him off because he’d lost his free bus pass, after they took his ESA away…..