Diploma in Professional Legal Practice (Access)
The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-03569, in the name of Sarah Boyack, on fair access to the legal profession. The debate will be concluded without any question being put. I remind members to press their request-to-speak buttons as soon as possible and those leaving the gallery, and indeed the chamber, to do so as quietly as possible to allow the debate to proceed.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament considers that the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice is an essential requirement for students embarking on a career in the legal field; is concerned that there is an access issue for students on low incomes due to the lack of loans to cover maintenance costs; understands that this restricts all applicants studying for the diploma, irrespective of financial vulnerability and need; understands that the Postgraduate Tuition Fee Loan, to be introduced for 2012-13, covers the cost of tuition for up to a maximum of only £3,400, despite course fees being considerably higher; considers the Professional and Career Development Loan to be an unsuitable alternative source of funding for many low-income students due to interest levels and restrictive repayment conditions, and believes that these measures limit the career path for many students in Lothian and across the rest of the country and do not widen access to the legal profession.
12:33
First of all, I thank the students from the campaign for fair access to the legal profession who got in touch to alert me to their concerns about changes to funding for students who wish to take the diploma in professional legal practice. Without their commitment, we would not be having this debate. I also thank colleagues across the chamber for being prepared to sign my motion and support my call for action.
Changes to loans available for the DPLP have made it harder for students from low-income backgrounds to become lawyers. Although there are more loans, they are smaller and do not begin to cover students’ living costs. The changes simply make a bad situation worse. Answers to parliamentary questions that I have lodged suggest that the situation was not expected and is actually an unintended consequence; nevertheless, it needs to be addressed.
I was first alerted to the challenge facing students by my constituent, Helen. Although an award-winning student, she is now £20,000 in debt. Students should not have to face such huge financial barriers. As the National Union of Students reports, five times as many entrants to LLB degrees come from the least-deprived backgrounds as come from the most-deprived backgrounds. If a student wants to become a qualified lawyer, the postgraduate diploma is essential, as it provides the required vocational skills and knowledge.
It is interesting that in England, universities are increasingly incorporating those vocational elements into undergraduate degree courses. In Scotland, we now have a major access problem for students on low incomes, due to the lack of decent loans to cover maintenance costs. The DPLP is only one of seven years of commitment that the vast majority of potential Scottish lawyers must sign up to: the four-year honours degree; the DPLP; then two years’ professional practice on very modest salaries of around £16,000. Seven long years is a very long time for people to have to support themselves and possibly their family; the cost of paying that back is substantial.
It should concern us all that the postgraduate tuition fee loan, which was introduced for 2012-13, covers the cost of tuition for up to a maximum of only £3,400, despite course fees alone being considerably higher. It is not cheap, which means that students have to borrow money from elsewhere or have already saved the thousands that are required to pay their fees and support themselves. The postgraduate and career development loan is an unsuitable alternative source of funding for students from low-income backgrounds because of interest levels and restricted payment conditions, which are a major barrier to those students. Repayment of the loan begins almost immediately after graduation, irrespective of a student’s income, and in the current climate there is no guarantee of gaining employment in the legal profession and affording the repayments. Banks are charging higher fees and interest rates, and are much more risk averse. The measures limit the career options of many students in Lothian and across the country. They certainly do not widen access to the legal profession.
It has been suggested to me that I should not be concerned, as the income generation opportunities for lawyers are excellent. That may be the case for some, but should that be the driving motivation for all our prospective lawyers? What price social justice? What sort of legal system will we end up with? The profession will end up the preserve of those who can afford seven years of limited income and to build up significant debt, which is not an attractive prospect during a recession.
An inevitable consequence of the expense of the DPLP is that it forces graduates to seek the legal traineeships that will lead to the maximum financial returns. I am told that the majority of trainees end up working for larger legal firms in Edinburgh; less than 10 per cent of them work for sole practitioners. That has clear implications for the provision of legal services in less commercially viable areas. In rural areas, health boards can commission staff to work as doctors in communities. What about the provision of legal services in rural areas? In the long run, what will attract people to set up practices when there are much more lucrative options to be followed in our cities? The channelling of new graduates into large legal firms also has implications for less lucrative fields. As an MSP, I have referred many constituents to students at the University of Edinburgh for free legal advice. Will students be able to provide that service in future, when they will have to work?
Affordable access to legal advice is already hard to come by. Spreading loans more thinly and offering a lower amount will mean that students who come from lower income circumstances will be deeply disadvantaged. We should be concerned not just for those students, who will find it harder to stay the course over the full seven years, but for the health of the profession as a whole. As the campaign for fair access to the legal profession put it,
“A representative legal profession underpins a fair legal system and a just society.”
I welcome the support of NUS Scotland, which has added its voice to the call for Scottish Government action. In the responses to all the parliamentary questions that I have asked, I have not seen any acknowledgement from the Scottish National Party Government that it understands the concerns. We all know that money is tight. Surely, that is all the more reason to have a proper rationale for how investment in the next generation of lawyers is spent.
I hope that the Minister for Learning, Science and Scotland’s Languages commits to act. Scotland cannot afford a legal system that is closed to all except those from the highest-income backgrounds; it is not fair and it will not lead to a legal system that is built on the principles of access to all. It will not let us build the Scotland that we all aspire to. I propose that a summit is convened that pulls together students, NUS Scotland, the Law Society of Scotland, representatives from a variety of legal firms and universities and members of the Justice Committee and the Education and Culture Committee. A range of solutions could be developed and there would be no loss of face for the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning were he to do it. We would welcome and support his actions and then find a way forward together. We have to do better. We need a legal system that is open and accessible. That is important for our students who are struggling now and for generations to come.
12:40
I thank Sarah Boyack for securing the debate, although it is quite ironic to be hearing about access to university from the party that introduced tuition fees.
I believe that it is important to have a legal system that is open to all, and I also believe that it is important, more widely, to have a postgraduate system that is open to all. I recognise that we already have the best-funded postgraduate system in the United Kingdom, but there is no incompatibility between recognising that and arguing that we could do even more.
I will go straight to a suggestion that might interest potential postgraduate students, whether they are studying law or any other subject.
According to the spending plans that are currently set out, the annually managed expenditure for net student loans advanced will rise from £408.3 million next year to £468.3 million the year after. Assuming that inflation of current commitments and all else is equal, that should leave around £50 million in genuine additional resource. That is a rare thing in government these days, and there will be many deserving student causes knocking at the minister's door for a share of that funding. We have already seen an unprecedented uplift in core living-cost support for undergraduates this year, and my inbox is twitching in anticipation of more e-mails asking for further increases. There is also the long-standing question of part-time students. It is clear that postgraduates are not making the only demands on funds, but postgraduates are expected to undertake full-time studies with limited support from public funds, especially for living costs. On their behalf, let me make a gentle tap on the door.
The recent European Commission report entitled, “National Student Fee and Support Systems, 2011/12”, showed that Scotland and the rest of the UK were poles apart for student funding, with the UK having the highest undergraduate tuition fees in Europe, and Scotland ranking alongside mainstream social democratic nations such as Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden in upholding free access to an undergraduate education. That is good news, because it shows that the supposedly irreversible trend towards ever-higher fees—which have been backed by Administrations of many colours—is no such thing. However, the report noted that Scotland was the only one of those five nations to charge routinely for what it called “the second cycle”, or postgraduate education.
Postgraduate education is fragmented and unregulated. However, there is a creativity to the chaos of courses, whether they are professional, applied or purely academic. In some cases, professional bodies pick up the cost, and it is fair to ask why the legal profession—not one known for its penury—does not carry more of the cost of professional legal training, as happens in accountancy.
It would be impossible to consolidate all of those arrangements into one overarching entitlement without tampering with the healthy variety in the sector in a way that would not be helpful. However, with the resources that are available—and bearing in mind the other competing priorities—I think that some form of creative, targeted and well-designed funding scheme to help to expand access to postgraduate education by funding fees and living costs for individuals from lower-income backgrounds is not beyond the wit of man. Of course, if it is not beyond the wit of man, it is definitely not beyond the wit of the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning. Therefore, I simply suggest to the minister and the Government that, when they come around to considering the student loans budget for 2014-15—an enterprise that is soon to be under way if it is not already so—they consider seriously whether such a scheme to help postgraduates in the round can be developed. That would be entirely in keeping with the Scottish Government's already exemplary record in opening the doors to higher education.
12:44
Tomorrow marks the start of the legal year. I—and various colleagues, no doubt—will join members of the legal profession in marking that important point in the calendar. It is therefore a good moment to reflect on the nature of the profession and its important role in wider society. I congratulate Sarah Boyack on giving us that opportunity in today’s debate.
As Sarah Boyack pointed out, the costs of entry to the legal profession can be a formidable barrier to access. Aspiring lawyers from low-income backgrounds have to be prepared for seven years of study and training before they can earn enough to begin to pay back their costs, if they are lucky enough to secure a permanent job in the current climate. The diploma in professional legal practice is part of that. Unlike the situation with many other postgraduate qualifications, law students have no choice but to complete the diploma if they want to go on to become solicitors.
That means that the funding system must be carefully designed to ensure that the diploma year is affordable for poorer students. Sadly, as the campaign for fair access to the legal profession has pointed out, the funding system is moving in the wrong direction. That campaign is led by law students from across Scotland, including my home city of Aberdeen. Other North East Scotland members will be aware of the great work that law students have done through the Aberdeen law project to help people to access justice, including no-liability legal advice through members of the Scottish Parliament and the Westminster Parliament to their constituents.
The concern for social justice that motivates those students underpins the campaign. Law students who are concerned about access to justice for clients on low incomes are right to highlight the issue of access to the legal profession for students from families of modest means. Socially aware law students such as those in Aberdeen might, after completing their diploma, go on to train in law centres, the public sector or the Procurator Fiscal Service, all of which do essential work but which do not in general offer the prospect of large financial returns in the way that the largest law firms can do.
To enable graduates to make that choice, it is important that the Government should seek to mitigate the obvious disadvantages that students from poorer backgrounds face. However, campaigners believe that the changes that are being made strike the wrong balance by providing loans to more students, rather than providing larger loans to students who need them most. Further, the loans are enough to help meet the costs of fees alone, and diploma students have lost access to maintenance support in the past couple of years, so the scale of debt that they will have to take into their professional lives will be all the greater.
I hope that nobody seriously pretends that it is possible to secure higher education on a large scale without students incurring debt. The issue is how much debt, and whether it is so great and over so long a period as to make that particular route of study unaffordable to large numbers of people. That is the risk with the diploma, but it can be avoided if the Government will at least recognise that there is a problem.
There are a number of possible solutions, as Sarah Boyack has said. The diploma year could be incorporated into the first degree, as happens elsewhere and as applies to the equivalent stage in education and training in medicine or dentistry. Alternatively, diploma students could be allowed to apply for a student loan to cover their living costs as well as their fees, as postgraduate student architects and teachers can do. I hope that ministers will at least recognise that there is a problem and decide to act on Sarah Boyack’s suggestion of a summit involving all those who have an interest in improving access to the legal profession. As Sarah Boyack has said, if ministers do not do that, we will all be the poorer for it.
12:48
The debate is about how we ensure that students who have the ability and desire to become solicitors in Scotland are not deterred by a lack of financial support. I note that the Law Society of Scotland and the campaign for fair access to the legal profession, which represents all 10 Scottish universities that offer undergraduate law degrees, have expressed concern about the Scottish Government’s policy.
As members have said, the diploma in professional legal practice is a postgraduate course that is compulsory for people if they are to qualify as a solicitor in Scotland. For 2012-13, the fees for the diploma are between £5,200 and £6,300. In the previous academic year, 300 of the most able students received Student Awards Agency for Scotland grants of £3,400, and the remaining 358 students were fully self-funding.
The Scottish Government announced last year that this arrangement would change and that all students taking the diploma would receive a loan of up to £3,400. In typical fashion, this was loudly trumpeted by the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Michael Russell, as more than doubling the number of diploma students who would be funded. The reality is that while more students will receive funding by way of loans, but not grants, the level of loan support is grossly inadequate, particularly for a course which is a requirement in order to qualify for a profession. Fees for the diploma for 2012-13 are between £5,200 and £6,300, while the maximum loan is only £3,400. The support available is therefore too limited to help those students who cannot fund themselves.
The Scottish Government argues that alternatives are available in the form of professional and career development loans. However, those loans attract commercial interest rates, they must be paid back regardless of subsequent employment and they are not available to all. Further, the Government's proposed funding arrangement for the diploma treats law students unfairly in comparison with students taking similar postgraduate professional courses. Architecture, teaching, medical, veterinary and dental students receive maintenance loans for their entire pre-qualification studies, yet law students, for whom the diploma is essential in order to qualify, receive a loan towards roughly half the cost of the course only.
On the latter point, the Scottish Government appears to have fallen prey to the one-size-fits-all mentality. The postgraduate loan of up to £3,400 will apply to postgraduate courses with very different levels of fees. The diploma, typically, has a fee in excess of £5,200, but the majority of other courses funded by the loan have fees of £3,400 or £3,750. It seems unfair that a diploma student only has access to the same maximum loan as a student studying a course costing up to £2,000 less. In general, these are highly specialised courses and while some Scottish ministers might benefit from a course in corporate communications with public affairs from Robert Gordon University, such a course—unlike the diploma—is clearly not essential for career progression.
The campaign for fair access has identified this inconsistency. It argues that the Scottish Government's policy will discourage law students from low-income families from entering the legal profession. As one who did so under those circumstances, I find that a particularly disturbing prospect.
An analysis of Universities and Colleges Admissions Service data by the Law Society of Scotland suggests that relative to all other subjects, law performs slightly worse in terms of the proportion of students from lower income groups. There is a risk that the Government's policy will make matters even worse.
Equity is the issue at the root of this anomaly. One group of students undertaking a professional qualification is subject to a different funding regime, which can only impact negatively on access to the legal profession.
12:53
I thank and congratulate my colleague Sarah Boyack for bringing the debate to the chamber. The debate is perhaps the only way that we will get a proper airing of this issue, because it falls between two of the Government’s portfolio areas—education and legal affairs. I believe that it is an issue for justice and legal affairs, because the new funding structure for the legal profession will lead to creeping elitism in the profession. At present, a student who is studying for the legal diploma can take a loan to cover half the £9,000 fees. However, they are not entitled to apply for a student loan to cover maintenance costs and the only option is a career development loan at commercial rates.
I will explain why that is a problem. A fifth-year student at school, from a low-income family, having gained good grades in her highers, will be looking at options to study at university. She will have worked hard and gained good enough grades to study law. She will be investigating the total cost of such studies up to the point at which she will be able to begin working. As my colleagues have said, a law graduate cannot start practising law without the legal diploma, so the pupil factors those costs into her calculations.
The cost of the legal diploma is prohibitive. My pupil in question eliminates law from her considerations. A student from a richer family, who will be able to rely on their parents to see them through the more expensive diploma, presses on with their law application, in the knowledge that it will be more expensive but that their private circumstances will see them through.
Apart from the inequality that that situation creates for students, it results in a more homogeneous and more privileged legal profession. Why is that a problem? If we have an increasingly privileged legal profession that has no experience of, limited appreciation of and limited empathy with some of the difficult and chaotic circumstances in which people find themselves, the profession’s ability to properly represent its clients and society’s interests will be weakened. Like the Parliament, the legal profession needs a range of people who have different stories, privileges, testing times and financial circumstances to produce balanced and sensible remedies and judgments to benefit everyone in society.
The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning has dismissed concerns that I have raised about the subject in the chamber before, but I tell the minister that there are law professors and practising lawyers working in Scotland today who are very concerned about the new funding arrangements and who have made representations to me and my colleagues.
The cabinet secretary has drawn an arbitrary line between undergraduate and postgraduate study. That is far too simplistic and has consequences—they are perhaps unintended, but they are consequences nonetheless. I suggest that the cabinet secretary might want to reconsider the funding structure for law students and others, such as educational psychology students, who are similarly affected by the arbitrary cut-off between undergraduate and postgraduate study.
The minister might want to consider a structure that guarantees consistent funding arrangements from the start of study to the point of entry into professions, when people can start to earn money. Only when funding is consistent will students from poorer backgrounds be able again to consider studying law to the point of entry to the profession.
I back my colleague Sarah Boyack’s call for a summit to discuss the matter fully and find a solution, but the minister could quickly make a difference to the situation by allowing students to apply for maintenance loans to cover their maintenance costs.
12:57
I refer to my declared interest as a member of the Faculty of Advocates.
I congratulate Sarah Boyack on securing this members’ business debate and bringing the issue to the chamber. I also acknowledge the CFALP’s professional campaign.
I have raised the subject in correspondence with the cabinet secretary and at question time in the chamber on 31 May. It is safe to say that the issue is not going to go away. Of course, we have as a society moved a long way from the days when prospective lawyers paid premiums for their apprenticeships, even if minimum salaries for trainees and the diploma itself are comparatively modern phenomena—that depends on people’s age.
However, students who undertake the diploma in professional legal practice are at a particular financial disadvantage when they are compared with their peers who seek to qualify as doctors, dentists and vets. That is partly because of the nature of the law degree. Traditionally, it has been perceived as an education in itself, unlike the training for vets, dentists and doctors. Accordingly, the smooth transition to the diploma as part of essential professional training is obscured. However, the diploma should not be considered to be just another postgraduate degree—to that extent, I disagree with the National Union of Students.
The cabinet secretary has made the Scottish Government’s position clear and has talked about tough choices. In contrast, the CFALP refers to the position on loans for fees and to the benefit that some DPLP students will receive under the new postgraduate arrangements. The campaign group has a point, although a loan for tuition fees might not be a consideration at all for the wealthiest.
The debate is about not just fees and loans but the make-up of our legal profession. As the campaign group has pointed out, the socioeconomic profile of entrants to the legal profession is narrow and there are disproportionate numbers from the wealthiest in our society. Without a doubt, we have a long way to go to reach the point at which the legal profession reflects the economic and social diversity of modern Scotland.
Despite tuition fee support, the reality is that poorer students might well be deterred from the DPLP not only by the maintenance issue but by the substantial difficulties in obtaining training contracts and the rather slim chance of getting a firm to support them on the diploma. We must acknowledge that, by reforming the postgraduate student allowances scheme, the Scottish Government was able to extend support for tuition fees with postgraduate loans for about 5,000 full-time and part-time students. That has not been replicated elsewhere in the United Kingdom.
The cabinet secretary has argued in previous answers to me that living cost support should be available through personal career development loans. Those loans are, to my knowledge, offered by three high street banks, and may be an attractive source of income to students who will have a handsomely paid job immediately after graduating. Unfortunately, however, that is not a prospect that many young people expect.
Career development loan repayments must commence immediately after graduation, and the banks advise students that they must ensure that they can afford monthly repayments before agreeing to the terms of the loan. Many students cannot make that commitment.
I fully accept that the diploma should not be for the faint-hearted, particularly in current times when training contracts are very difficult to obtain, and no one should embark on the diploma without a full appreciation of the risks involved. I remind members that to proceed to the bar and the Faculty of Advocates requires not only a diploma, but generally speaking a period of devilling of around eight months, which is unpaid, although a few comparatively modest scholarships or bursaries are available. That will certainly deter young—and many not so young—lawyers from humble backgrounds from taking that path.
More generally, we ought to look at the experience south of the border when considering alternatives to the LLB. Modern apprenticeships are increasingly being pioneered by some large firms in the south, which operates as a financial benefit to the new apprentices.
I would be grateful if the member would draw to a close.
It is not entirely clear how far the Law Society of Scotland is championing that concept in Scotland.
In conclusion, it is clear to any reasonable person that the Scottish Government is under enormous pressure, but I hope that the cabinet secretary will continue to keep the issue under review.
Because of the number of members who still wish to speak in the debate, I am minded to accept a motion under rule 8.14.3 to extend the debate for up to 30 minutes.
Motion moved,
That, under Rule 8.14.3, the debate be extended for up to 30 minutes.—[Sarah Boyack.]
Motion agreed to.
13:02
I congratulate Sarah Boyack on bringing the debate to the chamber, and I feel sure that the minister will have realised by now that there is a genuine problem to be resolved.
It is important that we have confidence in our justice system and believe that those who are responsible for administering and delivering justice on our behalf, by legislation or precedent, do so with a degree of empathy as well as skill. Is that confidence undermined if only those of means can seek employment in the legal profession and, by consequence, the judiciary? Is it important that those who make up the legal profession are there because of their knowledge, skill and talent alone rather than the financial support that they were lucky enough to receive from family? If we believe that it is, it is surely important that there is fair access to the legal profession for people of all backgrounds.
Does the present system deliver that fair access? A diploma in professional legal practice is as essential to practising law as the professional graduate diploma in education is to teaching. However, students who are studying for the education diploma can apply for maintenance loans, and their fees are paid by the Scottish Government. The same applies to students who are studying for certain postgraduate diplomas in architecture.
Students who are studying for a diploma in professional legal practice, on the other hand, apply for a tuition fee loan of £3,400, which covers approximately half the cost of the fees and materials, depending on the institution that the student attends. There is no longer any support for maintenance for those students, and if any student does not have funds to pay the balance of the fees and materials, they are directed to a bank to apply for a professional and career development loan. If they are successful in obtaining such a loan, it will be lent at commercial rates and must be paid back from one month after graduation, irrespective of the person’s employment situation.
The changes been introduced by Government with great haste and—in the Law Society of Scotland’s view—inadequate consultation. The disparity is clear. The Law Society of Scotland is concerned about any move that risks discouraging talented students from progressing with their ambition of becoming a solicitor because they are unable to fund their studies or are reluctant to take on further debt. I share those concerns and the concerns of fellow members in this chamber.
At the end of their university studies leading to the diploma year, many students will have as much as £15,000 in student loans. The thought of an additional debt for a student with little means of financial support is worrying for the young person concerned in the current financial climate, but should be of greater concern to this chamber. I hope that the minister reconsiders.
13:05
I add my congratulations to Sarah Boyack on securing the debate. I welcome the opportunity to participate and thank those who have provided briefings.
As the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning never tires of reminding the chamber, one of the central principles of Scottish education is that academic ability should always be prized above the ability to pay. By removing all grants for law diploma students and preventing them from making use of affordable, accessible loans to cover living costs, the Scottish Government—despite Mr Biagi’s loyal assertions—is failing to honour that principle.
Not surprisingly, NUS Scotland has confirmed its support for the campaign for fair access to the legal profession and the wider aim of ensuring that access to any profession is based on talent, not financial circumstances. That reflects the growing support for the campaign, including that of the Scottish Young Lawyers Association, which has criticised not only the discrepancies in treatment between those entering the legal profession and those entering other professions, but the lack of consultation in advance of the changes—a point that was made by Graeme Pearson. Although I am inclined to agree with NUS Scotland that there should be an expectation that institutions will do more to support legal diploma students and that there is still an important role for potential employers, as in the rest of the UK, that does not absolve the Government of responsibility for those students.
The supply of law diploma students may remain adequate, but they will come from an increasingly narrow section of society—that runs contrary to the access agenda that ministers are pursuing more generally, which enjoys cross-party support. Sarah Boyack and Roderick Campbell, I think, made some interesting observations about disincentives to pursue less well-paying careers in rural practices.
A point that has particularly angered those heading up the campaign for fair access to the legal profession and others is—as David McLetchie suggested—the extent to which law graduates appear to be being singled out. For example, postgraduate architecture students already benefit from five years of loan support, as do those who are training for the medical, dental and veterinary professions. Although, as the Law Society of Scotland states,
“In order to qualify and practice as a solicitor you must complete the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice”,
similar support is simply not available to those students. The diploma is essential, as it acts as a vocational bridge between the academic degree and the practical experience of a traineeship and allows students to develop their practical skills in a real-life but controlled environment.
It is difficult to see ministers’ objection to levelling the playing field and ensuring that the DPLP students who most need financial support receive it. Extending the provision of a means-tested student loan for an extra year for those students would be simple to administer and would adhere to the precedent set for other required professional postgraduate programmes. Such a proposal would result in just 0.75 per cent more student loans for SAAS to authorise, but it has the potential to widen markedly access to the legal profession.
I appreciate that the sector itself could and should do more. Indeed, that has been recognised in my discussions with the leaders of the campaign for fair access to the legal profession. Perhaps, therefore, a solution lies in ministers’ agreeing to address the anomaly over the immediate term but tasking the profession to come up with a workable model that can be put in place for the medium to long term. A summit such as that which Sarah Boyack suggested may be a logical catalyst for those discussions. By making clear the time-limited nature of any support, ministers could send a strong message that they expect to see the issue resolved sooner rather than later. That would also send a welcome signal of the Government’s commitment to widening access across the board, including for those who seek to pursue legal careers.
In its briefing, the campaign for fair access to the legal profession states that
“a legal system cannot hope to fairly reflect the needs and interests of all elements of society if it is drawn solely from one section of that society”.
It is difficult to argue with that sentiment. I am pleased to support the motion and congratulate Sarah Boyack on helping to shine a light on the issue. I look forward to hearing the minister’s response on a problem that, as Roderick Campbell rightly observed, will not go away.
13:10
Like other colleagues, I thank my friend Sarah Boyack for bringing the motion to the chamber. I welcome the opportunity to talk about widening access in a more general sense. I look forward to more debates of that nature in the chamber in the coming months, as we will talk about higher education quotas in line with the Government’s legislative programme.
Members can tell by the number of Labour MSPs who are in the chamber that there is a real appetite to examine the issues behind widening access that are not simply about tuition fees. I have a long-standing interest in, and passion for, widening access, through my previous roles at Edinburgh University Students Association and at the National Union of Students. I am also a law graduate, so I will talk about the issues that face law students today.
However, I will first address Marco Biagi’s speech. He said that Labour MSPs had a cheek to bring the issue to the chamber because of tuition fees. When will the SNP understand that widening access is about much more than tuition fees? There are many issues behind it.
Marco Biagi stood up and said that his Government has an exemplary record of opening the doors to higher education. However, only 3.9 per cent of the students studying law in his constituency at the University of Edinburgh come from the most deprived backgrounds in Scotland. That is the second-worst record in Scotland. The only university that does worse than that is the University of Aberdeen, which is the institution that I went to. I will talk about that in a second.
Widening access can be about a number of things. It can be about the course choices that somebody has at school, the aspirations or fears that their parents have for their future, the encouragement that they get from their school and teachers or whether they really think that university is a place for them.
There is an issue with getting people from the legal profession into classrooms at the earliest stage to talk about different legal careers. When I went to study law, I was inspired by “Ally McBeal”, which was the big television programme at the time. I wanted to be a courtroom lawyer like the character Ally McBeal. Only when I got to university did I realise that criminal law or courtroom law was only one sixteenth of the LLB programme that I was there to study and that I had to do tax law, family law and trusts—all the things that bored me senseless for four years at university.
There is an important point in that: students need to understand the type of education and experiences that they will have at university before they get there. That has a lot to do with retention. It has to do with what happens to students when they get to university and their ability to stay there.
In the short time that I have left, I will comment on cost and culture. At the University of Aberdeen, I was surrounded by people who were privately educated. I come from a middle-class background—both my parents are teachers and I went to a state school—but I still found that incredibly intimidating. I ask members whether they can imagine what it would be like to go into that environment if they came from a really deprived background. I do not know how people would cope. I simply cannot get my head around it.
From day dot—from the word go—at the University of Aberdeen, all the law students from privately educated backgrounds were already on a mission to secure their traineeships. It was all about accessing the next path into their careers. They were able to work for free at legal firms over the summers and build up the work experience that I and my friends could not get because we had to work during the summer to get enough money to stay at university and continue studying.
Such networks open and continue to grow when someone is at university. Widening access goes right through a person’s entire education. We need to address many cultural issues about opportunities and networks.
The final issue is cost. Students who study law have huge amounts of initial, up-front costs for the textbooks that they must access. In my first two weeks as a law student, I spent hundreds of pounds buying books. It is not possible to buy them second hand. They change every year because, by its nature, the law changes every year. We do not give students the ability to cope with those additional costs.
Those are only two issues. There are a range of issues, and I strongly urge the minister to take on board Sarah Boyack’s request for a summit and make some serious progress on widening access.
13:14
I thank Sarah Boyack for bringing this extremely important topic to the chamber. The question of who has access to a career in the legal profession must be of concern to all who are interested in social and legal justice in Scotland.
I congratulate the campaign for fair access to the legal profession on presenting such a clear and compelling case and thank the Law Society for its briefing on the issues that face those who aim for a career in the profession.
The campaign’s steering group represents law schools in Scotland that offer undergraduate LLBs across their campuses. The campaign has been covered supportively by the SCOLAG Legal Journal, including at the start of this year, when the changes in funding to postgraduate professional legal education were announced. It is regrettable that there was no consultation prior to that announcement, as representatives from universities and the professional and student bodies would have warmly welcomed such an opportunity, and their expert input might have laid the foundations of a sustainable and practical funding arrangement. It certainly remains the case that the issue of proper and fair funding for professional legal education has not been dealt with satisfactorily, but that can be remedied. I, too, support Sarah Boyack’s call for a summit with those parties.
The Government has stated that the decision is a budgetary decision, so there is a choice. It has also suggested that the decision will not be reversed, but the issue is too important to go unaddressed and unresolved. I ask the minister to look at the matter again. The lack of certainty around funding is a major issue for students. Those who undertake undergraduate study need to know just how much postgraduate study will cost. There is great uncertainty about affordability for too many students who are on courses in which such postgraduate study is compulsory.
Our legal profession is an integral part of our civil and criminal justice systems. It is the source of advice and representation for our citizens. Our judiciary is drawn from it, so it is hugely important that the profession is inclusive and open to and representative of Scottish society in all its diversity. The abolition of the maintenance grant in 2010 and the replacement of the fees grant with a capped tuition fee loan of £3,400 means that that diversity is unlikely to be achieved.
NUS Scotland has prioritised widening access to all levels of higher and further education. Its research shows that only just over 8 per cent of the LLB intake come from the 20 per cent most deprived areas. As we have heard, the figure for the city of the Parliament does not reach even that lowly level. With tuition fees of up to £6,000 or more and the Government’s own estimate of living costs at more than £7,000, DPLP students are required to find £9,000 of their own or their family’s money to study. For many people, that will be simply impossible without a commercial loan. Will all banks be willing to risk putting up cash when many students have no guaranteed traineeship? The students themselves must try to secure funding that will need to be repaid at commercial interest rates. As well as studying, they must try to secure a traineeship, and many will have to find work when their course timetable or possibly even their childcare arrangements permit them to do so in order to fund the majority of that compulsory qualification. We offer far greater support to other professions that have similar training requirements.
It is unrealistic to suggest that the additional strain will not affect the diversity of those who seek entrance to the profession, and it is absolutely right that we continue to question whether our legal profession is fair, inclusive and representative. NUS Scotland has stated that there is a serious problem with access to law at the undergraduate level, which should concern all those who wish to see a more representative profession and judiciary. The lack of support at postgraduate level will exacerbate the problem.
If financial status is a deciding factor for or bar to entry, the profession cannot be said to be open to all, unless, as the SCOLAG Legal Journal has pointed out—borrowing a phrase from Sir James Mathew LJ—it is
“open to all—like the Ritz hotel!”
13:18
I thank Sarah Boyack for lodging the motion. Students at the University of Glasgow have raised the issues with me, and many of the concerns are common. I want to use my time to talk about why we need people from the broadest range of backgrounds in legal practice.
As Kezia Dugdale rightly reminded us, the law is not all about criminal defence—we should be thankful for that—and crime is not simply an issue for more disadvantaged communities. However, it remains the case that people from less advantaged backgrounds are more likely to find themselves drawn into activities that are on the wrong side of the law. Equally, people who live in less advantaged areas are substantially more likely to be victims of many kinds of crime. I am not saying that a person has to live on a council estate in order to understand the issues—I am sure that David McLetchie will be pleased to hear that that is not my argument. However, Jenny Marra and Alison Johnstone were right to remind us that, just as in politics, it helps if those involved in our legal system recognise the communities and families that they work with rather than see them as a class apart.
The minister will no doubt argue that a move from grants to loans to assist students studying for the legal diploma will allow us to support more individuals. However, the Scottish Government must recognise that the view of almost everyone else is that the changes will not result in a widening of the mix of people in the law. Since I assume that the Scottish Government accepts—it is well evidenced, as Rod Campbell highlighted—that the law is a profession in which the mix of people in practice is already not as it should be, the Government must then consider extremely carefully the criticisms that are being made of its policy.
Students studying law are more likely to drop out of the subject if they come from a poorer background, and students from poorer families are more likely to be concerned about debt. They are then less likely, even at the moment, to try to obtain their diploma, because they are more concerned about whether they will find a traineeship at the end of it. Ultimately, they need to find a job with more urgency than others who can afford to take the traineeship risk. Legal traineeships are unbelievably difficult to find in the current environment. It is to the Government’s great discredit that that is a significant problem in schemes such as the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service scheme, as well as schemes in commercial practice.
Law graduates are faced with the likelihood of unemployment at the end of their diploma, which is of time-limited value, or at the end of a traineeship when they find that they have been used as cheap labour and are disposed of for the next trainee. Any new barrier on the route to legal practice will have the effect of making law graduates from less well-off backgrounds less likely to try to enter practice. That is a legitimate concern to which the Scottish Government should listen.
I am aware of law students who have argued that the Law Society should abandon the minimum recommended salary for legal trainees because middle-class law graduates think that that is a barrier to small firms offering them traineeship opportunities. The implications of such a move for less well-off graduates are simply appalling: it would serve to extend the iniquities in the profession.
I say to the minister, the Law Society, the profession and the universities that they must take heed of Sarah Boyack’s call both for a coming together that recognises that access is being eroded and for a clear action plan to ensure that at the end of the recession we are not left with a legal community that looks more like the profession in the 1950s than the profession in 2005. If that means thinking again about the move from grants to loans, the Government should consider that. Equally, if it means a change in the way in which we train lawyers—a questioning of whether a seven-year journey from undergraduate to practice-qualified solicitor is reasonable and whether we as a society are prepared to support law students in the same way as we continue to support medical students and others—we should consider that.
13:22
I am grateful to Sarah Boyack for raising the matter in Parliament and for the considered contributions of members to the debate—not least those of David McLetchie and Jenny Marra, to name but two.
We have a long tradition in Scotland of aiming to provide excellent education. That excellence is in abundance at the postgraduate end of the scale. It has been a policy of the Scottish Government to support as many people as we can in that regard. Education plays a huge part in underpinning Scotland’s international competitiveness, particularly when we can prioritise postgraduate study around some of the key subjects that drive our economy and social improvements, such as life sciences, engineering and teaching.
Without minimising the financial pressure that clearly exists for many students, it is true to say that Scotland is the only Administration in these islands to provide support across a comprehensive list of postgraduate disciplines, including law, which is the subject that we are debating today.
This year, the postgraduate students allowances scheme will support around 5,000 students studying more than 450 postgraduate subjects at 18 institutions. However, that was not always the case. Support for law and other subjects has evolved over a number of years and prior to the changes that we introduced two years ago, after consultation with representatives of the universities and the Law Society, the system supported only about 1,800 postgraduate students in Scotland with living and fee costs. To broaden that out—I remind members that the total number of students in higher education in Scotland is nearly 300,000—the Government removed the living costs element and used the money to support more students with their fees. That raised the number that we could help to around 2,700.
Support was still provided on a discretionary basis, however, and this year we developed the arrangements such that Scotland-domiciled and European Union students who follow a designated course of study in 2012-13 can apply for a non-means-tested loan of up to £3,400, which can be put towards the cost of their tuition fees. We estimate that, with the improved arrangements, the number of students who benefit from our postgraduate support arrangements will increase to around 5,000. Approximately 700 of those students will be law students.
There is a need for the legal profession to give more thought to how it supports people who want to enter the profession, as Liam McArthur and other members said.
The Government is not promoting bigger numbers at the expense of wider access, as is suggested in the motion. Widening access is a priority for the Government. We committed in our manifesto to introducing statutory agreements that would force the pace of change, and that commitment will be taken forward in the post-16 bill that we plan to introduce later in this parliamentary session. In relation to widening access, significant resources are required, so we must prioritise. Our priority is to get as many students as possible through a first degree at undergraduate level. That remains our objective, despite the budgetary pressures to which Rod Campbell and other members referred.
Will the minister at least acknowledge that by withdrawing support for living costs from postgraduate diploma law students he has limited people’s ability to access the course, and that the issue would be worth looking at again?
The Government wants to keep up a dialogue with students and the profession on that. However, it must be acknowledged that in Scotland we have what is widely recognised—by the National Union of Students and others—as the best package of student support in the UK. In practice, that means that students finish their first degrees with, on average, less than half the level of debt that is built up by students who study in England. Completion of a first degree with a relatively low amount of debt is therefore the starting point for our postgraduates.
Universities are autonomous bodies, which is relevant in the context of Lewis Macdonald’s interesting suggestions about reforming the shape of law degrees.
In Scotland we are funding 400 more undergraduate places this year, when acceptances at English universities have fallen by nearly 50,000 as a direct result of the UK Government’s policy and its betrayal of a generation of students through the introduction of fees.
Will the minister give way?
No. I am concluding.
Budgetary realities mean that we are not able to provide living costs support to postgraduates on top of the fee support and teaching grant support that we provide. After postgraduate students have met their living costs, they will still have less debt than many graduates elsewhere in the UK.
That is the reality of how we support higher education in Scotland—it is not to minimise the financial pressures on individual students. I thank Ms Boyack for raising this important issue in the Parliament. The dialogue with the student body and the profession will continue.
13:28
Meeting suspended.
14:30
On resuming—