Vince Cable

There is considerable anxiety amongst advice giving bodies like the CAB (but also MIND, the Disability Law Service and other bodies) about the implications of the Legal Services Commission to cease funding specialist advice.

The CAB in the borough - in Richmond, Twickenham and Hampton - is currently a crucial source of independent advice on a wide range of issues: debt, immigration, welfare benefits, homelessness, employment rights. It was, for example, heavily involved in giving advice to in-house care workers in their dispute with the Council, for those who did not have access to a union.

Vincent Cable MP says that he is "very alarmed" that "an absolutely vital service could be lost as a result of some thoughtless penny pinching in a Government quango. I have many people coming to me with complex, often legal, problems which need specialist advice from a body like the CAB. From July, they will cease to be able to provide this service, a very retrograde step indeed."