Axe falls on criminal legal aid advocates

A funding order cutting the fees of criminal legal aid advocates was approved by both houses of Parliament as part of last week's legislative 'wash-up'.

Graduated fees for advocacy will be cut by 4.5 per cent every year for the next three years and the number of VHCC cases drastically reduced by increasing the threshold from 40 to 60 days.

It has been estimated that only around ten of 100 VHCC cases every year last for more than 60 days. The cuts in fees will be implemented on 27 April 2010 and the extension of the threshold on 14 July 2010.

The Bar Council has already launched a judicial review on the grounds that the consultation exercises for both measures were inadequate and unfair (see solicitorsjournal.com, 16 February 2010).

'That the government has, so suddenly after the consultations have closed, ignored the overwhelming rejection of its plans by the profession and done exactly what it planned to do all along, will cause many to question whether these really were genuine consultations in the first place,' Paul Mendelle, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, said.

Rodney Warren, director of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, said the advocacy fee cuts would hit solicitors 'straight in the pocket because our expenses remain the same'.

Warren said the proposal would have a similar impact to the rise in national insurance, which the government plans to introduce next year.

'There should be a public debate on the scope of legal aid and on eligibility,' Warren said. 'They can't just keep taking money away.'

Bob Heslett, president of the Law Society, said: 'In these difficult times, we deplore any cut to the rates paid to solicitors for routine legal aid work.

'The government has to understand that it cannot keep seeking to control the legal aid budget by attacking already inadequate rates of remuneration, while the costs keep being driven up by other factors outside the control of the Ministry of Justice and the lawyers in the system.

'The only possible result of such a strategy is that good lawyers will be driven out of the system and the quality of justice in this country will be damaged.'

However, Straw is not planning to extend the litigator graduated fee scheme to cases lasting 60 days, a proposal which was strongly opposed by the Law Society.

The funding order was contained in a statutory instrument passed through both Houses of Parliament under the negative resolution procedure, meaning that no debate was necessary.

There is, however, a period of 40 days where a member of either House can pass a motion 'praying' for the instrument to be annulled. The period runs from the day the statutory instrument is passed, but is put on hold when Parliament is dissolved and there is a general election.

A spokesman for the MoJ said that focusing more of the savings on the transfer of VHCC cases to the advocates' graduated fees scheme would reduce the impact on more junior advocates, who were less likely to be undertaking work on more complex cases.

'This approach also allows a lesser reduction in graduated fees and to phase that reduction over three years, which will give advocates more time to adjust to the changes,' he said.