Grayling to impose 17.5 per cent fee cut on criminal lawyers

Plans for the price competition tendering of criminal legal aid work have been ditched, justice secretary Chris Grayling has said in an interview with The Times this morning.

Instead, in what the newspaper described as a "ground-breaking deal with the Law Society" he is pushing ahead with the 17.5 per cent fee cut he had already threatened to impose as an alternative. The Law Society is yet to comment on the announcement.

The first cut of 8.75 per cent will be introduced in early 2014, and the rest take effect when the new contracts begin in Spring 2015.

Grayling told the newspaper that plans for a cap on the number of legal aid contracts in each area or on the number of duty solicitors slots would not go ahead. He is reported to be demanding a 30 per cent cut in the cost of "long-running criminal cases".

Full details of the plans are due to be announced in a fresh consultation paper later this morning.

There are no signs of any shift in the MoJ's plans for further cuts in civil legal aid, including a new residency test.

Franklin Sinclair, senior partner of Tuckers, said the "devil would be in the detail" but warned that legal aid firms in London could be "decimated".

He went on: "They can't take a 5 per cent cut, let alone 17.5 per cent."

Sinclair said Tuckers and the other big firms could not survive without "significant consolidation" in the sector.

Grayling abandoned proposals which would have ended choice of solicitor for criminal legal aid clients in July this year.