Solicitors agree not to bid for cut-price contracts

Solicitors across the north of England have voted not to bid for contracts under the government's Price Competitive Tendering (PCT) scheme or expressed unanimous opposition.

In Liverpool, all 43 firms voted not to bid for contracts at a meeting earlier this week, as did a meeting of 21 fraud specialist firms in Manchester.

A meeting of criminal law firms and barristers from West Yorkshire in Leeds last month expressed unanimous opposition to the plans. This was followed by a similar meeting of solicitors and chambers in North Yorkshire, Teeside and South Durham, which came to a similar conclusion.

It is understood that criminal law firms also agreed not to bid for contracts at a meeting in Plymouth last night.

Mike Mackey, a partner at Burton Copeland in Manchester, said the plans, launched by justice secretary Chris Grayling last month, were about "slimming down, scaling down and dumbing down."

Mackey said that the big criminal legal aid firms, like Burton Copeland or Tuckers, could only bid for one contract in their area. In Manchester this would mean getting the same size share of the work as the 36 other successful bidders.

"We would have to get rid of 75 per cent of our legal aid income," Mackey said. "They think the little firms can become bigger and deliver economies of scale. That's a complete load of rubbish.

"All our fee-earners can access our data from tablets or mobile phones. All this requires a dedicated IT manager. You can't scale down that kind of operation. It doesn't work."

Mackey added that he did not think the contracts, at the fee levels the government had set, would make "any sense to anyone at all".

Tom Handley, director of chambers, said larger criminal law firms would see cuts of up to 30 per cent in fees for very high cost cases (VHCC).

Under the new system, they would not be allowed to operate outside their own area, which Handley said would be "hopeless" for them.

Meanwhile, he said 100 small firms in Manchester faced going out of business.

"There are 133 firms, but only 37 contracts," he said. "In Merseyside there are 43 firms and 16 contracts.

"Why are they changing the way people operate in a way which means that they cannot stay in business when, if they would only sit down with the profession, we could consider how costs could be reduced. They've never even attempted this."

In a separate development, Des Hudson, chief executive of the Law Society, has called on the LSB to delay the implementation of QASA, scheduled for September.In a letter to LSB chief executive Chris Kenny, Hudson said September was 'simply the wrong time' to impose a new burden on professionals concerned about their very survival.