GCN barristers urge Straw to ditch plans for BVT

19/06/2009

Members of GCN have written to Jack Straw expressing their condemnation of the proposed BVT scheme for LSC contracting. A copy of the letter is reproduced below:

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Jack Straw MP
House of Commons
Westminster
London SW1A 0AA

17th June 2009

Dear Jack Straw

We write as a group of barristers in Manchester who practice in criminal law to record our deep concern at the proposals contained in the Legal Services Commission’s Consultation document on Best Value Tendering.

Those who are arrested and detained at a police station, whether or not they are later charged with a criminal offence, are most often vulnerable and powerless. The provision of adequately funded expert legal advice and representation is not only a fundamental human right but is one of the cornerstones of the welfare system of which the citizens of this country have been rightly proud. Without it, it is not only the guilty who will get convicted but also the innocent. Miscarriages of justice are the inevitable consequence of failing to provide adequate legal representation.

The current LSC proposals, if implemented, will have devastating consequences for the provision of advice and representation for those charged with criminal offences. To have any chance of winning a contract to supply services at a police station and magistrates’ court solicitors will have to submit the lowest tender available. This is likely to be uneconomical for many solicitors, already barely able to make a profit from legal aid work and will mean that many firms will simply be unable any longer to provide advice and representation to those who most need it. The result will be the wholesale decimation of solicitors firms, leaving clients without any choice as to whom to have to represent them in court. It will also be entirely inevitable that services provided at the lowest possible cost by cutting corners will be of low quality to the clients.

One spin off of this is that cases are likely to arrive at the Magistrates and Crown Courts with the issues badly defined, defendants badly represented, the Court unassisted by the advocates, and no clear line drawn between cases which ought to be fought and those which ought to be pleaded. BVT is an ill considered recipe for the dismantling of the criminal legal aid system as a whole generation of practitioners have known it, as a result of some disproportionate fixation your deservedly unpopular government has on the market place. As lawyers, it is true that we do operate in a market, but there is a world of difference between what we now have and a midnight auction to see who can get into a police station to see an arrestee. It is very much a matter of proportion and it seems to us with our collective experience at the coal face of crime that you have got it wildly wrong.

By some irony the LSC, via its website, is currently seeking stories from members of the public to illustrate the difference that the legal aid system, which is 60 years old this year, has made to their lives, citing as a possible example “perhaps they’ve needed a Duty Solicitor at a police station”. It is no exaggeration to say that if these proposals are implemented it is unlikely that the criminal legal aid system will survive long enough to celebrate a 65th anniversary.We urge you to recognise the irreparable damage this scheme will do to legal services in this country and scrap this scheme immediately.

Yours sincerely

Farrhat Arshad, Mark Barlow, Sonia Birdee, Andrew Byles, Andrew Fitzpatrick, Mark George Q.C., Nina Grahame, Peter Hodson, Ian Macdonald Q.C., Erim Mushtaq, Kate Stone, Pete Weatherby.

cc. Paul Marsh, President of the Law Society of England & Wales

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Quick links

> 18/06/2009 - LAG Legal Aid Conference report 'Legal aid at 60: Bridging the justice gap' was a national conference presented by LAG to commemorate this landmark which discussed the government's plans for reshaping legal aid. Garden Court North Chambers sponsored the conference.

> Law Society Best Value Tendering website