YESTERDAY, Lord Falconer of Thoroton launched the White Paper modernising legal services and offering an end to the regulatory maze that governs legal services. Our position is clear: the consumer comes first.

The proposals rightly include better quality, service and pricing. Competition, innovation and improved regulation deliver real benefits to the consumer and we must achieve them.

Our approach to legal aid is part of wider modernisation. Last week, Guy Mansfield, QC, the chairman of the Bar Council of England and Wales, argued the importance of civil legal aid to social inclusion and basic rights. I agree — and we aim to create a system that delivers them. There is widespread recognition that an overhaul of the system is overdue if we are to provide advice and representation on civil matters to those who need it. The paper, A Fairer Deal for Legal Aid, sets out how we will do that.

Lord Carter of Coles is looking at the way we pay barristers and solicitors for publicly funded legal services, especially criminal defence, and he will draw up proposals for a system for procuring publicly funded legal advice and representation, to achieve value for money and control spending.

The legal-aid system has developed piecemeal over the years. Working practices sometimes produce less than ideal outcomes for individuals and taxpayers. Young barristers have to establish themselves and manage student debt, but do not have the support that their peers in other professions get as employees. Core trial fees average £650 for a one-day case; £1,300 for three days. We appreciate that if barristers take a preliminary or sentencing hearing as a return, they can receive an apparently meagre amount for the preparation. If changes can bring about an improvement here, without unacceptable increases in costs, we will look at them favourably.

Nevertheless, the recent escalation of legal-aid spending presents us with a projected deficit of some £130 million in the current year. Like any other organisation, we have to live within our means. We regret that we have had to reduce some fee rates — although not rates for one to ten-day cases which are the bread-and-butter for younger barristers. We understand that the reductions to fees for longer cases and the additional payments to QCs are unwelcome to those affected. But — contrary to claims elsewhere — we are not looking to legal aid savings to plug the whole gap: for the Bar, these only amount to £7 million this year. We consulted over the changes. We made changes on solicitors’ fees in directions suggested by the Law Society; we were open to proposals from the Bar — it declined to offer any.

Claims about changes to remuneration for guilty pleas and cracked trials deserve less sympathy. These reflect many months of constructive discussion with the Bar and were designed to preserve remuneration for work done on smaller cases that crack. There are reductions in rates for the most substantial cases, but these remedy the absurdity of arrangements where a case that does not go to trial can pay substantially more than one that does.

We regret that there has been so much ill-informed comment on our proposals that, in a few places, members of the Bar have refused to take on new work or returned cases, for prosecution or defence. It is not clear what they want, other than to register a misguided protest. Targeting prosecution work where rates are unaffected, and losing business that would often have been paid under the previous rate anyway, is illogical. It is counter-productive, because it is no way to win the political argument for a legal aid system of the kind responsible practitioners want to maintain.

I invite legal professionals — and everyone who cares about a legal system that will help the vulnerable — to engage in the debate about how we can make this happen.

The author is the Legal Aid Minister at the Department for Constitutional Affairs

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