It is telling that last week’s announcement to scrap the best-value tendering pilots in Manchester and Avon and Somerset came from the Ministry of Justice, not the Legal Services Commission. At a time when the two bodies seem to be increasingly at odds, the MoJ has decided to step in at the eleventh hour to pull the plug on a project that was central to the LSC’s strategy for what it would call delivering value for money from suppliers (some lawyers might have another name for it).

It was also a project that the LSC had devoted a heck of a lot of man hours and cash towards.

Speaking to the Gazette, Lord Bach made it pretty clear that the decision to abandon the pilot had come from him rather than the LSC. He said he was not convinced the pilots were in line with what Lord Carter had envisaged in his review, particularly as they coincided with the current consultation on Crown court fees. ‘[Firms] could argue that they didn’t know the full picture when putting in bids,’ he said. ‘That was a view that played with me quite a bit.’

But before criminal law solicitors start thinking of Bach as their knight in shining armour – as if – he was quick to emphasise that while this battle might be lost, the war was far from over. ‘Anyone who thinks we’re abandoning BVT is quite wrong,’ he said.

The LSC did not put out a press release as such on the decision, but it did issue a statement from chief executive Carolyn Regan, in which she was at pains to point out that the commission is not backing down on tendering. Quite the opposite. ‘The decision [clearly not her own] not to go ahead with the BVT pilots announced in July 2009 presents the opportunity to develop a more ambitious programme of competitive tendering for England and Wales,’ she said.

And the financial resources spent on it have not gone to waste, of course: ‘The considerable work already undertaken in preparation for the pilots puts us in a strong position to develop new proposals in conjunction with colleagues in the Ministry of Justice and the legal professions.’

That’s as maybe. But the MoJ clearly wasn’t too impressed with the way the legal aid quango put together the Manchester and Avon and Somerset pilots.

Whether this or any other government will trust it with the management of an even larger-scale project – Bach did hint to the Gazette in October that he may set up another body to handle the delivery of legal aid alongside the LSC – remains to be seen. Perhaps this time it is not just the legal profession which is left wondering what will befall it next.