JANET PARASKEVA DESCRIBES MOVES TO PERSUADE THE GOVERNMENT TO RETHINK ITS LEGAL AID STANCE

As many of you reading this will know, the Law Society has just completed a wide-ranging consultation with the solicitors' profession and other key stakeholders on the future of publicly funded legal services.

In addition to publishing a consultation document, we held 16 roadshows around England and Wales to canvass the views of practitioners, and I thought the profession would like to know what the next steps are and what other work is in hand.

Earlier this month, we presented our emerging findings to a seminar at the Society's London offices, giving key organisations and providers of legal aid services the opportunity to speak freely about their concerns and how the system could be improved.

The feedback from the entire consultation process is being used to draft a strategy for the future of legal aid.

The profession will have an opportunity to discuss this strategy at the Solicitors Annual Conference, to be held at London's Queen Elizabeth 11 Conference Centre in September, when Angus Andrew, chairman of the Law Society's representation board, will chair a session on the future of publicly funded legal services.

The Legal Aid Practitioners Group annual conference will provide another opportunity for discussion.

I will be chairing a debate entitled 'this house believes that hourly rates should be scrapped'.

I have no doubt that motion will generate a lively debate.

The Society's strategy for the future of publicly funded legal services will be put to the council for agreement in October.

This work is taking place against a background of growing 'advice deserts' - parts of the country where there is no help available at all in some categories of law.

For example, there are no firms of solicitors in Kent doing legal aid housing law.

In addition, we believe there are also many people unaware of their need for advice in civil matters let alone that they may qualify for legal aid.

Many have no idea how the legal aid system works or even how to get help.

The Legal Services Commission estimates that around two million people a year have a significant legal problem but fail to obtain advice.

That is a vast quantity of unmet need.

The government has also launched its own consultations that set out some ways in which savings could be made to the criminal legal aid budget and on asylum cases.

The Society is extremely concerned by proposals to limit the availability of legal aid to those detained at police stations, and the proposed five-hour time limit for initial advice on asylum applications is plainly unrealistic.

You might ask - as Law Society members often do when I meet them around the country - what the Society is doing about all of this.

The answer is a great deal, though not all of it is immediately visible.

We are preparing responses to the government's consultation documents that set out the profession's concerns in detail, but that it just the beginning.

We have started a series of meetings with individual MPs to brief them on the latest developments and to enlist their support in making our case in Parliament and directly to government ministers.

The political conference season also provides many opportunities for us to meet policy makers and get our messages across not only to the politicians, but also to party activists, who can be an important influence on their MPs.

We are planning a seminar for key decision-makers that we will hold in Parliament in the autumn.

We are also pressing for changes to the basis for funding criminal legal aid to ensure that there is adequate provision to meet the consequences of policy on law and order, which have put such a strain on the budget.

We are looking for ways to ensure that the civil legal aid budget is not plundered to meet the rising cost of criminal legal aid.

To help build our case, we have been conducting research into the incomes and profitability of firms carrying out legal aid work.

If you have received a questionnaire, I urge you to complete it - the information you provide will help us to help you.

There is also a job to be done with wider public opinion.

ICM did some useful polling for us a few weeks ago that found 88% of the British public support the principles that underpin legal aid and that justice should not be something that only the better off can afford.

That research was reported in The Independent last week.

I picked up on it in an article that I wrote for that newspaper which appeared on the same day.

Our efforts in the press will continue over the summer and autumn as we work to bring the crisis in legal aid up the agenda.

Finally, we will be working with several partners - from lawyers' organisations to the Citizen's Advice Bureaux - to remind the government of Tony Blair's pledge before the 1997 election that: 'Labour's goal of improving access to justice is an essential part of our commitment to social justice'.

Janet Paraskeva is the Law Society's chief executive