With respect, I doubt that Mr Parkhouse takes home the minimum wage (see [2009] Gazette, 29 January, 9). Nor does he receive £150 an hour when representing clients privately. Mr Parkhouse surely receives a graduate-commensurate salary, as do the vast majority of criminal practitioners. His firm has obviously concluded that it makes commercial sense to persist in offering criminal services (the potential for cross-over and big case paydays being substantial factors, I assume).

While the requirements of accreditation are indeed an expensive inconvenience, when fees are being funded by the public purse it seems to me eminently sensible that there should be an external assessment of practitioner competence. Mr Parkhouse would have been free to undertake privately paying criminal work without accreditation.

Even £6.38 is better than nothing, and the days of working to capacity for £150 an hour are long gone. Newly qualified criminal solicitors are not martyrs. They are no worse off than their conveyancing and probate-practising peers. Indeed, in the current climate, Mr Parkhouse might be more grateful for the steady stream of work and fees that crime offers.

Laura Barton, Trainee solicitor, Probert & Gray, Neath