Criminal waste of resources

Criminal law specialist solicitors are fed up - and who could blame them? The government's plans for criminal contracting and the salaried defence service are vague at best, and pernicious at worst.

Duty solicitors from around the country are to withdraw their services - for one day at first, but perhaps for 48 hours in future.

The media will, no doubt, emotively call the action a strike.

The rights and wrongs of solicitors taking industrial action is a complicated debate, but there is clearly a high level of militiancy, as expressed by criminal law practitioners at last weekend's S2K conference.

What is clear is that the government is trying to railroad through a plan for criminal contracting that is incomplete, confusing and potentially unfair to solicitors.

The main problem is over pay.

At least one senior official at the Legal Services Commission has acknowledged that omitting pay details from contracts was a mistake.

Solicitors fear that if they sign contracts blind, the Legal Services Commission could end up actually cutting rates of pay.

The issue needs clarifying soon.

Indeed, the Law Society has received bullish advice about the contract's ripeness for legal challenge.

But the commission does not hold the purse strings.

They are pulled by the Lord Chancellor, and Lord Irvine's record on state-funded work brings little cheer to hard-pressed practitioners.