Criminal waste of talent

By now, criminal law specialist practitioners must be getting used to being bashed over their heads by the government and its henchmen.

A little more than a fortnight ago - just before it became the the Department for Constitutional Affairs - the Lord Chancellor's Department whipped the wrapping off some unwelcome proposals: first, that 150 million should be lopped off the crime and asylum legal aid budget; second, that the existing freeze should be kept on the current pay rates for criminal legal aid work.

This week, the Legal Services Commission - DCA's presence on earth as far as legal aid lawyers are concerned - has apparently decided that those proposals were a bit soft.

So the LSC has piled on two more recommendations: a single fee for telephone advice and the removal of the right to duty solicitor rates for 'bail backs'.

Practitioners are warning that if implemented, the raft of proposals will hit the profitability of already hard-pressed high street legal aid firms.

Temperatures are rising and a return to the bad feeling that surrounded the implementation of criminal contracts two years ago is forecast.

What Whitehall seems incapable of understanding is that social policy is intertwined.

Quite simply, being tough on crime means more people being nicked.

More people being nicked translates - or at least it should translate, in a free and open democracy - to more suspects requiring expert criminal law advice.

There is no point in trying to dodge the fact that justice has a price.