Recent comment on the legal aid system has focused more and more on the fees of barristers, and QCs in particular.

Even coverage of the Law Society's own proposals for legal aid concentrated on that issue.

These attacks are worrying and misconceived.First, the facts.

Fees in criminal legal aid cases (on which media attention has been concentrated) are not uncontrolled as has been suggested.

They are controlled both by the government and, where necessary, judicial officers.Barristers do not set their own fees for legal aid Crown Court work.

They are paid what the government allows under regulations.

Standard rates are set covering the majority of Crown Court work.In other cases the fees to be paid are assessed by determining officers who work for the Lord Chancellor's Department which has overall responsibility for the legal aid budget.Under £4000 they are vetted by determining officers in court.

Over £4000 they are taxed by special regional taxing teams.

In both cases appeal may lie to the taxing masters.Secondly, QCs' fees represent only a very small part of the criminal legal aid budget - less than 5% in 1990 to 1993 (the l ast period for which I have a detailed breakdown).Even a drastic reduction in those fees would make little difference to the overall budget.

That is, of course, not a reason for failing to consider it if the taxpayer is paying too much.

But it is a reason for realising that radical overall cost reductions must be found elsewhere.Thirdly, the rates paid on criminal legal aid are significantly below private fee levels and more modest than tabloid headlines assert.One of those surveys we are becoming so used to seeing recently speculated on the annual earnings of a number of the top commercial silks.(I was featured myself; it was intriguing to read what I am supposed to be earning in a year when most of my time is anyway spent on Bar Council business.)However, the rates which corporate organisations are prepared to pay in a free negotiation in multi-million pound litigation in order to get the person they want, as solicitors quoted confirmed, are not the same as the rates allowed to criminal lawyers by court determining officers.One problem is that fees tend to be quoted as if the only work was the bare court appearance.

The hours of preparation both before and during the trial are ignored in the calculation.When we look, however, for example at the figures quoted in the recent Barlow Clowes publicity, analysing them on that basis showed rates of, perhaps, £50 per hour for a leading silk.Of course, to many of the population that will seem a high figure.

But it has to be remembered that these are silks working at the top of their profession on matters of the greatest complexity and the figures quoted are gross, out of which all the expenses of running chambers and conducting a practice, including making provisions, for a pension have to come.All this said, we cannot be complacent about the present situation.

There is no doubt that there is a need to control the legal aid budget because realistically no government will allow it to continue to rise at the rate at which it has.The way to achieve that, however, is not by attacks on a section of lawyers but to recognise that more radical solutions are needed.A major factor is that present fee structures depend more on the amount of time actually taken on a case than on more objective criteria.

What is more, the amount of time taken on cases is still more than is necessary.We must examine, therefore, a new structure to see that fees for advocacy are paid on the basis of more objective criteria.

This is the philosophy behind the graduated fees system which the Bar Council has been urging the Lord Chancellor to adopt.Secondly, we must continue the efforts to streamline the court procedure.

Both in civil and criminal work, proposals have been made by the Bar Council - and the Law Society - which could reduce significantly the time spent on cases and therefore the overall costs of those cases.We all look forward to the result of Lord Woolf's enquiry into civil justice.

That at least is under way.Thirdly, a further examination of the special problem of long fraud trials which have featured so prominently in recent comment is due.Again proposals put forward by the Bar Council some time ago would, if followed, significantly limit the issues placed before a jury in a major fraud trial and therefore significantly reduce the costs by reducing the length both of preparation and the trial itself.Ultimately, however, we must beware that continued attacks on the legal aid system do not weaken fundamentally the system under which people can be represented.Criminal trials a re prosecutions brought with the full might of the state against the individual.

The individual needs the ability to be represented in a way that ensures that the balance of justice is not tipped unfairly in favour of the state.Let us not see a system, such as has recently been alleged to apply in Texas in relation to death penalty cases, where inadequate legal aid has led to representation by lawyers who it is said were not up to the responsibility that those cases impose.