We are told that by the end of 1996 legal aid expenditure in England and Wales is expected to reach £1.6 billion.

At the same time, we know, as lawyers, that the number of people who have access to legal aid is almost at its lowest level.

When more and more is being spent on less and less and the vast majority of our population has little or no access to justice then something has to change.This government has undertaken a fundamental review of all public expenditure.

Legal aid is included in that review and I, together with a few other people, was asked to take part in this.

I did so with alacrity.

I have no wish to be an outsider looking in on events that are so important.Throughout the spring and summer we met together to bounce ideas of f the wall.

I am not betraying any secrets, but the conclusion that I arrived at early on in our deliberations was that if so few now qualify for legal aid despite the amount of public money being spent on it, probably the current system had come to the end of its useful life.We were not involved in a cost-cutting exercise.

We all believe that the budget is not to be cut and that current levels will be maintained in line with inflation.

What we did consider was whether or not it was possible, spending the same amount of money, to achieve greater access to justice rather than to assume that the only solution was ever-increasing sums of money.

The law plays an increasingly important role in our lives.

It infringes on pretty well every aspect of most people's lives and that is without the European dimension.

It is not a bit of good creating rights if there is no means of enforcing them for the ordinary person in the street.I think it is essential that lawyers are involved in any detailed review of legal aid.

Our profession played a significant part in the creation of legal aid in 1948.

If there are to be dramatic changes, it is essential that we play an equally important part in what is to come.I will highlight some of the ideas produced by our fundamental review.

Our first conclusion was that while lawyers have a large part to play in legal aid matters they should not have an exclusive role.

It is quite possible to deliver an adequate service at a level one step below that of a lawyer.

This is not a case of applying second rate justice to those who cannot afford to pay for top rate justice, but rather a case of supplying access to justice at the level required to enable that access to be as wide as possible.

Given that the vast swathe of the population has no access to justice whatsoever and no likelihood of ever obtaining it, this was not an unrealistic conclusion.In addition, the cost of the present system shows no realistic sign of becoming cheaper.

Lawyers expect a particular lifestyle and designing a legal aid system to support that lifestyle is probably not wholly realistic and certainly not reasonable if the cost of doing so limits the availability of legal aid.A further conclusion was that we could restructure the demand and the supply side.

I emphasise the word could.

This is where the term fundholder for justice arises.

The fundholder would be the first point of contact for citizens seeking access to justice.

A current example is those who enjoy access to justice via their trade union membership.

The trade union in that context is the fundholder.

It appoints those solicitors who it feels are able to deliver an adequate and cost-effective service to its members.

There is no question of the client having the benefit of any choice if he or she is to enjoy those services through the medium of a trade union lawyer.

The client has to accept that if access to justice is required it is through the medium of a lawyer appointed by the trade union.This led to a further conclusion.

A balance had to be struck between the widest possible choice of lawyer and reducing that choice to enable greater access to justice.

It was felt that the latter was the more important from the client's point of view.

Perhaps in the same way as a client in the area where I live cannot demand complex heart surgery in a hospital of his or her choice, but instead has to go where he or she is told to get that operation, so a client will be directed in particular matters to firms which specialise in certain areas of legal practice.

This could inv olve travel difficulties but then those same difficulties are faced by medical patients daily in my area.

The result is intended to be a better quality of treatment albeit given by fewer highly trained and therefore more efficient specialists.In the field of criminal law a different approach was adopted by the review team.

The best way of describing this in shorthand would be to say that it was a privatised public defender system.

By that I mean that a system of calendar court contracts was proposed.

A firm would tender for all the legal advice required in criminal matters in a particular court for a particular day of the week.

It might choose to tender for more than one day of the week and a number of firms would be chosen since more than one firm would have to be involved for a particularly busy court.The contract would involve providing all the legal advice for a fixed number of clients on a particular day of the week with a provision that those clients would be looked after thereafter while in process before that court.

Thus subsequent appearances would be included in the number of people to be represented on days contracted for.The lawyer would deal with the question of whether or not representation by advocacy was required or whether all that was required was verbal advice having regard to the fact that a pre-sentence report would be obtained or in any event the client wished to plead guilty.

The lawyer however would have to make a decision as to the nature of advice required knowing that not everyone would necessarily deserve or indeed need representation.The idea has some attractions but also some drawbacks and further examination is required.

Nevertheless, it is a way of providing for greater representation in the courts for everyone dependent primarily upon legal need rather than his or her financial position.There is no doubt that there is a clear realisation for those involved in the exercise that calling for more public funds to be made available with no change in the current system is not a realistic way forward.

Whichever political party is in power that will remain the case.

Radical reform is the only way to solve the current problems.

The method of delivering legal aid is going to change.The key issue for the profession is whether it can be involved in that change or stand to one side, take pot shots at what is produced by the Lord Chancellor's Department and challenge, probably not always justifiably, most of the conclusions the department has reached.The trouble with adopting such a destructive and negative approach is that in the end the profession plays a lesser role in what is formulated.

I think it is preferable to be involved in producing new ideas and in testing whether or not they will work.

Informed public debate is now part of the testing process.What I fear is that if we do not take part in the exercise the situation we will find ourselves in will not be far removed from that which the medical profession is currently experiencing, given its past opposition to any proposals to change the National Health Service.

In the end changes did take place.

Perhaps, had the medical profession played a more positive part in the examination of those changes, many of the current problems might not have arisen, with benefits both to the patient and the medical profession.