Hour of Need


I read with interest your article 'Staunch defence', which revealed that a report on the Public Defender Service showed it to have costs far higher than private practice (see [2007] Gazette, 1 February, 22).



When the service was first launched, I expressed concern that it was obvious that

it would be a costly replacement for the provision of defence work handled by legal aid practitioners.



On the one side, we have low-paid private contractors working - without paid holiday or generous employers' pension contributions - for long and unsociable hours to make ends meet from premises for which they themselves pay. On the other side, there is a new, elite, well-paid corps of civil servants with long paid holidays and generous pension provision, operating from government offices. Only a fool could fail to see how that arrangement could possibly have saved money.



As a former senior partner of a substantial legal aid practice, my advice to defence lawyers working on legal aid is to give up the day and night job, and join the prescribed-hours culture of the civil service. You will reap your rewards on earth and not in heaven, and you will probably live much longer.



Given that it seems hard for central government to see the obvious in such a simple set of circumstances, no wonder the NHS is in such chaos.



Perhaps legal aid practitioners should employ the British Medical Association's negotiators, who worked on the new GP contracts and secured an average 30% pay rise in return for giving up unsociable hours.



CNA Baxter, Dowse Baxter, London