ISSUE HAS MILEAGE

I would like to applaud the actions being taken by the Criminal Law Solicitors Association (CLSA) as reported in a recent front-page article (see [2001] Gazette, 6 September, 1).The idea that if I get into a car to travel to court for a criminal case and receive 36p a mile, and if I then travel in the same car to a court for a matrimonial case I receive an entirely different and higher rate mileage charge, is just a further example of the Legal Services Commission's (LSC) discrimination against criminal law practitioners.

Something has got to be done about this penny-pinching attitude the LSC has towards us, and I am sure that the CLSA will have the support of criminal law practitioners in trying to achieve equality in what seems to be a one-sided partnership.

The commission only offered firms what at first sight seemed to be a reasonable monthly contract figure cynically to entice them into signing the contract when all along they knew that any generosity on their part could be recouped by the clawback provisions.

And true to form those clawback provisions have been exercised.The reality is that far from receiving an overall increase in fees the exact opposite seems to have happened and it will be interesting to see how long we, as a profession, will continue to tolerate such treatment.

In more than 30 years of practising criminal law, I have never known a situation where practitioners are so incensed with the treatment that they are receiving at the hands of the Commission.Anthony Sugar, Sugar & Co, Leeds