LEGAL AID LAWYERS SHUN GREEN PAPERLegal aid practitioners last week savaged the government's proposals for cash limiting and block contracts, labelling the plans as 'disastrous'.

In a response to the Lord Chancellor's green paper, Legal Aid Practitioners Group co-chairman Bill Montague warned that if the government's plans were carried out, people who deserved legal aid would be denied it.

'The government does not need to use an absolute cash limit to control spending on legal aid,' Mr Montague said.

'The underspend of legal aid for the last two years is £170 million, and reductions in the numbers entitled to legal aid and the levels of payments to lawyers mean that expenditure will continue to be well under control.'Whatever the Lord Chancellor says to the contrary, cash limits will mean some people who clearly need and deserve legal aid will not get it, because the budget has run out for their kind of case in the area in which they live.'Mr Montague hit back at claims that legal aid solicitors did 'shoddy work' and artificially induced demand for their own ends.

'It is a grossly unfair slur upon the competence and integr ity of the vast majority of solicitors in the legal aid field,' he said.'Nowhere is there a recognition of the huge amount of free work done to fill in the gaps within the system, and the great dedication shown by solicitors to serve clients with complicated circumstances.' The Legal Action Group, which campaigns for access to justice for the disadvantaged, was more cautious, concentrating on the need to ensure quality of work.

'The green paper could lead to a major improvement of legal aid services or it could prove to be a total disaster,' LAG director Roger Smith said.

'Success depends on the government's willingness to heed the practical difficulties in the face of too gung-ho an approach.

Coercion of clients into accepting only designated practitioners and the introduction of price competition must await adequate quality controls.'Mr Smith pointed to experiences in the USA, where he said quality had slumped as price became the dominant concern.

The proposed cap on the criminal legal aid budget was also a concern of the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association in its response to the green paper.

'No form of cash limiting of criminal legal aid will be acceptable,' the association said.

'Not only would this breach art 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but it would be unacceptable to the public.'In Bristol, lawyers focused on the threat to rural solicitors' firms from block contracting.

John Peake, chairman of the Bristol Law Society's legal aid committee, said: 'Rural areas would stand to lose a number of providers of certain services, with residents travelling to the nearest large town or city.'The Law Society and Bar Council will finalise their responses to the green paper later this month.REFORMS ANGER LAW CENTRE WORKERSThe existing legal aid green form scheme was described as 'a corpse in the water' with solicitors preferring to work for free rather than comply with its bureaucratic formalities, a Legal Aid Board franchise manager told the annual conference of the Law Centres Federation at the weekend.Joe Cowley said that under the green paper reforms, the board hoped to move from assessing work on a case-by-case basis to assessing the people who did the work.But Brent Community Law Centre representative Fatima Patwa attacked franchising for creating more paperwork for law centres and criticised the board's quality assurance criteria for not giving the clients a say.'The quality assurance law centres offer is that they are relevant to people's needs,' Ms Patwa said.Mr Cowley replied that most franchised firms had benefited from the process, and were now more efficient and better managed.

Labour's plans were very similar to the government's, ensuring he had 'a job for life', said Mr Cowley.Other law centre delegates voiced concerns that increased legal aid funding under the proposals might lead to local authorities cutting off finance.

They feared that hard-up councils would use increased legal aid funding as an excuse to stop grants.-- Funding law centres by legal aid under block contracts could make it more difficult for them to negotiate finance from local authorities, Law Centres Federation chairwoman Isabel Manley warned at last weekend's conference.

Ms Manley said her law centre in Bradford was 'doing all kinds of things we would not have funding for under block contracts'.

Nick Woolf, from Saltley Action Centre in Birmingham, pointed to an alternative to 'increasingly unreliable' local authority funding.

His law centre, and six others, received grants from the Legal Aid Board in addition to any money earned from the mainstream legal aid scheme.