Legal aid practitioners to strike?

I find the suggestions for a 'Week of action' by legal aid practitioners to be pathetic (See [2000] Gazette, 31 May, 1).

The general public is not going to notice if we stop work for just a day and the Lord Chancellor is not going to care.

Most practices that depend on legal aid work cannot afford to down tools for longer.

The idea that we should, for example, ritually remove Legal Services Commission publicity materials for a day is little short of farcical.

We are not like refuse collectors: one day of inaction will have little impact.A more effective protest would be to refuse to computerise our time recording and accounts until there is either a substantial rise in fees or capital grants to pay for the investment, to refuse to tick boxes and inundate clients with paperwork they do not want.

The Lord Chancellor's Department must appreciate that it will get what it pays for.

At present the LCD is trying to get more work from us for less money.

Lord Irvine has found money for flash promotional material for the LSC, for managers and for auditors.

It seems there is money for promotional gimmicks but not for people actually doing the work.We should refuse to co-operate with the bureaucracy and concentrate on our clients rather than on making the files look right for the auditors.

Like many other criminal practitioners, I would like to see us taking an action which will hurt no one but will defeat the aspirations of those who want us to be civil servants rather than independent professionals.

There is far more at stake than just money.

Jan Davies, Reading Solicitors Chambers