Mixed emotions as legal aid rates riseBy Neil RoseFamily practitioners and social welfare lawyers are seeing an early spring as a four-year freeze on legal aid rates thawed this week with rises of up to 25% in some cases.

However, the rise has been greeted with anger by criminal practitioners who are also seeking a substantial pay increase before criminal contracting is introduced in April.

So far, 21 duty solicitor areas have signed declarations refusing to enter contracts unless pay rates are increased.For family lawyers, the greatest increases will go to the 328 solicitors accredited by the Solicitors Family Law Association (SFLA) and the 2,076-strong Law Society children's panel.

As well as the basic 10% increase for legal help and fully certificated work going to all family solicitors, accredited panel solicitors will receive an additional 15%.Announcing the rises, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, said the enhanced rate would 'further encourage greater specialisation and expertise in family law work'.

Solicitors doing housing, employment, immigration, community care, mental health, education, public law and actions against the police will receive a 10% increase for advice work only.

Law Society President Michael Napier said the increases were good news.

'These increases are an important incentive to all community lawyers, still the poor relation of the profession, to continue their vital service.' Similar progress now had to be made for criminal practitioners, he added.Andrew Brookes, chairman of the Housing Law Practitioners Association, said the increase would go 'some way to making up lost ground' of seven years of pay freezes.Lord Irvine said the increases were targeted at those areas already identified as a priority by the government.

'These proposed new pay rates will help to safeguard a good range of quality-assured legal firms in the Community Legal Service throughout England and Wales,' he added.Immigration Law Practitioners Association spokesman Chris Randall said it was a 'good increase'.

He added: 'I am glad that the Lord Chancellor has recognised that social welfare law must be properly remunerated in order to attract providers.' Peter Watson-Lee, chairman of the Law Society's family law committee, said the increases were a 'piece of excellent news' but that it would remain to be seen if it was enough 'to stop the exodus of solicitors from doing publicly funded work'.The enhanced pay rates were a great disappointment for those on the Society's family law panel rather than children's panel, Mr Watson-Lee said.

For example, those working on finances and providing a home for children had not been similarly recognised.SFLA chairman Rosemary Carter also welcomed the 10% increase but said it had to be seen in context of years of pay freezes.

She was delighted that the SFLA's work on accreditation had been recognised.

Although accepting that the pay increases were good news for family lawyers, Steve Wedd, honorary secretary of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, said it would make criminal solicitors 'furious'.

Criminal solicitors will find it hard to accept they were worth less working at 3am in a police station than their colleagues working in an office at 3pm, he said.