I refer to the article by Carolyn Regan in which she asserts that legal aid reforms aim to ensure 'the future sustainability of services for the people who need them' (see [2008] Gazette, 10 January, 10). Those of us with even short memories will notice the subtle change in emphasis, from ensuring sustainability of the supplier base (in the manner of Lord Carter), to ensuring sustainability of services.


I would ask Ms Regan how sustainability of either experienced, qualified suppliers or of services - you cannot have one without the other - could be assisted by terminating, on an unspecified date, all contracts for publicly funded legal advice and representation, as announced in the Legal Services Commission's (LSC) impersonal email sent to all legal aid solicitors ten minutes before the end of the last working day before Christmas?



This was the commission's reaction to the judgment of the Court of Appeal on the legality of the crucial parts of the unified contract, which had consistently and justifiably been challenged by the Law Society - a decision the commission rather alarmingly claimed it had anticipated. I also ask Ms Regan, if that is correct, why the commission wasted public money in opposing the appeal, and why it did not anticipate this earlier and reach agreement with the Law Society before forcing through the unified contract in March last year? How much more public money will be wasted by the process of termination and retendering? In fact, I would like to know the total cost of the 'reforms' - it must be massive. This money would be better spent on 'the people who need' legal advice and representation.



There is a belief, within government, the civil service and the commission, that payment for hours worked results in unsustainable cost increases, the so-called 'perverse incentive' (a LSC myth). Not only is that inaccurate, there is no evidence to support it. Conversely, there is plenty of evidence, some of it commissioned by the LSC, that the cost drivers lie elsewhere in the system. Yet this evidence is ignored. We and the clients we serve are entitled to ask why this is so.



Promises made in the past are routinely broken - witness Lord Falconer's speech to the AGM of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group in 2003 when he stated that any changes would be based on evidence.



Contrast that with the brushing aside of evidence given to the parliamentary select committee last year that it would be reckless to push ahead with the proposed reforms without them being tested in a pilot. This evidence was given all the more force by Lord Carter's admission in his evidence that his proposals were not based on any economic modelling, but simply on his 'opinion'. To that must be added his advice that the supplier base must be given sufficient transitional time to adjust between revolutionary changes to the system of funding and structural alterations being proposed. On any interpretation of the Carter proposals, the government's and LSC's actions are without either justification or common sense, unless the objective is to drive out of legal aid as many solicitors as possible.



Stephen Mannering, Sheltons, Nottingham