Orchard fires his parting shot

The outgoing chief executive of the Legal Services Commission (LSC) has called on the government to take heed of the lessons he has learned while heading legal aid when it reforms the system.

Speaking to the Gazette ahead of his departure this week, Steve Orchard said although he was confident that the government was keeping an open mind about reforms to the regime, changes such as the introduction of competitive tendering, might be in the pipeline if it did not listen to legal aid experts.

'The problem with the public sector as a whole, and not least with civil servants in general, is that they refuse to accept the evidence of experience,' he said.

'Everything's got to be proven from a blank sheet of paper, which I do find frustrating because some of us actually know quite a lot and have examined most of the issues that they want to examine afresh.'

Mr Orchard - who has become increasingly outspoken about the potential long-term effects of lack of funding - said it was 'probably not' possible to carry out positive reform without an injection of cash.

He admitted that the situation had descended into a case of the LSC and Lord Chancellor's Department fighting from one corner, with the Treasury in the other.

'The worst case scenario would be massively increasing the spend on criminal defence by eating into the available funds for the Community Legal Service,' he warned.

'I wouldn't say it's likely - but it's not impossible.'

Mr Orchard said his particular concerns were for crime - where recruitment of young lawyers was the major problem - and family, where the threat was from far higher-paying private work enticing the best practitioners away.

'There is a limit to how far you can carry on like that,' he said.

A shortage of practitioners in civil areas such as housing and community care should also be looked at, he added.

Mr Orchard said the government should be looking to clamp down on the poorest performers - either in relation to over-claiming or offering poor services - and target resources by rewarding the best.

In terms of what he has been able to achieve throughout his time heading up legal aid, Mr Orchard said he was proud of improving the quality of LSC staff and, most importantly, 'getting quality on the agenda'.

Mr Orchard's successor, Clare Dodgson, will take over next week.

Paula Rohan