Pointing the finger

I refer to your recent feature on models of legal aid provision (see [2003] Gazette, 30 May, 20).

The duty solicitor scheme in Barnsley has an even more alarming age profile than that in Sheffield.

There are 17 solicitors on the scheme - down from 24 in 2000, although in fairness the rules governing admission to such schemes have since been tightened - and of those none is in the 20 to 29 age bracket.

Two are in their thirties, five are in their forties, and no fewer than ten are in their fifties or older.

These are eye-opening statistics and it strikes me that this is the sort of information which, if collated on a national scale, might bring home to the government the practical effects of its current approach to criminal legal aid.

A Kennedy, Howard & Co, Barnsley