Angry criminal defence solicitors in Liverpool threatened to abstain from the Legal Services Commission's (LSC) peer review process last month when they learnt that two of the reviewers were public defenders.

The solicitors complained that this may threaten the independence of the project.

They also said they had not received enough notice that they would be targeted by the LSC to take part in the exercise - aimed at evaluating the Public Defender Service (PDS) - or had sufficient opportunity to apply to be reviewers.

They said they would not submit any files, and the stand-off was only resolved when the LSC told them that it had informed the Law Society about what was going on and promised there would be no sanctions attached to the results of the process.

The LSC has appointed 15 reviewers, including one representative from the Liverpool PDS and one from its Middlesbrough office.

Peer review projects have already taken place or are ongoing in Middlesbrough and Birmingham as well as Liverpool.

Further projects will take place in Cheltenham next month, Swansea in July and Pontypridd in September.

James Benson, criminal law practitioner and president of the Liverpool Law Society, said the PDS appeared to have information about the review where private practitioners were kept in the dark, and questioned its presence on the panel.

'The results will feed into policies on competitive tendering and whether the PDS should be expanded - in effect, whether private practice should be reduced,' he said.

And Criminal Law Solicitors Association (CLSA) director Rodney Warren demanded: 'Why does the LSC consider it to be appropriate that PDS employees should be involved - especially in areas [under review] where the PDS has offices - when the main issue for the peer review is that it is independent?'

An LSC spokesman stressed that peer reviewers did not review files from their own regions.

'The PDS employees who are crime peer reviewers will have been selected by the research team on the basis of their experience and knowledge - not because they are PDS employees,' he insisted.

Meanwhile, written evidence given by the LSC to the constitutional affairs select committee's investigation into legal aid reveals that the PDS has cost more than 9.5 million to set up and run so far.

The LSC said the PDS appeared to be providing value for money.

'In the light of [our] operational experience in running the PDS over two years, our view is that PDS offices are a viable option for providing services in areas where there would not otherwise be access to Criminal Defence Service services,' it said.

But Mr Warren pointed out that this was almost half the amount the government wanted to slash from the criminal legal aid budget when it made changes to low-level advice, set to come into play next month.

'It is disappointing when, year after year, we are told that there is no more money and no money to increase rates of pay - but the money can be found to fund an experiment like this,' he added.

By Paula Rohan