Home Secretary Michael Howard last week launched one of the most eagerly awaited pieces of legislation in recent criminal justice history.The Criminal Appeal Bill - which will create a criminal cases review commission to study allegations of miscarriages of justice - has been given broad-brush support by campaigners.

But there were still considerable doubts expressed by legal experts and the police over core elements of the bill.Lawyers were particularly concerned at the legal aid provisions in the bill.

The home secretary confirmed that applications to the new body will be covered under the green form scheme, but that there would be no legal aid available for applicants to finance their own investigations.Likewise, civil liberties groups were concerned by the government's decision to allow, in practice, the prime minister to have control over the appointment of the commission.

They also threw another question mark over the future body's independence, pointing out that the Home Office had opted not to allow for a dedicated group of investigators.

Instead, the government plans to tack investigations on to existing police work - sometimes handing the cases to the force which investigated the original crime.Nonetheless, Mr Howard painted the future commission as being a 'strong and independent body...which will play its part in ensuring we have as effective a system of justice as we can.

A system that convicts the guilty, but only the guilty.'That official government line found support from the highest echelons of the judiciary.

Lord Chief Justice Taylor described the proposed commission as 'a body entirely independent both of government and of the courts'.Essentially, the bill will replace the existing Home Office department C3, which currently deals with miscarriage allegations on behalf of the secretary of state.

Instead, applications will be made to an approximately 11-member commission, chaired by a lawyer but with a strong lay element on board.The bill will allow the commission to refer to the Court of Appeal - in England, Wales and Northern Ireland - any conviction, verdict, finding or sentence in a case which has been tried on indictment.

The proposed legislation would then require the Court of Appeal to allow an appeal against conviction if the judges thought the conviction was unsafe.There are also provisions in the bill for the commission to refer summary cases to the Crown Court for appeal.

And Mr Howard confirmed that decisions taken by the commission not to refer cases to appeal would be open to judicial review.Mr Howard said he was keen to see the commission up and running as quickly as possible, but he warned that the parliamentary process might throw up a few stumbling blocks.

When the bill goes on the statute book, all positions on the commission - from chairman to members to staff - will be advertised.

Ultimately, commission members will be appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the prime minister.A third of the members will be legally qualified, according to Mr Howard, while half of the remaining two-thirds 'will have some experience of the criminal justice system'.

There will be no requirement that the chairman is a judge. It is anticipated that initially the commission will be swamped with applications.

Currently, the Home Office and the Northern Ireland Office between them are asked to study some 730 cases annually.

Once the new commission was in place, both offices would hand over their existing case loads.There is also a realistic expectation that the majority of those people who had their cases refused by C3 will re-apply to the new commission.

Indeed, Home Office officials confirmed there would be no bar on those applications.

Last year, the civil rights group Justice predicted a new body would deal with more than 1600 cases a year, some 250 of them in depth.The new commission will have an annual budget of £4.4 million and employ about 60 staff.

The staffing figures tally exactly with what Justice called for last autumn, and indeed the budget is nearly £1 million more than a Justice report predicted would be necessary.Lawyers generally welcomed the Bill.

Bar Council chairman Peter Goldsmith QC said the legislation would 'help to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system'.

But he warned that the new commission 'must be adequately funded' and that 'it must not become...an additional Court of Appeal - that would quickly lead to overload'.Specialist criminal practitioners were more specific in voicing their worries.

Roger Ede, secretary to the Law Society's criminal law committee, said there were three main concerns: who conducts the investigations; who appoints the commission; and what will be lawyers' overall role.Mr Ede said the Society would have preferred a system where a special group of police officers would be seconded to the commission for a reasonable period and isolated from other police work.

There was also concern from both the Society and from Justice that the commission will not be under a duty directly to supervise police investigations.The home secretary said the government had looked at the option of having a dedicated attachment of officers, but it was ruled out on the grounds that 'it would be impossible to make an accurate assessment of what size that group should be'.Mr Ede also pointed out that Chancery Lane had pushed for commission members to be appointed by a parliamentary select committee.On the question of lawyer involvement, Mr Ede said legal aid was crucial.

'The green form scheme is not likely to be enough to finance the work needed for an application and it will be difficult to get an extension,' he predicted.On a wider level, Mr Ede maintained that the Society does not think - as apparently Mr Howard does - that the solicitor's role should finish as soon as the application is made to the commission.

'Once the investigation has been concluded, the solicitor will want to make representations to the commission in support of a referral to the Court of Appeal.'1995