I read, with mounting disbelief, the comment column 'Defending the Way Ahead' by Paul Roach (see [2003] Gazette, 29 August, 14).

I am a criminal practitioner of 27 years and I thought that the article was written in a spirit of irony until I got to the end.

I realised that Mr Roach was being serious.

While I would agree with a lot of what he says about decreasing the income and increasing the administrative burden, I cannot agree that it would benefit any criminal lawyer to become, in Mr Roach's words, 'a respected public servant on a par with the Crown Prosecution Service'.

Had I wished to be a public servant I would have joined the civil service.

Given that the CPS is chronically underfunded and is in a state of chaos, is he seriously suggesting that the Public Defender Service (PDS) should emulate this? There is no reason to suppose that the government would adequately fund a Criminal Defence Service, any more than it has properly funded the CPS.

Clients will undoubtedly suffer as there will be no realistic prospect of proper client care and the client clearly should have the ability to choose his own solicitor.

To suggest that choice could be built into the system 'as it is in the NHS' is mind-boggling.

What choice do patients have in the NHS? There is also the more fundamental question as to whether it is right for the state to retain and pay defenders.

There must be a danger of some sort of policy developing as there is in the CPS towards certain offences.

As far as I am concerned my duty as a criminal lawyer and advocate is to my client and to my professional body only.

I do not want to be looking over my shoulder at the 'bosses' in case they do not like how I present my case.

While the PDS may, regrettably, be inevitable, it is not something that the profession should embrace like a group of lemmings.

Surely the US provides a dreadful example of a PDS where many of the lawyers staffing it are either newly qualified with little or no experience or those who are unable to get jobs in private practice where the real money is.

John Birdford, Cabral & Co, Wallington, Surrey