Radical proposals for legal aid from the Law Society that have left the door open to everything from GP-style contracts to competitive tendering will be debated by the ruling council this week.

In a wide-reaching paper, the Society said radical steps must be taken as the traditional high street model is proving unsustainable.

It proposes measures to increase funding and to target resources in new ways.

The paper calls for an initial 'substantial' pay increase combined with annual reviews linked to the retail price index to combat the fact that the cost of running a legal aid practice has soared by 67.5% over the past decade, while remuneration rates have only risen by 26%.

The Society's paper says there must be 'urgent' separation of the crime and asylum budgets from the civil fund, and adds that these should be managed on a yearly basis like other demand-led services such as social security.

The paper suggests that one way forward would be to adopt the funding set-up used by the medical profession for GPs, who have more control over how they spend their allocated budget.

It proposes that a competitive tendering pilot be set up, but it adds that this would have to be transparent and fair.

It moots expanding the not-for-profit sector or the use of salaried lawyers, along with greater use of legal expenses insurance and conditional fee agreements.

Society chief executive Janet Paraskeva said the priority must be protecting the civil budget, but she urged solicitors to keep an open mind about new ideas such as the GP-style contract.

'Such a model will enable resources to be targeted on areas of greatest need and give solicitors more flexibility in the use of resources,' she said.

'However, this does not take away from the need for the government to invest further if it is to achieve its social exclusion objectives.'

Rodney Warren, chairman of the Law Society's access to justice committee and director of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, commended the Society for continuing to keep the debate alive, but he expressed serious reservations about competitive tendering, which could see firms that failed in the first round disappear for ever.

The director of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, Richard Miller, acknowledged that Chancery Lane's proposals echoed much of what was said in his group's own paper.

However, he pointed out that it did not recognise the potential of a fund where non-legal aid firms paid the interest accruing from their accounts into a pool to support social welfare law services.

See Editorial, page 16 (see Gazette [2003] 16 October)