CRIMINAL LEGAL AID: fears that best value tendering proposals are not workable


The Legal Services Commission's (LSC) proposals to introduce best value tendering (BVT) for criminal legal aid work are flawed and will damage quality and harm the ?criminal defence service, solicitors warned this week.



Responding to the consultation on the LSC's plans to introduce a radical new system of legal aid procurement based on firms bidding for contracts, all the major solicitors' representative groups for criminal work questioned the workability of the scheme.



Practitioner groups were heavily critical of the paucity of detail in the proposals and sceptical about the LSC's understanding of the legal services market and its ability to manage such a fundamental change in the way the legal aid ?system operated.



The Law Society said the LSC had produced no compelling arguments or evidence to suggest BVT would create better conditions for providers, or improve the quality of legal aid provision for clients. It said there were 'considerable risks' that it would not achieve its aim of more efficient provision, adding that fixed prices created an incentive to cut costs which could put quality at risk.



These views were echoed by the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association, the Association of Major Criminal Law Firms, the Legal Aid Practitioners Group, the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, the Criminal Defence Union and the Independent Defence Lawyers Group.



Given the financial circumstances in which firms were currently operating, the groups all feared that practices would be forced to bid for work at unrealistically low fee levels and enter into contracts on a financially unsustainable basis, which would further damage the already fragile supplier base.



Solicitors were sceptical about the LSC's assertion that BVT would reduce its administration costs, because the problems and complexities surrounding it would require a great deal of administration.



All bodies called on the LSC to reduce the bureaucracy of its processes and 'micro-management' style and put greater trust in its supplier firms.



Solicitors said that fees set at a realistic level to enable suppliers to provide services at an acceptable quality would be a better alternative to BVT. Some suggested the fee rates could be set by an independent fee review body rather than the LSC.



The Independent Defence Lawyers group said: 'The entire structure of the proposals reflects either a deep ignorance of commercial business practice or an indifference to the constraints that commercial enterprises operate under.'



An LSC spokesman said: 'Given that the consultation on our initial proposals for BVT for criminal defence services only closed yesterday, we are still logging the responses we received. Subject to the outcome of the consultation on our initial proposals, we will undertake a further consultation later in 2008.'



The LSC received some 200 responses to the consultation, with about 90% from individual firms.



Catherine Baksi