The Conservative Party this week pledged to abolish the proposed supreme court and crack down on overbilling by legal aid solicitors if it is elected as part of a plan to find hundreds of millions of pounds of savings in the Department for Constitutional Affairs' (DCA) budget.

Unveiling their spending plans for 2005-08 if the party wins power at the next election, leader Michael Howard and shadow Chancellor Oliver Letwin said they would reduce the DCA and Law Officers' spending from £4.3 billion a year in 2005-06 to £4.1 billion in 2007-08, a fall of 5%. Overall, the Conservatives envisage public spending rising 9% in that time by finding £35 billion in savings.


The strategy, based on a report by businessman David James, identified a raft of areas where the DCA's spending would be shaved, primarily in reform of legal aid, with an estimated saving of £126 million.


The report said £81 million could be saved by ensuring solicitors do not overbill the Community Legal Service (CLS), referring back to a National Audit Office report in 2002 which alleged widespread overbilling.


It also recommended scrapping the CLS partnership initiative budget (£20 million) and better screening of clinical negligence claims, which it said would save £18 million, as well as better pursuit of legal aid debts and securitisation of those debts to realise a proportion of their value.


Ditching the supreme court would save £3.5 million plus a £50 million capital outlay, the report said, while also proposing to reduce the budget of the proposed judicial appointments commission by £3.5 million 'to the same level as the present equivalent operation'.


Other savings included cutting staff and Court Service bureaucracy (£100 million), merging the Unified Courts Agency with other DCA agencies (£29 million), scaling back the Data Protection Office (£10 million), and reducing ineffective trials (£27 million).


Some 2,000 DCA employees would lose their jobs in addition to the 1,100 envisaged by the government's Gershon review, while the enhanced early retirement scheme would be ended.


Among the list of 168 quangos the Tories would abolish are the Council on Tribunals and the Magistrates' Court Inspectorate. Their functions would be transferred to the Unified Courts Agency.