The Welsh Assembly and the Legal Services Commission (LSC) came under fire this week over plans to set up a key committee for the Community Legal Service (CLS) in Wales made up of policymakers and funding providers - but no lawyers.


Roy Morgan, chairman of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group and principal of south Wales firm Morgans, criticised the exclusion of advice providers from the committee, which was unveiled in a consultation paper issued by the two bodies.



Mr Morgan said: 'Joined-up thinking is essential. Decisions will have a direct impact on clients and it's crucial to include practitioners in the process.' He added that practitioners were already playing a central role in funding decisions where fixed fees and cross-subsidisation between prac-tice areas within a firm were involved.



Tiana Williams, a policy developer with the LSC in Cardiff, denied that lawyers were being distanced from the decision-making process.



Arguing that the committee was primarily a strategic funding group, she said: 'If providers sat on the committee, there would be a conflict of interest when the question of remuneration arose.'



She added that the CLS Wales national forum, which was unique, gave practitioners ample opportunity to make their voices heard.



The consultation proposes an ex-panded role for CLS Direct and three alternative models for community legal advice centres (CLACs) and networks (CLANs). These comprise one CLAC/CLAN for the whole of Wales, CLACs/CLANs organised on a regional basis, or 22 CLACs/CLANs reflecting local authority boundaries. 'Initial analysis suggests that the regional approach may be the most sensible and practical option,' the paper said.

Mr Morgan said consultation was welcome, given the controversy over the tenders for pilot CLACs in Gates-head and Leicester. The LSC was not going back to the drawing board, he said, but it seemed to recognise that acting in haste could 'damage the delicate infrastructure of advice, particularly in the area of social welfare law, that characterises rural Wales.'



Jonathan Rayner