Lord Carter's arrogance is quite staggering. He is happy to insist that hard-pressed legal aid lawyers should commit to fixed fees and timetables, but when it comes to managing his own business of running a government review efficiently and to time, he himself operates by different rules. He has no apology to offer for failing to stick to his own budget and brief by spending £1.5 million of taxpayers' money and missing the Lord Chancellor's deadline by more than six months.


Just as well he works for the government, where you are not expected to have to practise what you preach. Clearly, he would not last five minutes as a legal aid lawyer operating under his own proposed regime.



The truth is that Lord Carter has no idea whether his proposals are workable. But that is what you get if all that is important to you is cutting cost without regard to quality.



Christopher Digby-Bell, Law Society Council member for Cambridgeshire & Bedfordshire