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A public defender service in the UK would work well if properly financed and resourced by the state and kept independent and protected. That will never happen though as it would be too radical and expensive and goes completely against current conservative policy of stripping down the state to a bare shell and outsourcing as much as it can where it suits financially. Implementing a full PDS would be far more expensive than the current cost of legal aid. And whichever party replaces this government is unlikely to do anything significantly different. Even without a proper PDS in this country our justice system is increasingly resembling America's anyway - with legal aid provision being a skeleton of what it once was and now close to collapse.