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It seems to me, in practical terms, there is little left of the original re-structuring of Criminal Defence other than getting rid of Duty Solicitors and drastic cuts.

The real threat to justice is the transfer of Duty Status from Duty Solicitors to Equity Partners. It's Duty Solicitors and Barristers who provide the Legal Services the tax payer is covering. It's them Justice needs. Firms are merely the means of organising support services for Duty Solicitors.

Yet the Law Society openly favours the transfer. The various campaign groups support it by their silence. The media, the public and most of the profession don't even know it's happening.

The only way forward for Duty Solicitors is to join together and apply for a Duty Contract on the basis that they will establish an equal equity partnership of Duty Solicitors as the most cost effective and highest quality provider structure. The first Otterburn report, commissioned by the Law Society, made the same point. But the lack of publicity and terms of applying for a contract mitigate against these new partnerships.

The Law Society, the MoJ and campaign groups need to bite the bullet and help set up help these partnerships to ensure we have an effective criminal defence service. There is no point getting stuck in the ideology that a good profit to current equity partners will mean the best quality service. The cuts are far too big for that. We need to re-engineer the structure of the individual providers around our existing Duty Solicitors using new techhnology to raise their productivity and share out the fees equally to ensure talent can make a modest but reasonable standard of living. At least pro-rata with teachers. Because as the father of a teacher, I can assure you they are better paid.

It's no good saying the cuts will send the innocent to prison . If we move to a clerk dominated low paid low quality agent model, that will happen for years. We have a duty. It's our profession.