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My 10 year prediction:

One Magistrates' Court per CJS area, with four in Greater London;

No legal aid available for anything other than a directed or sent Crown Court case, and

Limited access to third sector (ILEX qualified) advocacy assistance services in the Magistrates' Courts for those considered to be particularly vulnerable.

Rightly or wrongly, many in power view 'legal aid' as a relic of the Attlee programme of welfare reforms and they have an ideological issue with it.

This is why, under the Coalition, the LAA were tasked to approach the insurance industry - to see whether there was an appetite for commercial underwriting of criminal cases. And, there obviously wasn't.

This is probably why Michael Gove now makes overtures to the commercial heavyweights to 'put something back' - and, I suspect that call will also be rejected.

Pro bono work by City lawyers for the benefit of neighbouring communities, for example, forms part of their own 'corporate responsibility' strategies - something that I hasten to imagine that they would not like to see confused with their being seen to provide an infrastructure of representation for a small number of recidivists.

I might be wrong but, fundamentally, those of us working in publicly funded criminal practice have to start thinking innovatively about precisely where we might fit into this jigsaw.

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