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To those, perhaps prematurely, celebrating the demise of the two-tier contract I would only say be very careful what you wish for. The abolition of two-tier, if undertaken by a spiteful or vindictive government, could simply see all "own client only" firms removed from the market. The only acceptable alternative would be for any firm to be entitled to undertake legal aid work but this isn't necessarily the most attractive option, even for a Conservative government allegedly dedicated to market forces.

As to size of firms at risk this is a function of the failure of the Ministry to understand that what they should be looking for in "their" market is resilience not necessarily sustainability. From the Ministry's point of view their concern is that there should be sufficient firms providing the criminal legal aid fig leaf in every area not that it needs be the same firms from one week's end to the next and, so long as there are firms that will willingly join in to compete for the role, at whatever price they can make sense of, there is no real prospect of the government needing to change its stance. Sadly the race to the bottom seems to have already happened and many firms are locked in to a dire situation where they can not make enough money for success but cannot afford to stop because the consequences of doing so are catastrophic for them. The fragmentation of the approach to the Ministry has not helped, whatever the vested interests may have asserted or claimed, and the idea that beleaguered criminal legal aid practitioners will ever have the unity required to make a political difference is sadly, laughable.

It is a desperate economic reality that a large firm with a large payroll and an inadequate income gets to the buffers much quicker than a small firm or sole practitioner who can choose to pledge their own credit, or go without, to keep their business going.