Law Society welcomes
legal aid tender delays
The Law Society has welcomed the
delay in implementation of new rules governing civil and family
legal aid, announced today by the Ministry of Justice. The
announcement was made in a written statement to Parliament and
moves the implementation date from the originally proposed October
2012 to April 2013. This allows time for the Legal Services
Commission (LSC) to tender under the new rules, which are currently
being debated in Parliament as part of the Legal Aid, Sentencing
and Punishment of Offenders Bill.
Desmond Hudson, Chief Executive
of the Law Society said:
'We have repeatedly warned that
implementation of the proposed changes to legal aid scope and
provision by October 2012 was impractical. The Government has taken
a sensible decision to defer this deadline. The new timetable
is still challenging, given the work required to implement changes
of this magnitude.
Like other small businesses, law
firms need reasonable notice of changes affecting them. This
announcement is a welcome recognition of that need. But even given
a more workable implementation timetable, solicitors and their
clients who rely upon legal aid to secure justice are not well
served by the poorly-evidenced and ill-conceived measures in the
Bill. The Bill will not deliver the claimed financial savings and
risks denying access to justice to all but the well-off. This delay
to the implementation schedule offers a window of opportunity to
work with stakeholders in improving the
Bill.”
A delay to the tender for legal
aid in crime cases, to 2014, has also been announced. Desmond
Hudson added:
'Criminal defence firms will be
grateful for the certainty that they have been given for the next
three years; and in particular, firms that do both criminal and
civil work will be glad only to have to consider changes in one
part of the business over the next eighteen months. The Law Society
is keen to discuss it's own ideas for reform of criminal legal aid,
and this new timetable will now give us the opportunity to discuss
these with Government.”
Ends
Notes to editors:
The Law Society is the
independent professional body, established for solicitors in 1825,
that works globally to support and represent its members, promoting
the highest professional standards and the rule of law.
The Law Society has 150,000
individual members in England, Wales and around the world and
11,000 member firms operating in domestic and overseas
markets. The Society provides over 50 different products and
services.
Contact: Rebecca Kiernan,
Catherine Reed or Graham Capper, The Law Society
+44 (0)20 7320
5902