Evidence submitted by the Newcastle Law
Centre (LAR 194)
LORD CARTER'S
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
REFORM OF
LEGAL AID
Newcastle Law Centre will be responding to the
consultation on the Governments proposals to reform legal Aid
contained in the paper "Legal Aid: A Sustainable Future".
A full copy of our response will be forwarded to you in due course.
The purpose of this letter is to alert you to
our view that the proposals contained in the paper will reduce
the quality of social welfare law advice, and threaten the very
existence of many advice providers in the Not For Profit sector,
and create advice deserts in many areas of the country.
Newcastle Law centre's work in Housing, Employment,
Welfare Benefits, and Immigration will all suffer as a result
of the changes.
The Law centre currently has hourly contracts
with the Legal services commission to undertake this work. The
proposal to change to a system of Fixed Fees based on the number
of cases taken rather than the number of hours performed poses
serious threats to us.
So that the nature of these dangers can be understood
I will quote the LSC's Draft Impact Assessment which accompanies
the "Sustainable Future" paper.
"We have modelled the impact of NFP organisations
moving to TFF Replacement Scheme if fees are set on a national
basis and our preliminary analysis suggests that if NFP's do not
increase the numbers of matters undertaken, 92% will experience
significant decreases in their publicaly funded income, and the
total spend with the sector in the categories of work covered
will reduce by 50% (£21 million).
This could mean that Newcastle Law Centre could
stand to lose out by up to £75,000.
The reason for this is that the fees have been
set too low. Lord Carter has based his formulae for NFP payments
on average cases times in private solicitors firms. This is akin
to comparing chalk with cheese.
This shift of emphasis from hours to an arbitrary
number of cases ignores the complexity of the legal aid market
and will lead to cherry-picking of quick, easy cases and an avoidance
of difficult, complex, and longer cases.
This danger was highlighted but ignored. To
quote again from the Draft Impact Assessment (para 62), "...the
key risk... of moving to a procurement system based on fixed fees...
is that quality of service and outcomes of some cases may be adversely
affected by providers seeking to maximise profits."
This emphasis on the need for a quick turnover
of short easy cases will not improve the quality of the service.
Research carried out by the LSC and reported in "Quality
and Cost: Final Report of the Contracting of Civil, Non-Family
Advice and Assistance Pilot (2001)" found that solicitors
funded to provide a fixed number of matter starts for a fixed
fee outcome performed worse than others in three areas of quality,
client satisfaction and outcomes.
Lord Carter went as far as admitting, in an
interview with the Law society Gazette that "...if we haven't
got the price right, there will be an advice desert and we will
have to pay more."
If fees aren't increased now any later change
may be too late for many advice agencies. The impact of these
changes on your constituents and within your constituency will
be an extremely negative one.
I urge you to give serious consideration to
these points and to our more detailed response on the wide-ranging
impact that Lord carter's proposals will have.
Please support the campaign to seek the reconsideration
of the LSC proposals, and play your part in ensuring that the
people of the North East have properly funded, top quality advice
services.
Tony Brown
October 2006
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