Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
LORD CARTER
OF COLES,
CAROLYN REGAN
AND RICHARD
COLLINS
17 JANUARY 2007
Chairman: Lord Carter, Ms Regan and Mr
Collins, welcome. We have first to declare any interests that
we might have around the table.
Keith Vaz: I am an employed barrister
but I do not do any legal aid work.
Jeremy Wright: I am a criminal law barrister
but non practising at the moment.
Bob Neill: I am in the same position,
a criminal barrister but no longer practising at present.
Q1 Chairman: Thank you very much.
I wonder if I could start by asking Lord Carter, what was your
perception of your task as an independent reviewer on the legal
aid procurement arrangements, and how much was your brief one
to save costs?
Lord Carter of Coles: The real
brief, as I took it, was to establish value for money and to try
and see how we can make the whole system work more effectively
and more efficiently, and to really test every part of the system
to that end.
Q2 Chairman: Were you given a very
explicit steer when you were appointed about this?
Lord Carter of Coles: No. I think
it was clear that the system was under financial pressure and
one can never ignore that. That was always there as a sort of
leitmotiv in the background, but I think because it was
independent I wanted to be clear that we took the whole system
to pieces as much as we could to establish the fact, and there
are inconsistencies in the system, which I am sure will come out.
Q3 Keith Vaz: Were you disappointed
that your proposals were not accepted in their entirety by the
Government?
Lord Carter of Coles: I think
it is always difficult. I think it is rarely, if I may say, that
governments accept things in their entirety. I think we set a
direction of travel and to sort of show which way it would go,
and I think one prepares oneself for things not being wholly and
always accepted.
Q4 Keith Vaz: Because the minister,
in a debate last week attended by the Chairman and other Members
of the Committee, was at pains to tell us that she had fine-tuned
your proposals. Do you know what she did to them?
Lord Carter of Coles: I think
there were issues about timing, the timing of the introduction
of things, I think issues which had to be settled around things
like minimum contract size and things like that. So there were
some open issues and to my knowledge really issues of timing were
the main things that she changed.
Q5 Keith Vaz: Were you disappointed
that the professions were so disappointed with what you were proposing
and that the term "Carter" seems to be now a term of
abuse?
Lord Carter of Coles: Disappointed?
Probably not, is the answer. I think one has to expect, when you
propose something like this, that people actually do come forward
and express strong views about it, because it involves quite a
lot of change and that is often not popular.
Q6 Keith Vaz: Because what they will
say, I am sure, and I put this to you, is that already in various
parts of the country there is what people described as "advice
deserts" where there is no legal aid work provided in a particular
field. What you are proposing is going to make matters worse?
Lord Carter of Coles: I do not
think that is quite right. Where there were legal aid deserts
was often a function of the pricing system, which was pretty even
throughout the country, and there were rural areas, for instance,
where actually there was not sufficient supply because I believe
the pricing was wrong. I think one of the things which possibly
has been overlooked in our proposals is that a market works both
ways. If we looked at the sort of supply to the market, there
was no shortage of supply in metropolitan urban areas, plenty
of supply in most of them. In some of the desert areas, the more
rural areas, et cetera, I would presume, I would hope, that prices
would rise in response to market forces to bring forth the necessary
supply those people need so we had equality of provision throughout
the country.
Q7 Keith Vaz: But you would accept
the premise that there will be a reduction in the supplier base?
There will be fewer lawyers, fewer firms of solicitors providing
this work and they will be paid less. So, going back to the Chairman's
initial question to you, this is in the end about saving money,
is it not?
Lord Carter of Coles: The point
perhaps I could address there and come back to the money point
is that actually we think there will be fewer firms. There may
be fewer offices. I doubt there will be fewer solicitors.
Q8 Keith Vaz: But there will be a
reduction in the number of suppliers as a result of your proposals?
Lord Carter of Coles: That is
absolutely so. Absolutely.
Q9 Keith Vaz: And that must have
an impact, must it not, on the consumers, on the very taxpayers
who fund legal aid? They are going to be paying for less, are
they not, in effect?
Lord Carter of Coles: No. I think
if you look at many of the metropolitan areas, a large amount
of provision is duplication in many areas. We could see closures,
I believe, in many areas and not suffer a denigration of service
or availability. I think I am clear on that, actually.
Q10 Keith Vaz: Yes, but what I am
not clear on, and perhaps you can help me, is that you said you
were aware of these "advice deserts" when you started
your work. You have had officials working with you. You have obviously
put your proposals to the Department of Constitutional Affairs.
Do you have a map as to what it is going to look like after your
proposals? We know what it is like now. We have people complaining
that they do not have access to publicly funded lawyers doing
certain types of work. Once your proposals go through, do you
have another map showing us what is going to happen?
Lord Carter of Coles: No, I do
not have a map, but I do believe that what will happen is that
the Legal Services Commission will have to pay more per case in
the areas where there are legal aid deserts which reflects the
higher costs in those desert areas to get people to go in and
practise in them. So I do not believe there will be a map of deserts
because I believe they will be removed.
Q11 Chairman: Does that mean that
the rural, small town solicitors misunderstand the situation if
they are now deciding that they are probably going to have to
give up legal aid work to the point where there is either no legal
aid solicitor in a market town, or perhaps only one and therefore
no potential competition at all? Is this a complete misunderstanding
on their part?
Lord Carter of Coles: I think
it is for the Legal Services Commission to settle what those contract
sizes should be. One of the issues around minimum contract size
is that if in a small market town it needs a smaller contract
to sustain somebody, then in the interests of access to justice
clearly we would want to see—I would certainly want to see—an
amount of money going into that town. Whether in fact it would
mean, because it was unsustainable, because there was not enough
business in the totality around that town, that maybe two towns
need to combine, or something like that, there is just the minimum
level, but I think that what you say should be correct.
Q12 Keith Vaz: Lord Carter, help
me on this. I am not an economist and I know you are. I just about
scraped economics A-level. We know that there are advice deserts
at the moment. Your proposals, you have just told us, are going
to result in a smaller supplier base. There is going to be less
money spent. How is that going to result in the advice deserts
disappearing? Just help me with that.
Lord Carter of Coles: The answer
is that we are seeking greater efficiencies in metropolitan urban
areas. So if you look at the system as it is presently constructed,
for instance in payment for travel and waiting time, we have situations
where people, for instance—and London is a good example—travel
very large distances because the way the system is constructed
encourages it. Now, actually I firmly believe—and I believe
most people do—that what we need is people not spending
time travelling and waiting but actually representing in court.
So we want to actually get people proximate to where they practise
and build the size of those practises up so that we can actually
take those efficiencies and spend more on representation generally,
if you like.
Q13 Keith Vaz: So your reforms are
dependent upon the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State
making the court system more efficient, because these lawyers
are not just standing there waiting for fun, are they? They are
waiting because their cases are not being listed properly or files
have not arrived, or there is something wrong with the system.
So it is a package, is it not, that you are putting forward?
Lord Carter of Coles: It was very
tempting to think about that and go into that space. Sadly, it
was not in my terms of reference. There are issues around the
operation of the courts. I think one of the things we will see
as a result of moving to a market-based system is that where practitioners
find the court system particularly irksome and badly organised
I would hope to see prices rise in those court areas and draw
attention to those facts and let people actually in the court
service thereby do something about it. One of the things that
strikes one about it is that there are not silver bullets to court
reform. What we need to do is take individual action in specific
cases and how do we draw attention to those, and I hope the market
mechanism is going to help do that.
Q14 Keith Vaz: What impact do you
think the reforms may have on the recruitment of young legal aid
lawyers? When I went into the profession, I do not know about
Mr Wright but I really wanted to work in a law centre. I wanted
to work in a legal aid firm. Nowadays, young solicitors and members
of the Bar all want to become tax consultants because there is
no money, is there, in legal aid any more?
Lord Carter of Coles: In terms
of solicitors, I think it is an issue. I think if you are a young
person in a training contract and you want to do criminal work
it is very difficult and I hope, as part of the quality framework
which the LSC build into these contracts there is a requirement
to see what people are going to do about training. I think one
of the things which does emerge is that the larger firms are better
at providing training. One can find evidence of that, and I hope
that will be one of the strong outcomes from the larger firms
being able to do that.
Q15 Keith Vaz: Sure, but if in the
end there is less money available, there are going to be fewer
contracts. That is going to be the knock-on effect. Again, I am
not an economist and you are, but I would have thought that is
what is going to happen. If you contract the number of suppliers,
then the number of contracts (which is very difficult for people
to now, as you say, compete for) are going to be fewer, are they
not?
Lord Carter of Coles: I am not
sure that necessarily follows.
Q16 Keith Vaz: Well, are there going
to be more?
Lord Carter of Coles: I could
not say that, but what I do believe is that larger firms will
be in a better position to offer training contracts. I think you
could have a hundred small firms with actually none of them offering
a training contract. We find very little evidence of that. I would
hope that 10 larger firms doing the same amount of work may possibly
be able to find five training contracts on the same basis. That
is really part of what we are trying to see. Larger entities are
able to in a sense deal with the challenges we face.
Q17 Keith Vaz: Ms Regan, this is
your first appearance before the Committee, I think, so welcome
to the Committee. What has become of your predecessor?
Carolyn Regan: My predecessor,
who was the acting chief executive and the deputy, Brian Harvey,
has retired. The predecessor chief executive has left, and the
one before that retired, I think, as well.
Q18 Keith Vaz: Right, so we hope
we have got you for a while, have we?
Carolyn Regan: I hope so.
Q19 Keith Vaz: Good! We have received
evidence that firms are already closing legal aid departments
in anticipation of the Carter reforms being implemented. Is that
correct? Is that your understanding as well?
Carolyn Regan: It is true to say
that the number of people we have contracts with has declined
over the last four to five years, that is an ongoing trend, but
the number of clients actually served has increased, and I think
that is an important benchmark as well. So there are about 6,000
contracts which the Legal Services Commission now has with professional.
| 
