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LONDON 03/04/2007

LAPG CONDEMNS “ABUSE OF POWER” BY “LOATHED” LSC

The Legal Aid Practitioners Group today condemned the LSC’s “abuse of power” which saw the majority of legal aid solicitors sign the new unified contract with a heavy heart.

LAPG Chair Roy Morgan said, “The LSC is required to act as a responsible public body, acting reasonably. It appears that in Britain today, a responsible public body is one that uses economic duress, and questionable threats to remove firms’ current business, to force suppliers to sign a contract; and not just any contract, but one that was so fundamentally flawed that a firm of commercial contract lawyers has said they would recommend that a client should not sign it.”

Director Richard Miller said, “This was an abuse of power by the LSC that will not lightly be forgotten or forgiven. I have seen many of the letters firms sent in with their signed contracts. Even in the worst days of franchising and contracting from the past fifteen years, I have never seen anything approaching the degree of contempt and loathing expressed in them. This is typified by the letter from 94 firms in the Times yesterday (Monday), denouncing the LSC for its ‘cynical’ actions and decrying ‘those who are driving the process of destruction of legal aid’.”

He continued, “The forcing through of this contract highlighted the worrying extent of the power the Government has over the lawyers whose job is to stand up for the rights of ordinary citizens. What does it say about the independence of those lawyers, who almost universally feel that the changes heralded by this contract will harm clients greatly, when the Government can impose its will on them by means of economic pressure?”

In response to the news that the LSC would shortly be “providing details of a new civil bid round as part of the CLS Strategy for improving access to joined-up services”, Miller commented, “Presumably therefore, some of the firms who returned their signed contracts will be getting their termination notices almost by return, in order to enable the LSC to run its bid round. How can any business be expected to survive in this system? LAPG joins with the Law Society in saying that it has no confidence in the ability of the LSC to implement this change programme in a manner that will ensure a sustainable legal aid system.”

LAPG is an independent grass roots movement, representing over 500 firms at the heart of the provision of publicly funded legal services. Website www.lapg.co.uk

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Simon Pottinger adds [from the States]:

"Richard might have said that any firm advising a client to sign such a contract would probably be found "below competence" or worse on Peer Review".