Thanks to the vigilance of LAPG here is another interesting development. Once again fingers in ears and La La La La La. Have they stopped yet?

LAPG WELCOMES SELECT COMMITTEE REPORT
 
The Legal Aid Practitioners Group today warmly welcomed the Constitutional Affairs Committee report into the Government's legal aid changes. The report calls on the Government to halt its programme until there is an evidence base to justify it, to scrap the move to fixed fees, and to pilot any changes before rolling them out across the whole country.
 
Director Richard Miller said, "The Committee’s analysis of the LSC/DCA approach is damning. The proposals are ‘reckless’. They will ‘disadvantage already vulnerable clients’. There is ‘a major risk that specialist providers will be lost to the Legal Aid system’. The LSC relies on academic economic theory ‘in the teeth of LSC-commissioned evidence which casts doubt on the capacity of supplier[s] to respond’. These criticisms, which echo our own concerns, are now coming from an all-party Parliamentary committee with the benefit of evidence from all relevant stakeholders and extensive independent advice.”
 
He continued, “Clients with mental health issues, with disabilities, or who are fleeing domestic violence will find it much more difficult to get help under the crude fixed fee schemes proposed. Firms that specialise in helping such clients will no longer be able to do so when the fees they are paid are based on averages for all clients. We are relieved that the Committee has recognised that any fee scheme needs to reflect more closely the work required in each case, and has called for the introduction of the LSC’s schemes to be halted. We sincerely hope that for the sake of our clients, the Government will listen.”
 
LAPG has already identified some of the damage done to the legal aid supplier base by the anticipation of these new schemes. Over 200 firms decided not to continue doing any legal aid work after April 2007, and many of those who signed the new contracts have dropped some areas of law, and/or are in the process of winding up their legal aid practices altogether. One of the losses was the last major social welfare law provider in central and west Berkshire. The final firm in East Yorkshire offering social welfare law services has now pulled out. There is an area of South-East London served by only two firms of solicitors offering housing advice. Among other London housing advisers lost were Powell Forster, Everett & Co, J C Gorringe, Belshaw Curtin and Daniel & Harris. A large firm in Kings Lynn that has signed the contract is winding up its practice and not taking on any new clients, leaving a town of 35,000 people without its only mental health practitioner, and with significantly reduced availability of family law advice.
 
LAPG chair Roy Morgan said, “The damage that has already been done to the supply of legal aid services has restricted the ability of people to get the advice they need on the problems affecting their day to day lives. We hope the LSC and the DCA will heed the Committee’s strong urging that they reconsider the path they are going down before far worse damage is done.”

The CLSA's views are here.