8:30am Saturday 13th March 2010
WE CONFESS to being somewhat puzzled by what Worcester solicitor Ruth Edwards says in her passionate defence of her profession in the ongoing debate over the rising cost of legal aid.
As regular readers will recall, we revealed earlier this week how legal aid costs for crown court cases had increased by more than £1 million between 2006 and 2009 even though the number of cases heard had fallen by almost 1,500.
Ms Edwards, from Worcester’s Thursfields practice, says the figures are not the result of rising defence costs. She says lawyers are not ‘fat cats’ milking the legal aid system.
Instead she says bureaucracy is the reason for the increased costs.
All of which is confusing, to say the least.
The extra £1 million it has cost taxpayers to pay the defence costs of 1,500 fewer defendants in a three-year period must be going somewhere.
Whether it is going into the pockets of solicitors or being swallowed up by red tape is immaterial.
What concerns us is that the system appears to be out of control financially.
We repeat our view that legal aid is vitally important to the administration of a criminal justice system that is fair and affordable to all. Every person accused of a crime must have access to legal advocacy whether they be a baron or a beggar.
But the system’s spiralling costs have to be brought under control, particularly with the nation’s public finances in their current parlous state.
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