Re: Lawyers 'exploit' legal aid cash
- From: Richard Miller <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:01:18 +0000
In message <GoAGm.3669$Ah3.2885@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Mentalguy2k8 <Mentalguy2k8@xxxxxxxxx> writes
"Nigel Oldfield" <wmcriticalestoppel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:2e635db0-3eb1-48a1-bb01-f28e5d8615b4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>.Page last updated at 22:07 GMT, Thursday, 29 October 2009
Lawyers 'exploit' legal aid cash
Some lawyers took advantage of legal aid, the report says......
before going on to report that the Pope is still Catholic!
The report is false in some fundamental particulars, and the press reporting around it is even more false.
It states that lawyers are claiming for acting for defendants in the Magistrates Court who are not eligible for legal aid.
Lawyers cannot act in the Magistrates Court until the Government has signed off that the client is eligible. After I read that allegation of claims for ineligible Magistrates Court clients, the report lost every last shred of credibility in my eyes.
The report questions whether there are sanctions against overclaiming. I would have said the threat of being struck off is damned powerful sanction. That kind of ignorance on the part of the report writer is difficult to excuse.
It relies on audits of files by people whose ability to conduct such audits is completely unknown. My personal experience of the Legal Services Commission's audits is that they are of remarkably poor quality in favour of finding technical reasons for disallowing claims, with many of the outcomes being overturned on appeal. I expect most of the NAO's assessments would have been overturned on appeal if there had been a chance to see what they had done. But there has been no quality control of their audits. Quis custodet custodies?
The report does not say, as alleged in the press, that lawyers have been claiming for ineligible clients. It says that the Legal Services Commission has failed in its obligation to the taxpayer to assure itself sufficiently that solicitors' claims are for eligible clients. But you would never know that from the press comment.
Moreover, the system is so complex that honest errors in claiming are inevitable. The rulebook under which solicitors operate runs to four arch lever files. Because the system has been messed around so much, solicitors are actually operating on four different systems in some fields of law, and dozens of different hourly rates, some varying by only a few pennies. The simple fact is that if you have a million rules, you will be easily able to find a million technical breaches. The Commission can't afford to administer a system as complex as the one they have created, and have repeatedly been advised to simplify it, and to run the system as a whole rather than every individual case within it. The National Audit Office, for all its uninformed and unjustified comments, rightly identifies this as a problem. It remains to be seen if the Government listens.
I am surprised that a public body can issue a report that makes serious allegations of dishonesty against a profession, without inviting the professional body representing that profession to comment on the findings before publication. I guess I shouldn't be. Following a fair process and getting to the truth has always taken a back seat to another round of bashing legal aid lawyers.
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Richard Miller
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