The Law Society has called on the Ministry of Justice to clarify its ‘incoherent’ and ‘deeply flawed’ consultation on criminal legal aid cuts.

In a hard-hitting letter to legal aid minister Lord Bach, Law Society president Robert Heslett said the vagueness and uncertainty of the paper makes it impossible to respond to it coherently.

The paper –Legal Aid: Funding Reforms – proposes cutting fees to duty solicitors and reducing Crown court defence barristers’ rates to bring them in line with prosecution fees. It also puts forward other reductions to payments made for advocacy and litigation in the Crown court.

Heslett said the consultation paper ‘is so deeply flawed and so full of serious ambiguities and mutually contradictory statements that the Society is not reasonably able to understand what the proposals are, or the policy considerations that have led to them’.

He questioned the rationality of the proposals and sought clarification on the policy aims behind them.

‘Until these are known, no respondee to the consultation is in a position to judge whether the proposals in the paper are the appropriate way of achieving these objectives,’ he said.

He asked the MoJ to explain what it meant by the ‘oversubscription’ of the duty solicitor scheme, which it put forward as the rationale for the proposed cuts. ‘This is not a term that has any meaning in this context,’ he says.

In relation to the proposed Crown court advocacy cuts, Heslett asked for details of the Crown Prosecution Scheme with which the defence rates are going to be harmonised, and when this would come into effect.

‘If exact parity in rates is not appropriate, what differential is appropriate. What are the limits in harmonisation, and when might the move towards harmonisation start?’ he asked.

The consultation, published in August, closes on 12 November. The Law Society has asked for that period to be extended once the MoJ has clarified the proposals.

Chancery Lane has also submitted a complaint to the consultation co-ordinator.