The government has responded to the Law Society's pre-action letter on criminal legal aid fees, the Gazette has learned - as the president urged Dominic Raab to follow the attorney general's lead and urgently secure the extra cash needed to restore an equality of arms for solicitors.
The Society is threatening to take the lord chancellor to the High Court if criminal legal aid fees are not increased to the minimum 15% recommended by Sir Christopher Bellamy in the government-commissioned legal aid review. Under the government's current reforms, solicitor firms will see a total fee increase of around 11%. The Society is currently reviewing the government's response to its letter.
In the meantime, Society president Lubna Shuja is urging Raab to follow attorney general Victoria Prentis's lead and urgently secure extra cash from the treasury for solicitors.
Last weekend the director of public prosecutions, Max Hill KC, announced that he had secured additional funding from the treasury to restore parity between prosecution and defence fees following the £54m deal struck between the government and Criminal Bar Association to suspend long-running industrial action.
Following Hill's announcement, attorney general Victoria Prentis KC MP said she had championed alongside the CPS and Bar Council for prosecution fees to rise in line with defence fees.
Shuja said: ‘While the attorney general has recognised the need for equality of arms for defence and prosecution barristers, and has managed, over the weekend, to expeditiously find the funds needed to rectify that, the justice secretary continues to do nothing about the plight of criminal defence solicitors. There is no parity for them. This has much wider impacts on both the police and the CPS, as criminal defence solicitors are the backbone of the criminal justice system.’
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: 'We expect our reforms to criminal legal aid will increase investment in the solicitor profession by £85m every year, including a fee increase of 30% for solicitors’ work in police stations and a 20% increase for their work in magistrates’ courts.
'With an overall expected investment of £1.2bn per year, our reforms are putting the legal aid sector on a sustainable footing for years to come.'
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