Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has promised to listen to the concerns of the legal profession over controversial changes to legal aid – but warned that some practices will have to close.
Speaking to the Birmingham Post at Westminster, he defended plans to cut the number of accredited legal aid firms.
Ministers originally announced that the 1,600 firms could be reduced to 400, although the details could change when the Government announces the results of a consultation later this month.
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Lawyers in the West Midlands have condemned the proposed changes, warning that they will create a justice system where saving money takes a higher priority than quality.
Earlier this year, solicitors and barristers gathered outside Birmingham Crown Court to protest against the changes.
But Mr Grayling urged critics to wait until the Government’s final proposals had been published.
And he said that the number of lawyers offering legal aid advice may not have to fall – even though the number of legal practices would.
He said: “We never suggested that a reduction in the number of contracts meant the people within those firms had to disappear.
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“What we have said is we need to make significant savings within the legal aid world.
“We are going to need to ask legal aid law firms to operate at a lower level of price than we have at the moment.
“But we also have to make sure there is a service available.”
The Government’s reforms were aimed at ensuring every part of the country was covered by firms offering legal aid advice while also ensuring that the cost to the taxpayer was lower, he said.
“This isn’t about individuals having to leave the sector.
“It’s about firms working more closely together, merging to share back office operations, forming partnerships to do things together at lower cost.
“We have 1,600 providers at the moment, a lot of whom are one man or one woman firms.
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“Clearly, if you have one person operating a law firm who is doing everything it is less cost effective to us than if you have a senior person doing the more complex stuff and a junior person doing the less complex stuff. That brings down the average cost of each piece of work.”
He added: “So we are looking for economies of scale and efficiencies so we can bring down the cost without compromising efficiency.”
The Law Society has described the Government’s original proposals as “unworkable” and claimed they could lead to “a collapse of the criminal defence system”. The revised proposals are expected within the next two weeks.
Along with the Bar Council, it argues that price-competitive tendering will make it uneconomic for firms to provide quality services and prompt “a wholesale exodus from the market”.
It has also condemned flat-rate fees where a solicitor would be paid the same for a guilty plea as for a potentially complex case where a client is not guilty as something which could easily lead to miscarriages of justice.
Mr Grayling also admitted there were “teething problems” when the Government introduced a new translation service in the criminal justice system – but insisted they had now been solved.
It was revealed last year that West Midlands Police was forced to release suspects on bail because they could not get interpreters for police station interviews.
In some cases officers were forced to hire linguists from Leeds and Manchester.
Translators were previously employed directly by courts or police forces but in 2011 the MoJ signed a deal with agency Applied Language Solutions to provide translation services instead, in an attempt to save money. Applied Language Solutions attempted to recruit translators but offered lower fees and travel expenses which in some cases meant their income would be halved.
It also began recruiting people who were not fully qualified and as a result, many translators boycotted the new system.
However, Mr Grayling said improvements had begun once Applied Language Solutions was acquired by Capita Group, a major national business with expertise in outsourcing.
He said: “I am confident it’s been resolved.
“We have never had a perfect system. There is a bit of a delusion around the view that what we had before the change was slick and always delivered the right result.”
But he warned once again that his department had been forced to cut costs.
“We have the challenge, across the government and the department of bringing down costs.
“And one of the ways we did that was to take a situation where translators were contracted locally and put them in to a central contract. That central contract has now saved quite significant amounts of money, but it certainly had teething problems.
“At the start the contract was given to a smaller firm that struggled.”
But Capita had “sorted out” the problems, he said. “I think we have got learnt from what went wrong.”
The Justice Secretary insisted David Cameron had not been damaged by his inability to convince the House of Commons to back his policy on Syria.
He said: “I don’t think it’s done damage. It’s created an uncomfortable weekend. Politically, it’s not something that causes long term damage to the Prime Minister.
“What went wrong last week? What happened last week was that Parliament said we don’t want to do this.
“And when you are in Government in a Parliamentary democracy, sometimes you ask Parliament to do something it simply doesn’t want to do. What we saw was the hangover from Iraq.”
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision to speak out in support of action in Syria had probably turned opinion further against intervention, he said.
“The country is wary because of what happened over Iraq. Probably doubly wary with Tony Blair jumping into the debate.
“But also last week the Labour Party was all over the place. Ed Miliband clearly started the week entirely sympathetic, worried about what happened in Syria.
“And then for party political reasons decided to change his mind.”