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Carter Review

Indeed. A point was put to me about the demise of high street solicitors. I cannot say that they will be unaffected by the review, but Lord Carter’s proposals do not mean a big is beautiful situation; they are about tuning the new system to ensure that efficient suppliers of a variety of sizes and structures who have been satisfactorily peer-reviewed—I cannot emphasise enough the point that quality is up-front in Lord Carter’s proposals—ought to be able to succeed under the best tendering model. So, as I said, high street solicitors will not be unaffected but there is no reason to forecast their demise. The hon. Gentleman referred to local courts and accepted the need for a balance. Of course, local justice can be good justice but appropriate facilities are needed, too. Some local court buildings are very old indeed and cannot accommodate modern needs; not only for disabled access, but also for defence witnesses to be kept away from prosecution witnesses and so on. Various moves are afoot. Last Friday, I had the pleasure of visiting the Liverpool community justice project, in which justice simply could not be more local. The project is having a superb impact because it is so well knitted into the surrounding community. Such initiatives are to be praised and encouraged. As ever, we are trying to do everything at once. The hon. Gentleman asked that financial incentives should not compromise cases and that the need to fix fees would not undermine a decent pay rate for lawyers. I think that was implicit in what I said. There is no intention to do that; it is everyone’s intention that good quality lawyers should continue to be recruited to the public sector. Our courts simply cannot work without them—the hon. Gentleman can rely on that. The hon. Gentleman asked whether a defendant could be represented throughout the proceedings by a good local lawyer. Solicitors will bid for a quantity of police station cases, and the usual model would be that they would take the case through from the police station to the magistrates court and to the Crown Court, if appropriate. There is provision in Lord Carter’s recommendations, which I applaud, for consultation on own-client work; that is, somebody who comes under the duty rota scheme by virtue of being locked up at a particular police station but who has another solicitor elsewhere with whom he has some faith. If he were able to rely on that person it could assist the system. There is scope for consideration of such ideas, but the broad intention is that the person who picks up the case at the police station should take it all the way through. High-cost cases are the exception. It is proposed that a panel of experts be set up and when it is clear at the police station that the case is a specialist one, it would go directly—as an escape route—to the panel. I agree entirely that although it is bad to be poor in a poor area, it is just as bad to be poor in a rich area. The hon. Gentleman will have appreciated from my previous answers that I am very engaged in how advice can assist in dealing with social exclusion. As he understands, a major thrust of the legal aid review is the intention to move money, where and when possible, over to civil sectors so that people can be prevented from going into social exclusion by timely advice about their problems in the first place.