Changes to Legal Aid Systrem

As usual the real problem is being overlooked --Legal Aid is just a victim of the British Justice System, which has been corrupt since Charles Dickens forcefully tried to alert society to the "Closed Shop" that it became, and the clever ways that lawyers could become very rich while judges lived in better circumstance than the Queen. DOCTOR, FIRST HEAL THYSELF. or perhaps now the people can heal the Justice System

Yes, I agree with you there, jane. I responded with reference to criminals because the article refers to the Criminal Justice System/CJS. I hope they can find a working solution to the legal aid problem. Better auditing and barring of the offending solicitors is needed.

Thank you When for your comments - I wasn't posting to get support for the petition, really just to see what people thought.
I must confess that I have never really associated Legal Aid with hardened serial criminals and bent solicitors, and wonder how much of the Legal Aid budget ends up in their pockets. I've always associated it more with helping people with things like divorce, domestic abuse, young people who may have commtted minor offences etc. but obviously you have a working knowledge of the system.
I think the wider issue is putting public services out to competitive tendering (if you accept that legal aid is a public service) and whether we want large companies running them and profiting from them, and whether this affects the professional relationship which providers of these services have with their clients.
It is the same process that is happening in the NHS, with doctors and dentists having to compete to provide services. Competitive tendering favours large organisations and while they may appear cheaper, quality of service may be at risk.

I feel ambivalent about this, having spent a career watching the legal aid system being abused by both criminals and lawyers, and experiencing in my personal life the frustrations of seeing different solicitors who obviously knew nothing about the case they were being paid to deal with, and continually failing to take action that they had agreed to take.

We all got to know who were the responsible firms and who were the ones who milked the system. There are some big companies that have grown to that size because they have specialised in legal aid criminal cases that they can disproportionately profit from, and it would be good to see their profiteering stopped.

The idea of not being able to pick your own solicitor to represent you in a criminal case is not necessarily the big issue. Serial offenders have their favourite solicitors, who string out the case for as long as they can, despite changes to the system to try to counter this. Also, many offenders are already happy to see a duty solicitor, having gone through other firms previously and fallen out with solicitors for various reaons. That sort of loyalty and relationship is not one that is healthy.

I understand and agree there should be a debate and consultations, and a fair legal system that all can access according to their ability to pay, but I'm not sure yet whether to support this. If it really does help youths and the mentally ill or otherwise vulnerable, I am in favour, but a change to the system has been needed for a long time. If it wasn't abused by incorrigible offenders and colluding solicitors, who give the rest a bad name, there would be enough fundng for the vulnerable clients.