You pay peanuts...

Tensions are building over an issue I flagged last month as casting a cloud over the imminent court reforms – the Scottish Government's proposed legal aid fee levels for solicitors in the new Sheriff Appeal Court. In effect, solicitors would be expected to conduct summary criminal appeals by themselves for little more than the fee they previously received for sitting behind counsel or solicitor advocate.

We now have the spectacle of solicitors in the Justice Secretary's own constituency of Falkirk agreeing to boycott such appeals as simply uneconomic to act in, a move that may well be reflected elsewhere as there seems little prospect of solicitors further from Edinburgh accepting their £20 travel costs plus the £27.40 allowed for the likely half hour duration of the hearing itself.

Illustrative figures in the Society's submission to Holyrood's Justice Committee show payments under the new rules of roughly one quarter to one sixth of what they are pre-reforms, for representation in the High Court. If, as appears to be the case, the Crown will continue to be represented by counsel, how does this represent anything approaching equality of arms? And the rates, the Society believes, are too low even for solicitors outside Edinburgh to negotiate agency rates with city firms.

It is quite obvious that legal aid savings could be made without resorting to anything like such derisory rates. It is frankly astonishing that one of the Government's justifications appears to be that the number of summary criminal appeals is relatively small – as if solicitors can be expected somehow to cross-subsidise this work from other more lucrative areas of legal aid work. What might these be, pray? Can that ever be a proper reason in any event?

Solicitors are entitled to feel aggrieved that at a time when Mr Matheson is winning plaudits for promoting a progressive justice agenda, he is undermining basic principles of justice in this way. “We do not believe these outcomes will be positive for the justice system,” the Society comments. “We do not believe they were intended by the Scottish Civil Courts Review.”

“Spoiling the ship for a ha'porth of tar” is the phrase that comes to mind.

Human rights based challenges to legal aid cuts have been tried and failed in the past. Are the prospects any different this time?