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Defence lawyers have dismissed Legal Services Commission (LSC) claims that the Public Defender Service (PDS) provides a better quality of service than private practice.
The LSC claims are made on the back of independent research, published this week, based on analysis of the PDS during its first three years of operation. The PDS was set up in 2001 as the first salaried criminal defence service provider in England and Wales.
The study shows that during the start-up period, when the PDS was building up its caseload, it had higher costs than other criminal defence providers in the same areas.
Its conclusions state that: “[T]he case that the PDS can provide general criminal defence services at a comparable cost to contract providers remains unproven.
Even using our ‘low’ estimate of PDS costs, based on their running costs only and excluding capital and start-up costs, there was a very significant cost differential between the average case costs of the PDS during its first three years of operation and comparable private practice, ranging from between 40% to just over 90% higher for the PDS depending on the area and type of case.”
Legal Aid Practitioners Group director Richard Miller says: “The evidence shows that the Birmingham and Liverpool PDS offices performed worse in quality terms than the average of all private practice firms in their region, while the other offices performed only a little better than average.
“These offices had substantially lower caseloads than
private practice firms. They also received substantially more public money per case. The PDS cost around half as much again as private practice, and on some measures more than twice as much. Yet they were still unable to keep up with the best private practice firms on quality.
Andrew Keogh of Tuckers Solicitors says: “The PDS costs
between 41% and 93% more than private practice. “For that act of daylight robbery you get more staff doing fewer hours on less serious cases, yet the legal aid minister claims that the PDS has a future. It beggars belief.”
Defending the service, Gaynor Ogden, head of employed services at the LSC says: “The research report is based on data collected early in the life of the PDS and we have come a long way since then in terms of growth, quality and cost.”
Copies of the 354-page report can be downloaded at www.legalservices.gov.uk/criminal/pds/evaluation.asp.
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