The High Court has held that the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) must show how it calculated its fee offer for counsel in a complex fraud case, after the accused brought a judicial review.
The LAA had offered £1.2m in fees for a QC and junior in the Serious Fraud Office case against property developer David Ames, which has not yet gone to trial. Ames has pled not guilty to the charges.
Ames’ barristers have estimated there are nearly 100 million pages in the case files.
Ruling in R (on the application of Ames) v the Lord Chancellor [2018] EWHC 2250 (Admin), Lord Justice Holroyde held that the LAA’s decision not to disclose the ‘calculator’ was irrational, a serious procedural unfairness and had breached transparency duties.
Granting Ames’s application for judicial review, Holroyde LJ ordered that the LAA’s offer be set aside, a fresh offer made and the calculator disclosed.
‘We would have expected the LAA to want advocates to know the basis on which their fees were being assessed in [very high cost cases], not to keep it a secret,’ he said.
‘It would surely be advantageous to the LAA, in its negotiations with advocates, to be able to demonstrate why and how the use of the "calculator" has led to a particular fee offer.’
The LAA had a contract with Ames’ solicitors, Cartwright King, but had not reached agreement with his counsel, Annette Henry QC of Furnival Chambers and David Miller of Red Lion Chambers. It initially offered £359,400 but increased this after a judge at Southwark Crown Court noted the unusual amount of defence material involved.
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