Public Accounts Committee savages LSC
The influential House of Commons Public Accounts Committee issued
a damning report
on the LSC's financial management and corporate governance.
 Describing
the unprecedented qualification of the LSC's accounts, the Committe
said that the LSC "has failed to get a grip of its financial
management". It went on to criticise "The Commission lacks
a clear strategic direction, reflected in its poor
management of the changes to legal aid detailed by Lord Carter".
More tellingly, and perhaps a metaphor for the LSC's handling of
BVT, the Committee stated "... all future reforms should have
a clear timetable, should be fully piloted and evaluated, and that
these evaluations are timely and consider the impact of reforms".
The MoJ admitted that it was completely unacceptable that the Commission’s
accounts had been qualified for 2008–09. This qualification
was because the Commission had made an estimated £25 million
of overpayments to solicitors providing both civil and criminal
legal aid due to weak financial controls, specifically that the
Commission’s processes for auditing the payments it made to
solicitors were insufficiently robust.
The LSC's response to this has been curiously lacking in mea culpa.
In fact, the latest missive
from the LSC's Executive Director Hugh Barrett in a startling inversion
of culpability, appears to place the blame firmly on the LSC's suppliers
for submitting inaccurate bills. This looks like the beginning of
an onslaught of activity that will target firms for minor misdemeanours
on fee schemes or lack of evidence of means. You have been warned.
Who are we to comment but given the costly BVT volte-face and the
qualification of the accounts, both of which are pretty high on
the Richter Scale of calamity, is it too much to ask for a resignation
or to from the people on whose watch this occurred? Just a thought...
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LSC in denial
One would expect the LSC to show some humility following its humbling
by the PAC and the qualifying of its accounts. Quite the contrary.
In the LSC's opinion it was all the fault of solicitors.
It won't wash. The LSC has been the architect of the most baffling
array of incoherent schemes of Byzantine complexity. Every few months
sees another tier of complexity heaped onto the crumbling edifice
of regulation. No wonder it cannot control the fund.
The Family Fixed Fee Scheme was a classic example of this. Only
the LSC could make a fixed fee scheme totally impenetrable by over-complex
rules. Add to that a botched implementation with poor training of
the profession and unfit for purpose IT systems. The LSC invariably
fails to predict the unintended consequences of its fee schems and
the result has been massively increased fund expenditure.
We now see the LSC trying to put the Genie back into the bottle
by blaming the profession for over-claiming. The LSC needs to wake
up to the fact that the reason that firms make money out of its
fee schemes is because of the flawed design of the schemes not because
firms are deliberately inflating their claims.
Our experience of the Family Fixed Fee Scheme is that when you
have a query that you need to raise with the LSC you get more conflicting
opinions than an Economists Convention. If the LSC don't understand
their own schemes what chance is there for the profession.
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