Legal aid changes ‘will cost lawyers £3.1m’
Front Line Policy, based in Edinburgh, says Ministry of Justice research of English cases suggests just 20 per cent of contributions are recovered.
The Scottish Government proposals have infuriated lawyers – who want the Scottish Legal Aid Board to be responsible for collecting fees – and have threatened to take industrial action in protest.
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Hide AdMark Harrower, the vice-president of the Edinburgh Bar Association, said: “Whoever collection of contributions falls to will encounter significant difficulties in recovering more than a fraction of the total amount due. This will represent a significant loss in income.”
But a Scottish Government spokesman said: “We don’t recognise these figures and the comparison with England is completely misleading.
“We are proposing that solicitors, not a collection agency, are best placed to recover these fees direct from clients, so suggesting this argument applies to the Scottish proposals is also misleading.”