The Gazette 1980

GAZETTE

JULY-AUGUST

1

the local authority to spend much more money on highway maintenance. Another law centre acted for a group of pensioners worried about getting heating allowances to help them form an association and to get a lease. The general experience of law centres the report said was 'that people need and demand to have their problems approached in a way which differs from that of private solicitors. It is a way which makes it necessary for the law centre employees to be available outside the centre — in the tenants' and residents' associations, in the youth clubs and luncheon clubs, at meetings in the evenings or at weekends, providing legal services which is innovative and imaginative' (Law Centres Federation 'Response to the Royal Commission on Legal Services', p. 15). The proposed Irish scheme I believe will not easily be capable of providing legal services that are innovative and imaginative if the lawyers are restricted in the ways outlined in the Government's paper. Local Committees The Government's proposals do however recognise albeit in a somewhat halfhearted way, the concept of local consultative committees for law centres. Local Committees consisting in the main of local residents have proved to be a very valuable aspect of the English system. Under the proposals the Legal Aid Board would have the power to establish such committees if it thought 'that legal services could be provided more effectively in a particular area if consultations between persons representing local interests and the person responsible for the management of the centre were provided for' (para. 5.3.2.). This puts it very tentatively. It would be greatly preferable I believe if, as proposed by the Pringle Committee, the Board were expected to establish such a committee in each locality where a law centre was set up. The consultative committee can perform the crucial function of keeping the law centre in touch with local problems and conditions and of helping it to decide its priorities. But although the Government seem to be equivocal about the need for lay participation in running law centres at the local level it seems to be persuaded of the value of having this arrangement at the national level. Legal Aid Board The Legal Aid Board has 12 members of whom only two are practising barristers and two are practising solicitors. Several of the first appointees are civil servants but two at least are ordinary laymen. In England civil legal aid is of course run by the Law Society — under the watchful eye of the Lord Chancellor's Legal Aid Advisory Committee. (The Government have just announced that it intends to implement the recommendation of the Royal Commission that criminal legal aid should also come under the aegis of the Lord Chancellor and therefore presumably within the scope of the Advisory Committee.) In England therefore the scheme gives the professional body the responsibility for managing the scheme but there is a broadly based advisory committee with a lay chairman and a substantial number of other laymen to act as the watchdog — monitoring developments. Some of the evidence to the Royal Commission, notably that of the Legal Action Group, suggested that legal aid should be taken away from the Law Society and given instead to a new Legal Services Commission which would have the task not only of running the legal aid

scheme but of acting as policy maker and review body. The Royal Commission preferred that legal aid should be left with the Law Society but that a new Legal Services Council should be created with the task of keeping under review the provision of legal services in the whole country whether provided by private practitioners or by law centres and whether from the public or the private purse. The Council would have mainly advisory functions though it was also said that it should have such executive functions, if any, as might be allocated to it by the Lord Chancellor. The Irish scheme provides for a very different set-up. The running of the scheme would be in the hands of the Board which would therefore have to make provision not merely for policy management but also establish and run systems to handle the processing of applications. It would run law centres, determine and collect contributions from clients and generally manage the fund. In this proposal the Government has followed the recommendation both of the Law Society and of the Pringle Committee but I am not convinced that it will provide the best answer. In one sense it appears a more accountable system than the English where so much power seems to lie with the professional body. But in fact the Law Society has little real power — its main task is simply one of stewarding and administration. In my estimation there is much value in separating the day-to-day administration of the scheme from the review of policy. That is why in my own evidence to the Royal Commission I urged that the Law Society be left to run the scheme and that the Advisory Committee be given the widest possible terms of reference. This was in fact the scheme adopted by the Royal Commission. Administration of scheme Under the Irish proposals the Board will have the job of day-to-day administration even though most if not all of its members will be part-time. Obviously it will have to employ persons to carry out its administrative functions. I imagine that the membership of the Board is likely to be broad and there will therefore be a variety of viewpoints represented to feed in ideas about the ways in which to develop legal services. But there will be no one outside the Board to act as Greek chorus on a continuing basis. One problem is of course that it would be inappropriate I suppose to ask the Law Society to run a scheme which consists wholly or mainly of salaried law centres. Some concept such as that of the proposed Board was probably inevitable. But ways will have to be found of keeping the Board in touch with continuing developments. One technique that the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee has instituted is to hold conferences at which the main interested parties assemble from time to time on a regular basis to discuss current problems. Those who take part in these conferences include representatives of the government departments concerned, the Law Society, the Bar Council, the Law Centres Federation, the Legal Action Group, the TUC, the Child Poverty Action Group and the National Association of Citizens' Advise Bureaux. Another idea worth attention is the recommendation of the English Royal Commission that the proposed Legal Services Council have regional off-shoots similarly constituted to assess the need for legal and para-legal services in their areas and to co-ordinate regional services and agencies. The model for such regional committees is 77