BVT (Best Value Tendering)
Well let’s start off with the good news! BVT (Best Value Tendering) has apparently been shelved
until 2015 at the very earliest with a consultation (another consultation) due sometime in the
Autumn of 2013. I may have been a voice in the wilderness on this but I could never, for the life of
me, understand why the powers that be were so hell bent on the idea in the first place. It seemed to
me a classic way, of antagonising the profession, actually putting firms out of business and storing
up a whole heap of trouble with high court judicial reviews etc etc. Don’t get me wrong I’m not an
advocate of the way they are going about reducing legal aid fees but it seems to me that the only
real approach is to alter the fees payable by means of primary legislation, for example, the proposals
to cap Defendants Costs Orders at legal aid rates as proposed in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and
Punishment of Offenders Bill and amendment of fees generally by way of secondary legislation. The
classic recent example being the Criminal Defence Service (Funding)(Amendment) Order 2011 which
came into force on 3rd October and reduced, or abolished, certain fees for both litigators and
advocates alike. I would have thought that the gradual introduction of fixed fees for everything
would be a far better and fairer way of controlling the budget than BVT. I wouldn’t want you to
misunderstand me on this point, I am not in favour of reductions in the fees payable for legal aid but
it seems to me that of the two options leaving it to the market place to decide who stays and who
doesn’t seems a more palatable approach than simply refusing firms a contract as a result of a
tendering process. I just have this awful feeling that in the tendering process bids will be put in
which quite simply are unsustainable. Anyway, enough of this, apparently we have to keep BVT on
the ‘worry list’ but at least it’s gone down a few notches.