Although the Legal Services Commission states that it will be able to find suppliers for all the contracts it needs, the fact remains, as Keith Vaz MP put it to the Constitutional Affairs Committee on24 February: "We have a Legal Aid Crisis .

If the Minister thinks that we, or the legal profession, will accept the Bill as the answer to the Legal Aid Crisis, she will have to think again.

The Government also need to concentrate their efforts on issues such as the Crisis in Legal Aid.

Many practitioners say that the proposals to reintroduce the means test for criminal legal aid under the Criminal Defence Service Bill will do little to resolve the Legal Aid Crisis gripping this country.

If, despite our general support for the Bill, the Minister thinks that we or the legal profession will accept the Bill as the answer to the Legal Aid Crisis, she will need to think again.

Incidentally, if Ministers spent less time trying to defend the legislation, they might be able to sort out the problems in their own Department, such as the Crisis of Legal Aid, which impacts on all our constituents.

While the Government surround us with legal guarantees and add new criminal offences to the 3,000 offences they have introduced in the past 12 years, there is nothing in the measures put forward to deal with the Crisis in Legal Aid, particularly in family cases, and the 23 per cent cut that the Government propose in publicly funded criminal defence work.