§ Mr. GarnierTo ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs what assessment he has made of the average cost per case of(a) defence counsel and (b) solicitors for the defence funded by the Criminal Defence Services in (i) 2001–02 and (ii) 2002–03. [149442]
§ Mr. LammyIt is not possible to provide information in the form requested for the following reasons
(a) work under the General Criminal Contract, carried out for hearings in the magistrates courts, is paid for by a different mechanism from hearings in the Crown court. Therefore there is no continuity of data which would readily enable us to identify total payments in cases heard in the magistrates court, and which are subsequently transferred to the Crown court and;(b) standard fees in the magistrates courts paid to solicitors may include money subsequently paid by a solicitor to unassigned counsel for publicly funded work. Therefore is not possible to obtain average case costs split between solicitor and counsel.