Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, it would not be appropriate to second guess, as it were, what the director of legal aid casework might decide on any individual case. Suffice to say that the purpose of having Clause 9 in the Bill is to take account of cases where the client would find considerable difficulty in presenting their own case and where there is, indeed, a complexity—these are not necessarily cumulative—in the important issues at stake. The fact that we estimate that some £6 million would be spent in dealing with these complex and lengthy cases is indicative of the fact that we do take—