The Consortium of Expert Witnesses to the Family Courts has appealed to solicitors for feedback on the effect of fee cuts, according to a report in the Law Society Gazette in January. According to the Gazette: “The group believes there are already difficulties in obtaining access to qualified experts and has objected to lower rates of pay in London compared with the rest of the country.”

The latter point refers to a Judicial Review called for by the group late last year. In a letter to consortium members, its convenor, Dr Judith Freedman, said: “We have been fighting the Government over their cuts to Legal Aid and to expert witnesses’ fees for over two years. However, the Government has capped all expert witness rates and, bizarrely, they have set the rates for experts whose office addresses are in London at one third lower than elsewhere.

“Now that the Government’s funding order is in place, we are pursuing legal action. One of the arguments we are making in our application for Judicial Review is that the Government made their decisions with an almost total absence of data. We also are arguing that these cuts will prejudice cases against vulnerable people who are on Legal Aid.”

Under the regime the non-London hourly rates for a neurosurgeon and a neurologist would be £171 and £153 respectively, but their London equivalents would receive £90. The rates can be exceeded in exceptional cases.

The application for Judicial Review, although specifically aimed at fee discrepancies, is also effectively an attack on the proposals as a whole. It is part of an almost-universal opposition to the Government’s proposals.