Does tendering create travesties of justice?

Legal aid in criminal proceedings exists to avoid defendants being presented as victims of an overbearing state, which assumes that ‘the two sides have access to roughly equivalent resources and expertise’ (Young and Wall, 1996). Recent governments have however focussed on value for money, which ignores political debate about what actually constitutes value in specific circumstances. It is against this background that the Ministry of Justice released its consultation paper including proposals to introduce Price Competitive Tendering (PCT) in most criminal proceedings.