The legal profession appears to be resistant to proposals that its members collect fees from those deemed able to pay a share of their defence costs ("Hundreds of lawyers protest at £4m cuts", The Herald, November 14).
Perhaps this reluctance is based on the experience of those who practise NHS dentistry who have toiled under a similar scheme for decades. It would be difficult to find many dentists who believe a method of funding which penalises those patients who are in work actually increases the standard of dental treatment, or is the optimum method of improving dental health.
A system where patients exempt from paying dental fees can have whatever treatment they want unrestricted by cost, yet patients who pay taxes have their treatment based on and restricted by their disposable income, is patently unfair.
That dentists are used indirectly as tax collectors is an unnecessary burden on the profession. The creation of exempt-from-payment status introduces unnecessary complications and opportunity for fraud. I imagine a similar system to cover legal aid will be beset with the same problems.
David J Crawford,
131 Shuna Street, Glasgow.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article