The news comes as a family law expert expressed fears that proposed civil legal aid system reforms, released last week, did not include measures to "clamp down" on the use of expensive expert witnesses in family cases.
Dave Emmerson, chair of the Solicitors Family Law Association's legal aid committee and a solicitor at Edwards Duthie in London, said: "Medical practitioners take a disproportionate amount of legal aid in public law." The Legal Services Commission said the consultation would start in the autumn. Annual fees for expert witnesses now amount to 100m, or around five per cent of the UK's 2.1bn civil and criminal legal aid budget.
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