A CORRUPT solicitor was jailed for five years yesterday for a "long-standing, skilful and deliberate" fraud of the legal aid fund.

John Tate submitted thousands of bogus green forms claiming fees for work he said he had carried out on behalf of clients.

Newcastle Crown Court heard that the 50-year-old submitted 8,000 bogus claims between 1996 and 1999 using names of clients he met at job clubs some years earlier.

Tate had accepted taking between £150,000 and £200,000 from the public-funded board, but Judge Guy Whitburn said he was satisfied that the actual amount stolen was at least £326,000.

The judge said: "I'm quite satisfied that if the rules had not changed you would have continued this fraud."

Graeme Reeds, prosecuting, said that Tate had opened his firm of solicitors, Tate & Co, in Middlesbrough in 1991.

Two years later, he was introduced through Young Men's Christian Association training as a guest speaker at clubs throughout the North-East. His role was to offer help and advice on benefits and rights for the unemployed.

The court heard he employed his father, Dennis, as a clerk to take notes throughout the advice sessions with job seekers.

A Legal Aid Board investigation was launched against Tate after his business folded in 2000.

Of the thousands of green forms he had submitted, 140 were taken as a sample to be investigated.

Mr Reeds said: "When police contacted a random sample of people whose name appeared on green forms, they could not find one person who received advice at the time it said on the form. All the forms were false."

Tate even continued submitting claim forms stating that his father was the fee-earner, even after his father left the company in 1998.

Tate, of Mayberry Grove, Middlesbrough, pleaded guilty to obtaining money transfer by deception between December 1996 and December 1999