The Criminal Bar Association (CBA) is consulting heads of chambers about potentially resuming direct action protests unless the government fulfils its promise of extra funds.
In May, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) offered criminal barristers an extra £15m for publicly funded defence work in the Crown Court in return for the Bar suspending its boycott of reforms to the Advocates’ Graduated Fee Scheme.
The deal was struck to prevent criminal barristers from engaging in an additional ‘no returns’ protest, under which barristers would refuse to cover for each other on cases where there was a timetable clash.
A 51.5% majority of more than 3,000 criminal barristers voted to accept the MoJ offer. However, CBA chair Chris Henley QC says the current form of the scheme, when applied to 2017–18 figures, would fall £4m short of the promise. He has also complained about delays to the four-week MoJ consultation on the spending increase. It was originally pitched to begin in mid-July, did not start until 31 August and has now been extended by a further fortnight to 12 October.
In his message to members this week, Henley said: ‘£15m must mean £15m. Every week that passes saves the MoJ money. The 1% [increase in fees] scheduled for April must be brought forward to compensate.
‘The delay is causing increasing anger, as are some of the fees now being billed under the new scheme.’
Henley said a barrister was recently paid a fee of only £900 for a guilty plea in a multihanded rape and grooming case with 15,000 pages of evidence. ‘Fees at this level for many, many hours of work, and the heavy professional responsibility, will decimate career progression and threaten the viability of chambers,’ he added.
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