Bar chair savages legal aid cuts

Improperly designed legal aid schemes will take us back to a pre-Victorian era of two tier justice, Bar chairman Tim Dutton QC told the Institute of Barristers’ Clerks annual conference.

Arbitrary cost-cutting in family or criminal legal aid could lead to the most needy either not receiving representation or receiving representation of inadequate quality, he said.

“I can think of nothing more distasteful in a justice system than our finding that those who are wealthy are able to obtain better representation than those who are poor and facing family break-up or the risk of imprisonment.”

He also attacked best value tendering (BVT). “It will if brought in for Crown Court or family cases cause litigators and/or barristers to be bidding against each other to a monopoly purchaser of their services on a discounted one case one fee arrangement, or OCOF, or in family cases the even worse acronym Family One Case One Fee or ‘FOCOF’,” he said.

Dutton chairs a Bar Council working group which wants the rule prohibiting partnerships to be relaxed to allow barristers to form associations with solicitors, but not partnerships. “Partnerships conflict barristers out of acting against each other, can reduce competition in geographical areas, and could prevent the public from having access to a wide pool of advocates who can appear against each other,” he said.