A ‘Hatton Garden’ type burglary now pays less than a shoplifting case and ‘resumption of action’ is ‘inevitable’, criminal defence barristers have warned this week.
Heads of chambers are due to meet at the end of October to discuss what action to take if the Ministry of Justice does not honour its £15m offer in full and compensate for delays in implementing the offer.
In May, the Ministry of Justice 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, Criminal Bar Association 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 voiced concerns about delays to the fourweek Ministry of Justice consultation on the spending increase, which ended last week but had been due to begin in July.
In his weekly message to members, Henley said a criminal case with thousands of pages is paid ‘as if it has less than 200’ while unused material is unremunerated even if disclosed. Fees for ‘guilty pleas and cracks are far below what they should be’ and ‘“shaken baby” cases with multiple experts are paid as if a minor punch up’.
Henley also called for ‘significant investment’ in prosecution fees.
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