The cases arose in response to the ongoing strike action by criminal barristers disputing fees for defence work in the Crown Court. According to the Criminal Bar Association, several senior judges have refused to extend custody time limits where there was no defence barrister due to the strikes.
Giving judgment in R (DPP) v Crown Court at Bristol & Anor [2022] EWHC 2347 (Admin), Dame Victoria Sharp P said the court could not hear the substantive case due to administrative delays in processing legal aid applications.
Dame Victoria said: ‘The serious consequences of the errors that were made in relation to the provision of legal aid in these cases should not be underestimated. The court's directions on expedition have been undermined, the time of the court and the parties has been wasted and the resolution of an issue of immediate importance to these and other custody time limit cases has been delayed.’
Meanwhile, former justice secretary Dominic Raab has recently asked the Law Commission to review the laws governing appeals for criminal convictions and acquittals.
Writing in this week’s NLJ, however, LSE Professor Michael Zander KC warns that any tweaking of statutory tests on criminal appeals are a waste of time. He writes that the issues that will dominate the review are predictable.
‘Altering the statutory test was tried in 1968 and again in 1995 to no effect,’ he says.
‘There was nothing wrong with the test in the 1907 Act or the 1968 Act or the 1995 Act… The problem lies not in the formulation of the test, but in the Court of Appeal’s approach to the test.’
He notes that the Criminal Appeal Act 1907 gave the convicted person ‘the possibility of persuading the Court of Appeal that the jury got it wrong. The unfortunate reality is that the plain import of this has never been accepted by the judges’.
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