Counting pages would no longer be the method used when calculating barristers’ and solicitor-advocate’s fees, under Ministry of Justice proposals for the Advocates’ Graduated Fee Scheme (AGFS).
The Ministry’s consultation, Reforming the advocates’ graduated fees scheme, closes on 2 March 2017. It proposes to sweep away the current system whereby advocates’ fees depend on the number of witnesses called, and the complexity of a case is decided by the number of pages of prosecution evidence served by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Instead, offences would be classified according to the amount of work typically required and time spent in court. Separate payments would be made for plea and trial preparation hearings, sentence and mentions. Payment would be made for the second day of every trial, and there would be a payment of £300 for trials which become ineffective.
In an introduction to the paper, Oliver Heald QC, courts and justice minister, said the proposals were “cost-neutral”, with no intention to reduce or increase the fees paid. He said the proposed changes were a “simpler, fairer, more modern alternative”.
The Bar Council and Young Barristers’ Committee welcomed the proposals.
Andrew Langdon QC, Chairman of the Bar, said: “These proposals go a considerable way towards restoring career progression at the criminal Bar.
“It removes a number of perverse incentives arising from years of salami-slice and piecemeal cuts. It will better protect newly qualified advocates who under the vagaries of the present scheme are at the mercy of events not under their control.”
Duncan McCombe, Chairman of the Young Barristers’ Committee, said: “There are a few modest drops in the base amounts for payments for some cases.
“But the clear advantage is that young barristers will be paid for their time in court, rather than being paid on an arbitrary basis, and will be paid for each appearance rather than feeling like every other case is a loss leader. The scheme also provides the groundwork for newly qualified barristers to have a sustainable career in their early years, and beyond. The young Bar needs a scheme that incentivises progression to more complex and serious cases.”
However, Law Society president Robert Bourns said the proposals would give senior criminal barristers a pay hike at the expense of their more junior colleagues.
“Changes to the legal aid payment scheme for advocates in the Crown Court were long overdue, but giving a pay rise to the better paid seems to run contrary to the government's own aims of reducing bottle necks in the court system,” he said.
“The government should be investing in the early part of the court process as early advice would reduce the number of cases that go to full trial. The proposed scheme can encourage late changes to defendants’ pleas, drawing out the process and running against the government’s aims of encouraging early guilty pleas.
"Meanwhile, already well paid QCs look set for a pay increase of around ten per cent. The advocates towards the bottom of the pay scale—junior barristers and solicitors—will either stay the same or receive much smaller increases.”
