A significant number of solicitor advocates will not qualify for higher rights advocacy under a proposed ‘bar-centric’ Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA), the chair of the Solicitors Association of Higher Court Advocates (SAHCA) has claimed.

SAHCA chairman Jo Cooper said that advocacy regulator the Joint Advisory Group (JAG), which is made up of nominees from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), Bar Standards Board (BSB) and Institute of Legal Executives (ILEX), has allowed the Bar to dictate policy at the expense of solicitors.

He said he planned to write to SRA chairman Charles Plant to ask him to bring some balance to JAG by nominating a full SRA board member onto it.

At present, the only JAG member who is currently practising and has advocacy experience in the higher courts is a barrister.

Cooper said: ‘In the absence of credible SRA board level representation, JAG [has proposed] a thoroughly bar-centric QASA.’

He added that at a recent SRA-sponsored consultation event, only 10% of solicitor attendees said that their existing practice would meet the scheme’s requirements – with the remaining 90% ineligible on technical grounds for quality assessment at the level they sought.

He said: ‘These figures are devastating. The SRA needs to make its voice heard now, otherwise QASA will be a disaster for solicitors and others working within solicitor type practices.

‘We do not feel our regulator has understood the concerns of its regulated constituency on this.

‘It would be unthinkable for the SRA to permit the exclusion of competent City solicitors from a part of the legal services market at the behest of the bar, but this is exactly what is happening on the criminal side.

‘JAG’s message appears to be that criminal law solicitor advocates of undoubted competence will be excluded from the market altogether if they do not practise like barristers.

‘The SRA needs to make its voice heard on this, and quickly.’