Criminal barristers are awaiting a decision on whether they will be balloted about action if the government does not commit to substantially increase legal aid funding.

Dominic Raab has promised to respond to an independent review of criminal legal aid, which said an extra £135m a year was needed to nurse the system back to health following ‘years of neglect’, by the end of March.

Last week, the lord chancellor claimed in an article for The Times that rushing criminal legal aid reform would open the government up to legal challenges and result in further delays – prompting a furious response from the Criminal Bar Association, which accused Raab of lying over its demands.

It also denied that it was proposing ‘strike action’ over legal aid reforms, saying: ‘We propose withdrawing labour on cases “returned to us” when counsel is no longer available due to work commitments, i.e. where our hardworking and outstanding value for the taxpayer props up a system which only functions with us.’

The CBA has previously said it will ballot members over action if the government did not commit by today to substantially increase funding, after 91% of the nearly 2,000 criminal barristers who responded to a recent survey said it was unreasonable for the government to wait until the end of March to publish its response.

A spokesperson for the CBA told the Gazette they had not yet received an update from the Ministry of Justice, saying: ‘The ball remains in the MoJ’s court for now.’

However, an MoJ spokesperson told the Gazette: ‘We have always said that we will respond by the end of March.’