Criminal bar 'holding justice to ransom' - lord chancellor

Justice secretary Dominic Raab has accused criminal bar chiefs of ‘holding justice to ransom’ – blaming striking barristers for prolonging the agony of victims and their families seeking justice.

Hundreds of barristers are preparing to commence full-blown strike action from 5 September after an overwhelming majority of Criminal Bar Association members voted in favour of escalating action over legal aid funding.

Writing in the Daily Mail today, Raab accused the CBA of ‘badly letting victims down’. He said: ‘Leaders of the CBA are now holding justice to ransom – threatening the progress we’ve achieved, causing untold anguish for victims, and preventing the innocent from clearing their names.

‘I’m sure Daily Mail readers share my frustration. The Crown court backlog driven up by the pandemic, but which had fallen as a direct result of action we’ve taken, is now starting to creep back up – as a result of the CBA’s decisions. Ramping up strike action now is needless and indefensible, especially after we confirmed a pay boost that will put an extra £7,000 in the average criminal barrister’s pockets.’

The CBA, which is demanding a 25% fee uplift to prevent further attrition, says it will be years before barristers see the benefit of any fee increase as the government’s fee increase will only apply to new cases.

The first course of action – no returns - began in April, when the Crown court backlog stood at 58,540. According to figures contained in a highly critical National Audit Office report, the backlog increased 23% in the year leading up to the pandemic, from 33,290 on 31 March 2019 to 41,045 on 31 March 2020. It increased a further 48% since the onset of the pandemic, to 60,692 cases on 30 June 2021.

Raab said his message to the CBA was simple. 'We are increasing your pay. Now your actions are only harming victims, increasing the court backlog, and hampering our efforts to make our streets safer. The criminal justice system deserves better. Victims deserve better. So, to those striking, I say - do right by them and please return to work.'

A CBA spokesperson told the Gazette: ‘It is frankly an insult to victims for a secretary of state to talk about delays to victims of crime brought about by our action for justice when it has been this government’s refusal to pay properly for criminal barristers to stay in their job to defend, prosecute and provide the part-time judges the public expects, and the government relies on, to clear rising and record delays and case backlogs.

‘These delays are all of government’s own making, long before we took action to redress the people shortfalls to make the system work.

‘To add further insult to injury for victims of crime, the secretary of state dares to proclaim this month that “our action on rape is working” when all the evidence from his own Ministry of Justice shows precisely the opposite with record and growing backlogs in sexual offence trials across England and Wales right up to the end of March 2022, before the criminal bar took any action.'

Meanwhile former justice minister James Cartlidge, writing in the Telegraph, said the government was left with no choice but to recruit a ‘Crown Defence Service’ that would mirror the Crown Prosecution Service.

Backdating the fee increase to existing work makes no sense, he added. ‘Anyone hiring a self-employed builder would not expect to pay them until the work was done. The same is true for barristers.'

Several barristers have told the Gazette that self-employed barristers do not get paid until the resolution of a case – yet they are waiting ‘literally years’ for trials to come to court.

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