A judge-led board set up to advise the lord chancellor on criminal legal aid will present its recommendations shortly, the new chair of the Criminal Bar Association has revealed.

The Criminal Legal Aid Advisory Board was set up nearly a year after the Bellamy review on criminal legal aid recommended the establishment of such an independent body.

Its remit is to provide advice on the operation and structure of existing and future criminal legal aid schemes, and to assess how the schemes should adapt to support the criminal justice system and wider objectives of the legal profession.

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The board first met in October 2022. Her Honour Judge Deborah Taylor, who was appointed chair in July 2023 on an 18-month basis, told the Criminal Law Solicitors Association conference last year that the board was ‘not going to be just another talking shop’.

Board members include the Law Society, Bar Council, Criminal Bar Association and Ministry of Justice officials.

New CBA chair Mary Prior KC wrote in her first weekly update that the board’s recommendations ‘are due shortly’.

Prior began her update by noting that the criminal bar has lost 47% of practitioners with eight-12 years’ experience and numbers will continue to fall without substantial, long-term investment.

‘Those that remain are working flat out to try to make a difference. Despite that, there were 1,436 criminal cases in 2023 in which could not go ahead on the day that they were due to start because there was no prosecution or no defence advocate or sometimes both. Without significant input into retention and recruitment, this will only get worse.’

Prior also called for barristers and solicitors to be shown more respect for their role in the criminal justice system. ‘When praise was rightly being handed out to the police, the judiciary and to the Crown Prosecution Service for their managing of the recent public order offences within the criminal justice system, little or no mention was made of the barristers or solicitors with higher rights of audience who conducted the prosecutions and defences of those cases in court.’

 

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