News

The Ministry of Justice’s decision to push ahead with its two-tier contract model for criminal legal aid is of concern to all lawyers engaged in criminal defence work, Bar leaders have said.  

The MoJ’s response to the consultation Transforming Legal Aid: Crime Duty Contracts  was published on 27 November. 

Chairman of the Bar, Alistair MacDonald QC, has pledged to “continue the excellent work” started by his predecessors Maura McGowan QC and outgoing Chairman, Nicholas Lavender QC, in preventing further cuts to legal aid, in order to defend a “proud and independent profession”.  

His inaugural speech on 8 December paid tribute to the “united voice of the profession” in the form of the Criminal Bar Association, Bar Council and Circuit Leaders, and the “determination and courage of the Bar” in resisting “what would have been disastrous changes, had they been implemented”. 

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) plunged into £300m of civil legal aid cuts without considering evidence of the consequences, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has heard.   

Dame Ursula Brennan, Permanent Secretary of State at the MoJ, admitted to MPs on 4 December that the Ministry had been unable to assess the impact of the cuts because of the speed with which they were required: “Government was absolutely explicit that it needed to make these changes swiftly. Therefore, it was not possible to do research about the current regime before moving to the cuts.” 

“Mild rebukes to counsel” and “gentle comments in judgments” are failing to get the message across that too many skeleton arguments remain “poor quality” and of “excessive length”, Lord Justice Jackson has warned.  

Delivering the public reprimand in Inplayer Ltd & Anor v Thorogood [2014] EWCA Civ 1511, Jackson LJ said that in spite of previous judicial protests and the threat of costs penalties “so far, unfortunately, this message has failed to reach the profession...with regret, I must speak more bluntly.” 

The President of the Family Division has made trenchant observations on the lack of public funding for legal representation in a child matter in which both parents “because of their own problems are quite unable to represent themselves”.   

In the matter of D (A Child) [2014] EWFC 39, the local authority wished to place a very young child for adoption. 

Our long commitment to the rule of law is a “great export” and of central importance to the economy, the new Attorney General told delegates at London Law Expos on 14 October.   

Speaking on the future of the legal services sector, Jeremy Wright QC said: “When you do business in the UK you know that it will be on the basis of tried and tested legal foundations.” 

The Bar Council’s Bar Placement Week, which aims to boost social mobility within the profession, has scooped the Award for Diversity and Inclusion at the Halsbury Legal Awards.  

Extended from London to Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, the initiative gives high-achieving Year 12 students from low-income backgrounds a week’s work experience and training in advocacy. 

The Court of Appeal has held that the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) is lawful. Rejecting each of the grounds put forward by the four criminal barrister appellants, it accepted that although the scheme is “controversial”, “it is no part of the court’s function to express any view about the merits of the scheme”.   

Instead the Legal Services Board is “entitled to a substantial margin of discretion in relation to the question whether the Decision [to approve the scheme] was proportionate”. 

New figures from the Legal Aid Agency show there is no need and no scope for further cuts, the Bar Council has claimed.   

Welcoming the quarterly legal aid statistics as a “more transparent approach to the workings of legal aid”, Nicholas Lavender QC, Chairman of the Bar, said: “Crime has fallen and so have criminal cases going to court. This means that the cost of legal aid has fallen. Crown Court advocacy fees have already been cut by an average of 21% since 2007 (or 37% in real terms).” 

The Ministry of Justice’s latest legal aid consultation in response to a High Court ruling has been criticised by practitioner groups as over-hasty and tokenistic.  

Mr Justice Burnett ruled that the Ministry’s previous legal aid consultation process was “so unfair as to result in illegality” and quashed its decision that 525 contracts would be available under the forthcoming tender for criminal legal aid defence services. He ordered a “relatively short” consultation on the research which informed its reduction of the number of duty provider work contracts from 1,600.