Addressing three hundred barristers at the Annual Remuneration Conference in London he said:
‘Capping legal aid spend at £2billion and then attempting to make unprincipled cuts within the system, puts quality representation at risk…the Government’s responsibility is to ensure under Section 25 of the Access to Justice Act that there is sufficient representation and sufficient quality for those who cannot provide for it from their own means’. He went on to say: ‘Our obligations as barristers are to assist in ensuring that there are fee schemes in place which assure to those most in need advice of no lesser quality than would be obtainable in the private legal market. The threat of prison sentences, children at risk, and the other evils which flow from family breakdown make thisproposition self evident…without the publicly funded Bar society would be taking a dangerous step backwards’.