Barristers to go on strike at crown courts across England - including Oxford

Members of the Criminal Bar Association are staging the walk-out in protest over Legal Aid rates. They are calling on the government to increase fees by 25 per cent.

At Oxford Crown Court, the three judges sitting will have only a sprinkling of cases this morning. No new trials are listed and only one defendant is expected to be sentenced.

Who is striking?

Members of the Criminal Bar Association, the representative body for criminal barristers in England and Wales, voted earlier this month for strike action.

Of more than 2,000 barristers who voted in the ballot, 81.5 per cent agreed to further industrial action.

Barristers had already been taking a form of action – called ‘no returns’. Since April, have refused to take on last-minute briefs ‘returned’ by colleagues who were originally instructed in the case.

That policy of ‘no returns’ has hit courts across the country. In Oxford, a handful of trials have had to be postponed as a result of the originally instructed barrister being held-up in another trial and unable to ‘return’ the brief.

But the vote to go on strike ups the ante. This week, the majority of defence barristers will refuse to work on Monday and Tuesday. Next week, they will not work for three days, building up to a week-long strike from Monday, July 18.

Why are the barristers striking?

The CBA is locked in dispute with the government over Legal Aid fees – the money barristers receive from the government for representing non-private paying clients.

The body’s members voted to push for a 25 per cent increase in fees and hourly rates.

That follows an independent review of Legal Aid for criminal cases, published late last year, which recommended government increase its funding of the Legal Aid system by ‘at least’ 15 per cent a year – amounting to around £135m in extra investment per annum.

The author of that government-commissioned review, former judge Lord Bellamy, said the extra £135m was ‘the minimum necessary as the first step in nursing the system of criminal legal aid back to health after years of neglect’.

Ministers say they are ‘moving as quickly as possible’ to introduce a 15 per cent increase to fees ‘by the end of September’.

That, the barristers say, would only cover cases that come into the system from the Autumn.

Criminal cases can take years to go from a suspect’s first appearance in the magistrates’ court to their being sentenced after a crown court trial – particularly with a backlog of thousands of cases in the criminal courts.

And as barristers are only paid when the case is concluded,  it could take years for them to see the benefit of any rate increase.

The CBA says it wants an ‘immediate’ increase in the Legal Aid rates.

The organisation points to a ‘crisis’ in the profession, claiming low pay for increasingly complex work has in part resulted in the number of specialist criminal barristers dropping by a quarter in the past five years. In their first three years of practice, junior criminal barristers earned on average £12,200 after expenses.

File image of barristers' wigs Picture: PA (Image: PA)

‘A process of attrition’

Jonathan Green, the head of crime at Drystone Chambers, whose members regularly practice in Oxford, told this newspaper: “It’s been a process of attrition and it’s finally come to the stage where we have to do something about it.”

“It used to be the case you could earn a living at the criminal bar. You were never going to get speedboats or chateaux in the Loire. But you could earn a living wage. Now, particularly at the junior end, you just can’t,” he said.

Mr Green, who has almost three decades of experience as a criminal barrister, added that there was a ‘serious’ recruitment challenge at the criminal bar, with many junior barristers turning to other areas of law or leaving the profession altogether.

That was echoed by senior lawyer Michelle Heeley QC, the leader of the Midlands Circuit and who recently spent two weeks at Oxford Crown Court defending a student accused of sexual assault.

Writing in The Times, she spoke of the impact on junior barristers: “These young and eager professionals work 60-hour weeks and face serious pressure over emotionally difficult cases. As they are paid by the case, they only take home an average of £12,000 a year.”

The bar has been on strike before. In 2014, they staged a mass walkout over government austerity cuts to Legal Aid fees.

But that industrial action was called-off by the CBA when the government agreed to postpone planned cuts to their fees. The body was accused of ‘abandoning’ solicitors, who faced cuts of 17.5 per cent.

Mr Green told the Oxford Mail last week: “We are committed to standing by each other. I don’t think the bar is content with taking anything which is going to come from another arm of the criminal justice system.”

That criminal justice system, barristers say, is in dire straits.

Backlogs and delays

The strike action comes at a time of significant backlogs across the courts. The latest figures show that at the end of December last year there were 400 cases waiting to be dealt with at Oxford Crown Court.

Last year, one in seven trials at the St Aldates court were ‘ineffective’ and had to be adjourned to a later date for various reasons, for example because there was no court time to hear the case or witnesses were absent.

In Oxford last year, one trial had to be pulled from the list at the last minute when it emerged there was no barrister to prosecute the case – prompting the city’s top judge to talk of the ‘desperate’ state of the justice system.

And the problem is not exclusive to barristers. Solicitors, who pick up the majority of cases that come into the criminal justice system, also face the squeeze.

Jan Matthews, the Oxford-based managing partner of law firm Reeds, warned of an exodus of solicitors from criminal law.

“We are probably two or three years past the point of no return in terms of new people coming into criminal law as solicitors,” he said.

“We now have significantly more people leaving year on year than are coming in and in another five to 10 years the criminal practices across the country will not have the solicitors to train to cover police and magistrates’ court work.

“We are seeing that already.

“There won’t be anyone to do it. It won’t be a case of ‘pay them more money’. Pay who more money? We haven’t trained them – they’re all civil solicitors [practising civil law].”

With ‘every month, every year’ that the government did not ‘pump more money in’, the ‘blip’ was getting bigger – and the ‘point of no return’ approaching quicker.

‘Disappointing’

Justice minister James Cartlidge said the decision by barristers to strike was ‘disappointing’.

He said last week: "We encourage the Criminal Bar Association to work with us, rather than escalate to unnecessary strike action, as it will only serve to harm victims as they are forced to wait longer for justice."

The judiciary has – publicly, at least – claimed neutrality in the dispute between the CBA and the government.

The Lord Chief Justice, who told judges last week that barristers who refuse to attend court as a result of the strike should be referred to the regulator to consider potential misconduct action, was heavily criticised over the letter. Dozens of senior barristers – called Queens Counsel, or QCs – accused Lord Burnett of trying to ‘intimidate’ the bar.

Lord Burnett’s office subsequently issued a clarification, saying his original letter had sought to ‘draw attention’ to the warnings given by the CBA to its members ‘that non-attendance might be in breach’ of the barristers’ Code of Conduct.

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This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.  

To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @t_seaward