Criminal barristers have voted almost unanimously to back industrial action to disrupt the courts over growing anger over legal aid rates. Over nine out of 10 of the 1,908 members of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) voted in a ballot to refuse to accept what is known as ‘returns’ work after 11 April (94%). In other words, barristers are refusing to cover hearings when other barristers cannot appear which they do ‘as a gesture of goodwill to prop up the criminal justice system’.
The industrial action will further disrupt the courts which are struggling to cope with backlog of cases waiting to be heard. Only last week MPs highlighted the inadequacy of the government’s response to delays and, as reported last week, the Public Accounts Committee pointed out that the backlog had nearly doubled since March 2019, to 59,928. MPs’ were highly critical of the ‘meagre ambition’ of the MoJ’s pledge to cut the number of outstanding cases by less than 8,000 by 2025.
The number of #rape & serious sexual #offence cases waiting over a year to be heard has⏫by over 400% since the onset of the #pandemic
As waiting times increase so does probability that cases collapse as #witnesses & #victims withdraw from the process
👉🏽📖https://t.co/KvFZcK5wV8— Public Accounts Committee (@CommonsPAC) March 9, 022
As reported by the Justice Gap, last month an independent review for the government said the legal aid budget needed an immediate injection of £135m to reverse a huge loss of lawyers. According to the CBA, the new ballot makes it ‘absolutely clear’ that barristers are ‘not willing to be led by a Government timetable that brings no prospect of a settlement until the end of September’. ‘They have already waited too long,’ said the group. ‘Through our labour and our goodwill, we have sustained a chronically underfunded criminal justice system on behalf of the public while suffering substantial reductions in our real incomes and exhausted by the hugely increased demands placed upon us, often for little or no reward.’
