Authors:Legal Action Group
Created:2022-08-22
Last updated:2023-09-18
.
The Criminal Bar Association (CBA) has today (22 August 2022)
announced that its members have voted to escalate their industrial action from 5 September 2022, when the new prime minister takes office. The ballot, which closed yesterday (21 August 2022), saw 1,808 votes (79.5 per cent of participants) in favour of the escalation. Barristers will not attend court or take new instructions or returns on advocates’ graduated fee scheme (AGFS) cases, and this will continue indefinitely.
The CBA deems the escalation of action necessary because the government refuses to negotiate a fair settlement. It has continued to meet with senior civil servants at the Ministry of Justice, but justice secretary Dominic Raab has refused to meet with CBA members or even its representatives. The final report of Sir Christopher Bellamy QC’s
Independent Review of Criminal Legal Aid (published on 29 November 2021). However, the government proposed the 15 per cent increase to take effect in October, and only to new representation orders made thereafter. With the backlog of criminal cases standing at 58,000 as of April 2022, the increase in fees will not take effect for several years.
Every criminal advocate who has honoured the ballot outcome has made the decision to withdraw their labour with a heavy heart. It is a decision to which we have been driven after years and years of abject neglect of the criminal justice system and the cynical exploitation of our time, effort and goodwill by successive governments determined to deliver justice on the cheap.