Bar chief looks over his shoulder

If you want to get the government off the ‘lefty lawyer’ agenda, the best way is perhaps not to quote the late Tony Benn to ministers. But that’s how incoming bar chief Nicholas Vineall KC began his inaugural speech in front of a packed audience at Middle Temple this week. The former Viscount Stansgate famously said that whenever you came across someone in a position of influence, you should ask them three things: who put you there, who pays you, and how do we get rid of you?

Vineall directed the questions to himself. So, seated in the front row, justice minister Mike Freer, attorney general Victoria Prentis KC and solicitor general Michael Tomlinson KC, learned that to get rid of Vineall before his term is up, ‘You’ll have to look at the Bar Council Constitution’.

In an hour-long speech, Vineall went on to outline the challenges that lie in the year ahead, which include criminal legal aid remuneration, the court backlog, and equality and diversity.

On regulation, he extended an olive branch to the Bar Standards Board, despite its dismal performance in handling investigations and enforcement. He was ‘cautiously optimistic’ about progress under its new chair, Kathryn Stone.

He was less diplomatic about oversight regulator the Legal Services Board, which he directly accused of a ‘campaigning ambition’ to become the sector-wide regulator. Noting that the LSB is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Ministry of Justice (not many people know that), he invited the MoJ to carry out a review of its mission-creeping quango.

About the only topic Vineall did not cover in his epic was climate change, despite a colleague standing outside the Middle Temple bearing a placard asking: ‘When will the bar act on the climate crisis?’