£30m needed to raise prosecutor fees in line with defence

Prosecutors’ fees need to be raised alongside those for defending advocates - at an estimated cost of £30m a year, the chair of the House of Commons justice committee Sir Bob Neill has said.

In an open letter to chief secretary of the Treasury John Glen, Neill said any increase to criminal legal aid under the Ministry of Justice’s advocate graduated fee scheme (AGFS) must be mirrored by an increase to CPS fees paid to prosecution advocates.

Neill said: ‘Even before the announcement of the 15% legal aid increase for defence barristers, there was evidence that a lack of prosecution advocates was resulting in an increasing number of aborted trials.’ He added that anecdotal evidence from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) suggested ‘a worsening of the situation’ with reports of trials being relisted from autumn 2022 to summer 2023 or later due to lack of a prosecution advocate.

He said: ‘There have been repeated social media reports in recent weeks from criminal barristers of serious cases... being taken out of the court list at the last-minute despite being fixed for trial for a considerable time because the CPS was unable to find a prosecution counsel willing to take on the case. There have been reports of this happening despite 20 different sets of chambers being called in a desperate attempt to find counsel to take on the case in question. In our view, this is an unprecedented situation, and these reports demonstrate that this is an issue which needs to be addressed urgently.’

Increasing fees for prosecution advocates would mean fewer delayed cases, according to Neil, who added: ‘Unless this disparity with prosecution fees is addressed, then there is a real danger that the government’s efforts [to ease the backlog] will be wasted. In our adversarial criminal justice system, it is vital that both the prosecution and the defence are able to access suitably senior counsel.’

He estimated that increased funding for the CPS of some £30 million a year would provide value to the taxpayer by reducing the number of last-minute adjournments and the expenses that those adjournments carry.

Kirsty Brimelow KC, chair of the CBA, called for an immediate increase in prosecution fees.

She added: ‘There is a crisis of lack of prosecutors, which seems to disproportionately impact trials of serious violence and sexual offences due to barrister shortages, lack of increase of fees for prosecution barristers in over 15 years and lack of required payment for the new government pre-recording evidence policy.

‘Increasingly, prosecutors are not prepared to prosecute in cases where their fee is about 20% less than their defence counterpart. The lack of barristers to prosecute means that justice in allegations such as rape has become a victim itself of government chronic underfunding with three key losers: the rape complainant, the CPS unable to progress their hard-fought for case to trial and the government with its rape review commitments derailed before they have got going.

‘The result of prosecution shortages is that trials are not able to go ahead and are adjourned for months or years or do not proceed as witnesses, victims and complainants give up. This is not a functioning justice system.’

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