Criminal legal aid solicitors will find out later today if the government has done enough to save their sector from extinction.

Lord chancellor Dominic Raab is expected to publish the government’s final response to the independent review on criminal legal aid, which recommended a minimum £135m a year to nurse the sector back to health.

Much is riding on what the government announces.

The Bellamy review, published a year ago, recommended an immediate 15% uplift in fees. But the Law Society said the government’s overall package amounted to a 9% uplift for solicitors.

Raab’s initial £135m offer, announced in March, prompted the criminal bar to strike. The Criminal Bar Association had long argued a 25% uplift was required to prevent further attrition of barristers. The CBA secured a £54m deal with Brandon Lewis MP during his short stint as lord chancellor and suspended its action. This led the Law Society to demand parity of funding for solicitors, or it would take the unprecedented step of advising members to shun criminal defence work.

The criminal bar’s revised settlement has also prompted solicitors to consider taking their own form of industrial action should the government’s response today be unsatisfactory. The Criminal Law Solicitors' Association is instructing counsel to look at the legal position and practical options for unionisation. Separately, law firms with criminal legal aid contracts are setting up their own representative body.

Raab has already signalled that new cash for solicitors is unlikely, telling the House of Commons justice select committee last week that an ‘unsustainable’ pay rise would stoke inflation. He is also unhappy about the £54m deal that Lewis negotiated to end the bar’s strike, but told the committee he would not renege on the settlement.

Today's response is likely to focus on the £20m that the government set aside for longer-term reform.

 

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