I am writing to comment on an address given by Shadow Attorney General Dominic Grieve QC to a meeting organised by my criminal defence firm, Hine & Associates.

Mr Grieve indicated that should the Conservatives return to power, they would not proceed with the proposed competitive tendering for criminal legal aid contracts. He expressed his support for the current two-tier system that maintains the status quo between the role of solicitors and barristers.

Although he described competitive tendering as ‘massively destructive’, Mr Grieve disappointingly stated that if the current proposals are implemented in the lifetime of the present government, a future Conservative government would do nothing to reverse the process.

With two years of the current regime still to run, and a time-scale of 18 months before implementation, it seems that tendering is set to go ahead, and will be here to stay.

The potential impact on the criminal bar is massive. As solicitors’ fees dwindle, both in magistrates’ court work and crown court case preparation, more and more solicitors firms will be undertaking higher rights work to maintain their fee income, through the use of more solicitor-advocates and recruiting directly from the bar itself.

Three- and five-year call barristers will be attractive to solicitors’ practices. Three-year call barristers retain their higher rights of audience, and with two five-year call barristers in-house, a solicitors’ practice can also offer pupillage.

At the same meeting, Sophie Shotton, outgoing vice-chairwoman of the Young Barristers Committee, could offer little comfort to those present hoping for a career at the bar. She acknowledged that pressure from fixed fees has meant that there is already significantly less work for junior counsel in magistrates’ courts, adding that the junior criminal bar would always have a future for ‘exceptional advocates’.

But are ‘exceptional’ junior advocates tempted to stay at the bar? Traditional career progression for the exceptional leads ultimately to taking silk. Is this a realistic option in the future? Patrick Upward QC, taking time out from a high-profile terrorist trial, pointed out that the days of good living opportunities had gone. He alleged that ‘the legs had been cut off the profession’ and expressed the need to ‘get rid of the shysters running our affairs’.

I believe that, unless the proposed single fixed fee for preparation work and advocacy is scrapped, a more attractive future for those at the bar may lie in the proposed multidisciplinary solicitors’ practice, where barristers can attain partnership in the practice which holds that single fee.

Mr Grieve pointed out that ‘the bar is dependent on the good health of solicitors’. If this is true, events on the solicitor side of the profession over the next 24 months will have enormous implications for the very survival of the criminal bar.