Barristers: legal aid minister raps 'totally unacceptable' behaviour by 'well-paid' professionals

The new legal aid minister has launched a stinging attack on 'irresponsible' barristers who threaten to strike, accusing them of jeopardising attempts to get a better deal for legal aid lawyers.


Speaking at the Legal Aid Practitioners Group (LAPG) conference in Birmingham last week, Bridget Prentice MP insisted that the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) was committed to battling 'in the hurly-burly of competition for public spending' to get more money if necessary, and to allocate resources in the best way possible. She said it was after a system that would survive in the long term.


But she said: 'It is all the more regrettable that this week we have seen a lot of irresponsible talk from some in the bar about refusing work - both defence and prosecution.'


She argued that causing such disruption was a 'totally unacceptable' way for professionals 'who are all well-paid by the standards of ordinary people, and some right at the top of the earnings league', to try and advance their cause.


Ms Prentice warned: 'Behaving in ways which unfairly cast all legal professionals in a bad light makes it less, not more, likely that we can sustain the case for taking forward into the future the principles of the legal aid system I have spoken about.'


The minister's remarks were met by disbelief among barristers. Andrew Hall QC, chairman of the bar's remuneration committee, said: 'When the leadership of the bar has been working very hard to persuade practitioners to take the long-term view, it is irresponsible of a minister to make such comments.'


He said Ms Prentice's attitude had only served to harden opinion, particularly in the midlands.


Representatives from the bar met the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, last week in a failed attempt to broker a compromise that would have seen junior barristers protected from the worst effect of cuts to pay rates.


Mr Hall explained: 'There was a way to deal with this that wouldn't have cost the government a penny, but they walked away from it.'


In a letter to Mr Hall after the meeting, the DCA said it had no reason to change its view that the new scheme for cracked trials and guilty pleas is cost neutral.


Meanwhile, LAPG director Richard Miller told the conference that he is angry that when holes in the system appear, 'the Lord Chancellor's response is to cut fees'.