Criminal barristers will continue to strike, claiming the Government’s offer of a 15 per cent fee rise is “nothing new” and “it will still be years for that money to land”.
Court walkouts began across England and Wales earlier this week in a dispute over pay and conditions.
Criminal barristers will receive a 15 per cent fee rise from the end of September, meaning they will earn £7,000 more per year, the Ministry of Justice said on Thursday, in a bid to stop the action.
But the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) told the Standard the fee increase was announced back in March, and the only change is that it’s being fast-tracked, with the legislation required being laid in July so that legal professionals begin to see the pay rise before the end of 2022.
A CBA spokesman told the Standard: “The statement tells us nothing new and crucially it does not change the overall timetable when criminal barristers could expect to see any uplift having any benefit to their takehome pay.
“It remains late 2023 or 2024 for any new payments on new instructions, only to land by which time hundreds more barristers would have left specialist criminal work.
“The way the uplift is being proposed for only new instructions and beginning this autumn, means that the backlog of well over 58,000 outstanding criminal cases log jammed in the Crown Courts will continue to pay out on the old rates.
“It will still be years for that money to land given the time it takes for cases to progress through a broken system.
“We’ve already lost a quarter of barristers to specialist criminal work over the past five years as they cannot sustain the assault on their remmuneration and working conditions.”
The Ministry of Justice said in response it hopes the CBA will go to the negotiating table, adding criminal barristers earned a median fee of £79,800 before expenses in 2019-20.
Criminal solicitors will also receive a 15 per cent increase for their work in police stations and magistrates’ and youth courts, with further multimillion-pound reforms to solicitors’ pay still under consideration.
Justice minister James Cartlidge said: “Our energetic efforts to tackle the courts backlog are working but the strike action by criminal barristers threatens all that progress, despite the very generous pay offer on the table.
“The typical criminal barrister will earn an extra £7,000 a year from September, so I urge the CBA to accept this offer to stop victims having to wait longer for justice.”
A walkout on Monday – the first of 14 days’ action planned for the next four weeks – meant that some courtrooms sat empty, while others were able only to swear juries in before adjourning cases until later in the week, when lawyers were available.
Barristers on picket lines accused the Government of not listening to their concerns about the criminal justice system, and are angry that a proposed pay rise of 15 percent would not kick in immediately or apply to backlogged cases.
A No 10 spokesman told PA agency: “It remains disappointing and regrettable and it’s the case that strike action will force victims to wait longer for justice, especially when we’ve been working to clear backlogs from the pandemic and have seen those reducing.”
