English criminal barristers have begun an indefinite strike over pay and conditions, at a time when a stricken criminal justice system is already facing crippling backlogs.
The Criminal Bar Association (CBA) strike will see defence barristers refuse to attend court for criminal cases funded by legal aid, likely worsening backlogs which have already seen over 5,800 alleged victims of violent crime and sexual offences, among many others, forced to wait years before their cases are brought to Crown Court.
The government had offered them a pay increase of 15 per cent in an attempt to stave off industrial action, starting from October — but said this would not apply to cases already in progress, arguing that this would “cost a disproportionate amount of taxpayers’ money”, according to the BBC.
The Criminal Bar Association has rejected this offer — and argued that it is misleading, with the “actual annual increase for specialist criminal barristers” working out nearer to 9 per cent, or as little as 6.3 per cent to 7.2 per cent after “practice expenses” — insisting on a 25 per cent increase in legal aid fees.
The Secret Barrister, an anonymous lawyer-cum-commentator with a high media profile, generally critical of Britain’s governing Conservative Party, has argued that the strike is not a case of “fat cats” trying to chisel money out of the government, but a response to the criminal justice system being ” slashed to the bone” by “years of cuts and chronic underfunding”.
The blogger claimed that since 2010, when the Conservatives first displaced the Labour Party from office, initially in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) has lost 20 per cent of its staff and an astonishing 43 per cent of all courts in England and Wales have closed down, with the sitting days of the remainder “artificially restricted”, with this helping to grow the existing backlog “long before” the Chinese coronavirus pandemic — “which the government takes delight in falsely blaming for the problems”.
“This is not a ‘world-class justice system’, as set out as the vision of the Ministry of Justice. It is not even a functioning justice system,” said Criminal Bar Association head Kirsty Brimelow of the present situation.
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