Why lawyers are striking

BRIXTON BUGLE COMMENT

A problem for the world, not individuals

It will surprise few people that Brixton Road is, once again, at the top of a list of dangerous places to breathe.

Planned reductions in local bus services will do nothing to help.

But their cause, a refusal by central government to fund affordable public transport in its capital city, is a frightening example of criminal negligence.

Transport in London is amongst, if not the most, expensive in the world.

Yet, once again, responsibility for doing something about an issue that is killing people is left to individuals.

Of course, if they are not be destroyed by ever-increasing pollution, proliferation of plastic waste, destruction of natural habitats across the world, and accelerating climate change, the lives of everyone will have to change.

It is the role of government in a civilised society to explain, organise and fund the changes we need to save the planet and the lives of people who live, and, we pray, will live on it.

Instead, we have one whose members are obsessed with reducing the role of the state at exactly the time that it is needed most.

Deadly pollution on Brixton Road – and elsewhere – is not just a problem for Brixton or Lambeth.

It is national, indeed worldwide, problem that can only be tackled by action on a national and worldwide scale.

If you have a complaint about the Brixton Bugle, see bit.ly/BBB_complain for how to pursue it

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Our legal system is STEFAN ROUSSEAU/PA IMAGES at risk of collapse

A criminal defence barrister protesting outside the Houses of Parliament in July this year

A senior and highly experienced criminal lawyer working in South London explains the causes of a strike in the legal profession

Why are criminal lawyers going on strike and should you care? How, if at all, does it affect you and your family? Isn’t the 15% increase in spending offered by the Government more than enough?

For those who work at the coal face of criminal justice, the whole structure is crumbling, as a result of government policy and determination to spend less money.

Spending less has been a huge success for the government. In 2011-12 the Government spent £1.37 billion on criminal defence work,

By 2019-20 the headline figure had come down to £ 918m. In 2020/21 it had again reduced to £617m.

These figures include 20% VAT which goes straight back to the Treasury. It also includes payments to experts. It includes payments to solicitors and barristers. The money paid to the lawyers has to cover office rentals, business rates, accounts departments, secretarial support, insurance, practising certificates, training, office equipment, computer programmes, etc and only after they are dealt with can it pay salaries. Income tax and National Insurance then go straight back to the government, and so the net figure spent on criminal defence work was far below the headline figures.

The government commissioned an independent report by Sir Christopher Bellamy back in 2020 to see whether the cuts were causing any problems. This was at a time when inflation was below 2%. The answer was a resounding “Yes”. He reported that defence rates are some 30-50% less than those considered reasonable by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), and that there should be an immediate cash injection of at least £135m.

What happened instead is that there was a reduction of a further £300m in annual spend and the government has only now said that it will begin the process of increasing fees by the end of September 2022.

This means any cases which have already started will not receive an increase of any amount. The government has announced an increase of 15% or £135m. The Law Society says that the actual “increase” is far less than this.

The backlog of Crown Court cases has just been published and now amounts to 58,271. In March 2019 the number of outstanding cases was 33,290 . In June 2021 there was an additional backlog of cases in the magistrates courts of 364,000. None of these cases will receive any increase in payment at all.

A significant factor in the backlog has been the closure and sale of court buildings such as Camberwell Green Magistrates Court, Balham Youth Court and Blackfriars Crown Court.

Another factor has been the government’s limit on the number of days that Crown Courts are able to “sit” – ie hear cases– on the pretext that every day a court sits costs money and the important thing is to save money. The Government sets in advance the maximum number of sitting days to be permitted.

Cuts to police budgets have meant that cases can take years from the date of arrest until someone is either charged with an offence or are told that the investigation is over and they will hear no more about it.

For example, a client appeared at court on 24 February 2021, pleaded not guilty, had a trial fixed for June 2022 and, as the Crown Court did not have capacity to “list” the trial when June came around, has now had it adjourned until August 2023.

This means that witnesses in this case will have had to wait over two and a half years in order to be able to attend to give evidence.

A defendant who denies the allegation will have to wait two and a half years to have the opportunity to clear their name. And, as far as the solicitor and the barrister are concerned, they have to be able to fund the case for two and a half years before being paid, and then won’t benefit from the so-called 15% increase.

It also means that they had to be fully

prepared for the trial taking place in June 2022 and the barrister will need to prepare all over again in August 2023. If the original barrister isn’t available in August 2023 they will receive nothing at all for the preparation they carried out for the trial not going ahead in June 2022. So how much does a solicitors’ firm get paid to represent someone at a police station on Christmas Day accused of rape? Let’s say it takes them 90 minutes’ travel; they wait at the station for the officers to get their act together for another one hour; and then five hours in and out of interview. The accused is released under investigation and then reinterviewed eight months later requiring a further number of hours travelling and waiting and a further interview. The figure is currently a fixed fee of £218.09 plus VAT and reasonable fares. This is for the whole investigation and not per police station attendance. This can be less than £20 per hour: not as a fee for the lawyer, but a sum of money to pay for the firm’s overheads before paying the lawyer. The fee payable to the solicitors’ firm for these two attendances on a rape allegation, and all the paperwork in between, is the same as if they had gone to the station once to represent someone witnessed by store detectives stealing a melon from Sainsbury’s. For someone accused of domestic burglary and going to the Crown Court, having a two-day trial, requiring the solicitor to visit the client in prison on several occasions, and prepare all the paperwork, the fee payable to the solicitors’ firm is £423.26. If the client is advised that the evidence is very strong and that they should plead guilty the fee is reduced to £184.70. The closest women’s prison is at Bronzefield, Ashford in Middlesex, a good four-hour return trip. The hourly rate for travelling and waiting was reduced to zero many years ago on the basis that solicitors’ offices were bound to be close to the courts and prisons. Now that Holloway Prison is a block of flats and many of the courts have closed, there has been no reinstatement of the rate. A lot of work carried out by defence lawyers is paid even less than this. For example, earlier this year I represented someone whose age could not be easily determined. A client appeared at court on 24 There were no fewer than five hearings at the magistrates court, February 2021, pleaded not guilty, and a referral to social services, before the court was able to make and had a trial fixed for June 2022. a ruling as to whether he was a child or an adult. One of these As the Crown Court did not have hearings took all day as the prison did not deliver the defendant to capacity to ‘list’ the trial when court until after lunchtime. The fee paid for these five hearings June came around, it has now been amounted to £150 – which works out at less than £30 per court visit adjourned until August 2023 with no extra payment for the correspondence and phone calls. The average age of a duty solicitor is over 49, and between 2018 and 2021 the number of solicitors under the age of 35 plummeted by almost 35%. There are now 1,067 firms of solicitors in the country with a legal aid contract. Ten years ago there were 1,652. Younger lawyers are leaving defence practice altogether for the better salary and prospects as prosecutors, or other areas of law, or leaving the professions altogether. The age of criminal lawyers is increasing and experienced lawyers continue to leave the profession and firms close down. Victims and suspects in criminal cases are left for month after month and year after year waiting for their fates to be decided by the police and the courts and the politicians simply don’t appear to care. I receive emails from the Legal Aid Agency headed “Dear Supplier” – which just about says it all.