The Guardian reports
Criminal barristers in England and Wales have voted overwhelmingly to take industrial action beginning next month in protest over levels of legal aid funding.
A ballot by the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) saw 94% of votes in favour of refusing to accept returns – where a barrister steps in to represent a defendant whose original barrister is unable to attend court – from 11 April.
The move is likely to add to the already substantial backlog in the crown courts, which stood at 58,350 cases in figures published last month.
The CBA described the usual acceptance of returns as “a gesture of goodwill to prop up the criminal justice system”.
After the results of the ballot – based on votes by 1,908 members, out of 2,400 criminal barristers – were published on Sunday night, the CBA’s chair, Jo Sidhu QC, and the vice-chair, Kirsty Brimelow QC, said the current government timetable brought no prospect of a new legal aid settlement until the end of September.
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