What a nonsensical comment. Barristers’ clerks are well paid and do not need regular public tummy-rubs to validate their existence. There are numerous comparable roles in every industry one can think of, from Executive Assistants to Director-level managers to air traffic controllers, all of whom perform sustained acts of intense and nuanced coordination on a daily basis. They are not “heroes” of the systems they work in – at least, not by dint of their roles, and I cannot believe that their roles are thankless. I bet they get thanked daily in the average workplace. Yes, they deserve a mention, but they are not trodden-on in the manner your comment implies.

You seem to have missed the point completely.

Every day they are having to play a massive game of Tetris with the diaries to ensure that as many cases as possible actually have a barrister to represent one side or the other.

They are the ones who are up against inflexible Courts who won’t allow CVP for a ten minute PTR because counsel is engaged in an over-running trial elsewhere, and get flack for over-loading barristers’ diaries because there simply is no one else available.

They are the ones ringing around fifty plus other Chambers (often without success) to get that hearing covered because otherwise it will be adjourned.

They are the ones ringing around their counsel to see if anyone can cover a Bench Warrant at ten minutes’ notice (where a person’s liberty is often at risk) to “help out the Court”.

They get no thanks and never get a mention.

Criminal Barristers’ Clerks – you are the heroes of the Criminal Justice System in 2023.

I salute you all!

The figures peddled in the strike were carefully aimed at the first three years when aged debt builds up. After that criminal barristers obviously earn enough, as there is plenty of supply in the recruitment market.

Funny thing is that there’s nothing to prove that a barrister from a public defender system would be ‘worse’ than one working from a Georgian townhouse in Temple.

There are so many capable advocates with Oxbridge degrees or very high 2.i’s who don’t get pupillage simply because the places aren’t available. Why would public defenders be less academic or less capable than any other advocates?

If it really were about ‘muh access to justice’ and ‘hoomaan rites’, criminal barristers would be badgering the government for any way to train more advocates to deal with the very real backlog in the courts.

Perhaps they just want to preserve a system that allows their own kids to be able to work from Georgian townhouses too?

How oddly phrased. The proposal of the government on strikes in the new bill is to provide for minimum service levels for a range of public services, as permitted by article 11 ECHR and aligned with the legislation of most of the larger EU economies. You can glue yourself to your own wall with impunity or anywhere where the property owner is happy for you to get such kicks. Strengthening the sanction for those that choose vandalism of art and trespass as a means of protest is an entirely appropriate response as far as the vast majority of voters is concerned.

Some of the most attention-seeking criminal barristers on Twitter complaining about their court fees make no secret on Twitter of the fact that they happen to be married to commercial barristers.

They EARN, but don’t LIVE on what they earn. They continue at the criminal bar because they have multiple income streams between their wealthier partner/parents/inheritances or investments to pay their bills.

However embarrassing, that is the truth. There are huge numbers of criminal barristers who come from privileged backgrounds and aren’t living in poverty just because they earn as much as a teacher.

And your proposed solutions are…?

“Collapse” and “crisis” are just MSM headline fodder to generate the perception of fear.

Yes, amnesties of thousands of accused who are likely to be criminals is a great proposal for a Tory government wanting to throw red meat at Red Wall Brexit types.

The Government is too busy criminalising strike actions and criminalising the act of gluing oneself to a wall.

There are obvious costs savings in the justice bill such as by capping publicly funded rates of criminal defence work at the cost of 5 yr PQE or so. The state needs only to provide a lawyer not a highly paid Rolls Royce defence team. Better still stop funding of the private bar and set up a public defender system, if that could be run more cheaply than the current set up.

One of the problems on the CPS side is that defence make overly burdensome disclosure requests that makes the CPS job virtually impossible.

Nowadays the simplest of cases requires the CPS to download and review tens of thousands of pages of electronic data from mobile phones belonging to
the complainant or the defendant just in case it contains something that assists the defence.

That takes time and person hours that the CPS just can’t afford.

Before smartphones, this wasn’t a problem. That is where the time and resources are being wasted.

Then we have the page count battles where defence demand that the Crown serve (as opposed to disclose) tens of thousands of pages of raw data (most of which is computer code) in order to boost the fee.

The system could be streamlined if the CPS were removed of their burdensome obligations to review all of the electronic data and instead defence be required to submit specific search terms that could automate the process.

Likewise, it should be standard that defence have an electronic copy of their own clients device disclosed so they can do any searching themselves, with only reasonable time doing so being billable.

Finally, as we have had a pandemic, all cases over 3 years old where there is no prospect of a custodial sentence should be amnestied to clear the backlog.

That and reopening of mothballed courts.

Oh and scrap Common Platform- it’s crap!

Just a few suggestions to be getting on with.