Young barristers voice concern over family legal aid cuts
18 June 2008
Young barristers would be driven away from important child protection work if legal aid cuts announced today are brought in by the Government.
The Ministry of Justice has published a consultation paper on family legal aid, which asks for feedback on proposals to cut legal aid for such cases by £13 million over two years.
Julia Beer, the Chair of the Young Barristers’ Committee, said:
‘Publicly-funded barristers work incredibly hard to represent some of the most vulnerable members of society. They are public servants whose work within the community is vital to the justice system, and who earn very modest sums, equivalent to or less than those earned by other public servants.
‘For the Young Bar student debt is now a fact of life – the average undergraduate leaves University with over £20,000 of debt before they have even embarked on the expense of training for the Bar at an additional cost of over £12,000 including living costs.
‘If fees continue to be eroded it will be financially unsustainable for even the most publicly spirited Graduate to be called to the Bar with a view to undertaking publicly-funded work. The unavoidable consequence will be that quality will be driven out of the publicly-funded justice system - the ultimate losers will be the public who in the long term will be denied access to quality representation.
‘The impact of further cuts on those junior practitioners already at the publicly funded Bar and servicing high levels of student debt will be extremely damaging. When it is considering its short term budgetary targets the Government must stop and properly consider the long term consequences and the damage which will be done to the public’s access to justice.
