Bar Chairman calls for new partnership in legal aid
23 June 2008
Chairman of the Bar Council, Tim Dutton QC, will today call on the Government to forge a ‘new partnership’ with barristers to enhance the legal aid system in the public interest.
Addressing three hundred barristers at a conference in London, he will say:
‘Capping legal aid spend at £2billion and then attempting to make unprincipled cuts within the system puts quality representation at risk…the Government’s responsibility is to ensure under Section 25 of the Access to Justice Act that there is sufficient representation and sufficient quality for those who cannot provide for it from their own means’.
He went on to say:
‘Our obligations as barristers are to assist in ensuring that there are fee schemes in place which assure to those most in need advice of no lesser quality than would be obtainable in the private legal market. The threat of prison sentences, children at risk, and the other evils which flow from family breakdown make this proposition self evident…without the publicly funded Bar society would be taking a dangerous step backwards’.
- ends –
Notes to editors:
1. For more information, or a copy of Tim Dutton’s speech, please contact the Bar Council Press Office on 0207 222 2525
2. The full conference programme is as below:
Saturday 21 June 2008
Hotel Russell, 1-8 Russell Square, London WC1B 5BE.
P r o g r a m m e
09.45 – 10.15 Bedford & Wharncliffe Suites
Registration / Coffee
10.15 Woburn Suite
Welcome & Introductions
Timothy Dutton QC – Chairman of the Bar
Michael Bowes QC – Chairman of the Remuneration Committee
David Spens QC – Leader, South Eastern Circuit
10.30 – 13.00
Woburn Suite
Michael Bowes QC: Introduction and general context for the session, highlighting particular relevant issues.
Professor Stephen Mayson: The Bar’s future as a referral profession:
how many pipers and what’s the tune?
Professor Martin Chalkley: Pricing advocacy services: no stone unturned?
Practitioners’ views (general Q & A).
Moving to Contractual Terms of Work
12.00 pm – Jalil Asif and Andrew Mitchell QC on the need to move to contractual terms, IT and other practicalities, withdrawal of credit and cash accounting.
12.15pm - Practitioners’ views (general Q & A).
13.00 – 14.15 Wharncliffe Suite
Lunch
With opportunity to visit sponsors stands
14.15 – 15.30 Workshop Sessions
(CPD Forms will be circulated during these sessions)
Crime
Woburn Suite
[Michael Bowes QC
Gary Brown
Gregory Dickinson QC
Alexandra Healy]
- Very High Cost Cases: new and future schemes.
- Graduated Fee Scheme and Fees Protocol: review of operation.
- Death of the ‘mention’ and wasted costs Family
Kensington & Chelsea
[Stephen Cobb QC
Lucy Theis QC]
- Developments with the Family Graduated Fees Scheme Civil/CFA
Bloomsbury
[Richard Clayton QC
Paul Kirtley
Martin Seaward]
- CFAs: latest developments
- Fast Track Trial Fees
- Developments in Civil Legal Aid Financial Issues
Sponsored by Place Campbell
Grafton Room
[Nick Avis & Simon Arthur of Place Campbell.
Richard Vallat]
- the calculation of barristers’ fees for tax purposes
- the use of TPA arrangements for chambers
- financial planning towards retirement
15.30 – 16.00 Woburn Suite
Conclusion
