"Barristers at war with Irvine over fees cut" 

     Lord chancellor to offer QCs £125 an hour for legal
     aid cases 

     Clare Dyer, legal correspondent
     Monday March 26, 2001
     The Guardian 

     Barristers are fighting the lord chancellor over his plans to cut
     defence QCs' legal aid rates in the most expensive criminal
     cases from £300 or more an hour to £125. 

     Lord Irvine is determined to reduce the burden to the taxpayer of
     the 1% of cases - mainly fraud, murder and drugs cases lasting
     more than 25 days - which consume 40% of the legal aid budget
     for crown court cases. 

     Under the current system, barristers submit a bill at the end of
     the case for whatever they think their work is worth. Costs
     judges in the courts decide whether to allow the bill in full or
     knock something off. 

     Lord Irvine believes the costs judges are often too generous and
     the cost to the taxpayer too uncertain. The Bar Council has told
     him that costs judges regard hourly rates of £300 plus as
     reasonable for defence QCs. 

     The Bar says the serious fraud office pays prosecuting QCs
     between £125 and £215 per hour, and the crown prosecution
     service between £120 and £175 an hour. 

     For barristers defending in fraud cases, Lord Irvine proposes
     average hourly rates of £125 for QCs, £100 for juniors (non-QCs)
     supported by a more junior barrister, and £70 for juniors acting
     alone. For non-fraud cases, QCs will be paid £105 an hour and
     leading juniors £85. 

     These rates will amount to a 40% cut for defence lawyers and
     25% for prosecutors, the Bar claims. 

     As part of the crackdown on fees, Lord Irvine recently intervened
     in court assessments of fees in two of the most expensive fraud
     cases of the 1990s - the Maxwell case and the prosecution of
     Abbas Gokal, who was convicted of fraud after the collapse of
     the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. 

     In January the courts ordered four QCs - Michael Hill and Clare
     Montgomery from the Maxwell case and Colin Nicholls and
     Philip Hackett, who defended Gokal - to hand back a total of
     £90,000 in legal aid fees. 

     The Lord Chancellor's Department has also passed on to the
     Bar Council the names of more than 100 barristers reported by
     the courts for over-charging. 

     All have had their legal aid bills cut by at least 50% in the last
     two years. 

     Mark Stobbs, head of professional standards at the Bar Council,
     said: "It was clear to us that in the vast majority of cases there
     was no element of dishonesty or incompetence. There were
     about 30 which we thought we ought to look at further." Those
     found guilty of dishonesty could be fined, suspended from
     practice or disbarred. 

     Over the last few months the Bar has fought a hard battle with
     the lord chancellor on two other fronts: over his plans to
     introduce a range of set fees for family work and to extend a
     similar scheme already used for criminal trials of under 10 days
     to those lasting from 11-25 days. 

     Lord Irvine originally proposed to cut family barristers' fees by
     15-20% but the Bar persuaded him to make a number of
     changes, limiting the cut to only 5%. Barristers, who claim the
     cuts will be much deeper for the more complex cases, are angry
     that they coincide with increases of 10-25% for family law
     solicitors to stop them deserting legal aid family work. 
 
     The extended criminal scheme for cases lasting up to 25 days,
     which was due to come into force next month, has been
     postponed while officials deal with objections by the Bar's
     negotiating team. 

     The annual report of the Bar's complaints commissioner,
     published today, says 84 of the 569 complaints against
     barristers in 2000 came from the Bar Council itself, compared
     with only 15 of 431 in 1996. The increase results from a
     continuing drive against barristers who fail to pay for insurance
     against negligence claims and "those barristers who are alleged
     to have overcharged for their services in criminal legal aid
     cases", the report says. 

     The report discloses that a new power to suspend from practice
     barristers who are thought to be a danger through illness,
     alcoholism or drug abuse has been used in three cases. Two of
     the barristers have been suspended pending disciplinary
     proceedings and the third case is still unfinished.

     From "The Guardian" an English broadsheet 

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     "Perceptions" note:

     More examples of different laws for the elite:
     If an ordinary person commits a theft or fraud of 
     even small value they are probably sent to jail by
     (pervert? see http://www.perceptions.couk.com/laworjustice.html)
     UK judges -
 
     ["judge = old barrister who's never been caught"
     - a lawyer's own definition ]

     - but if a barrister commits fraud, theft (or hard-drug 
     offences) or worse, he is only gently reprimanded / fined
     by other barristers.

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     evidence page for 

     http://www.perceptions.couk.com/laworjustice.html
     http://www.perceptions.couk.com/subindex.html#barristers

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