As the article states Legal Aid costs about £2bn a year with half of that going on criminal defence. This is not peanuts! and anyway barristers are really actors who do it because they like dressing up in funny clothes. I have never met a poor one yet.

Its market conditions in motion, HM Government has pitched a bid which is too low if as noted in the article that not one single barrister has agreed to the lowered amounts, if such cases cannot be brought to court in a fair way then its a result of the low bid, the markets will rule as always.

On the subject of criminal legal aid, you really do have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

You just see a bottom line figure and assume it is a lot of money, without understanding any of the complexities behind it.

Of course, this is what the Government want you to do.

Well it would be helpful if you could provide some detail to prove that you do know what you are talking about because so far it is just your opinion.

So far your opinion is based on assumptions. You have assumed that I have no idea of criminal legal aid, you have assumed I am not aware of the complexities of criminal law and you have further assume that I believe what the government want me to...whatever that means.

I am not taken in by government spin but neither am I taken in by a very rich and powerful Temple lobby.

The government has listened to the Law Society and have made changes to their initial proposals. The proposals require better efficiency and will initially consider better use of technology – for example holding short hearings by telephone or web or video-based applications. It will also consider ways of cutting the number of pre-trial hearings that require defendants in custody and advocates to attend court. This is not aimed at reducing hourly pay when working - but reducing cost that could be avoided.

Leveson’s review is expected to make recommendations for changes to the Criminal Procedure Rules to maximise efficiency and support the implementation of any changes proposed.

My comments were aimed at the barristers and not the solicitors who in many cases do earn very little when doing legal aid work.

Not answering my questions Elpers.

Typical Tory .

Quote: Lord Elpers "I think you are mistaken. You have chosen an example of greed working. For a serious fraud case to be stopped after defendants claimed they could not get adequate representation because of cuts to legal aid is a first. What a great defence. The government has reduced the legal aid fees in very high cost cases (VHCC) by 30% so we now have barristers refusing to take VHCC because now a QC will only earn about £100,000 for working on it and a junior barrister will now earn only £60,000. These latter day Rumpoles may be feeling just a slight pinch but you can hardly say this is austerity.'" it's a good job you haven't relied on figures from an untrustworthy source with form for overestimating barristers personal income isn't it. www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/r ... 032014.pdf Oh.........

Quote: Lord Elpers "I think you are mistaken. You have chosen an example of greed working. For a serious fraud case to be stopped after defendants claimed they could not get adequate representation because of cuts to legal aid is a first. What a great defence. The government has reduced the legal aid fees in very high cost cases (VHCC) by 30% so we now have barristers refusing to take VHCC because now a QC will only earn about £100,000 for working on it and a junior barrister will now earn only £60,000. These latter day Rumpoles may be feeling just a slight pinch but you can hardly say this is austerity.'" it's a good job you haven't relied on figures from an untrustworthy source with form for overestimating barristers personal income isn't it. www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/r ... 032014.pdf Oh.........

A thing or two about qualifying as a barrister.

The quickest way to do this is, generally, to do a qualifying law degree. This lasts for 3 years. You then pay a whopping £17K to do the Bar Professional Training Course (formerly the Bar Vocational Course). Which takes a year.

The next stage is possibly the hardest in the whole process. You have to get something called pupillage, which is basically an apprenticeship year working as a trainee barrister, or pupil as they are called in the profession. So that's 5 years in total before you are a proper barrister, assuming you go straight through the system without any delay.

Pupillage is hotly contested, with chambers frequently getting 200-500 applications per pupillage on offer. Statistically speaking, your chances of getting a pupillage are around 20%, and if you don't get one within 5 years of completing the BPTC you start looking for a new career.

Assuming you want to work in crime expect to be paid £12K - £15K for your pupillage year (compared with £40K in a commerical set). Once you complete this you are then a fully qualified barrister. Hopefully the chambers you did you pupillage at will take you on, but they might not. In which case you are looking for a new chambers.

Assume you are taken on. So, you have made it and are ready to start earning the big bucks. Wrong!

You are self-employed. You fund all your own expenses. You fund all your own professional development. You will travel all over the country doing y little hearings in return for peanuts. Before you are allowed to do anything half-decent.

Instructing solicitors will be slow in paying you, your clerk will not chase them because the chambers you are at will want work from them. And you will not chase them for fear that they will not send you future work. (I know people who were receiving cheques in 2012 for work carried out in 2009.)

You will be up all night prepping cases and you can kiss goodbye to a social life or other half.

Eventually you might get some good cases, but even then don't expect to earn much more than £25K in your first couple of years. Being self-employed, you will have to make your own pension contributions and there is no holiday pay.

After around 2 years you will realise that the bloke selling second hand Mondeos down the local car garage is making more money then you, and you will either diversify you practice away from criminal law, or leave the profession altogether.

I have friends practising crime who are 5 years qualified. They earn around £40K per annum before tax, possibly slightly less. Legal Aid pay rates are so poor (not been increased since the mid 90s) that it is very difficult to earn more.

The only people earning much more are very experienced (10 years + qualified) and probably working on serious cases all the time. Or people doing the VHCC stuff.

The junior end of the independent criminal Bar is absolutely stuffed. And the going rate for a junior CPS barrister is about £35K.

Either way, there is bugger all money in criminal law. The average earnings of a criminal barrister are about £37K before tax. And people are leaving to do other stuff in droves.

You probably think this is a good thing, and that there are too many 'fat cat' lawyers. And whilst £37K may be a decent salary in Hull, it is bugger all in London.

And trust me, when you are the one picked by up the police for something you haven't done, you will be demanding the best representation. And you won't get it. Because anyone half-decent will have left to practise something else worth doing.

In the alternative, you may find yourself in crown court being represented by a solicitor-advocate. They have never done a pupillage and get their Higher Rights of Audience on a 3 day course with a quick exam at the end. And it shows.

Seems like the free marketeers ain't so keen on a free market when it costs them money...

It would be nice if HM Government could apply the same principle of "We have a sum of money in mind and we won't pay you a penny more" to, for instance, housing benefit.

So with them not being over-keen on funding local authorities to provide affordable long term rents they could issue private landlords with a cheque every month and tell them what the rent is going to be this year, and next etc etc - a quick tweak of the law would be all that is required to compel private landlords to accept the government valuation of what a rent should be according to what HM Government can afford to give out in housing benefit and if HM Government send a single tenant to occupy a two bed property then the landlord stands the bedroom tax too. Private landlords would then obviously have the option to opt out and find their own tenants on the marketplace, or opt in and have a guaranteed supply chain.

See how things will work when I'm in charge ?

More and more stats are becoming available which makes you point of view a very pessimistic one. The latest GfK-NOP consumer confidence index last week showed overall confidence at its's highest level since June 2007. The optimists outnumber the pessimists about their personal financial position over the last 12 months, and about the country's prospects. This would not happen if most were feeling as grim as you and Labour suggest.

The Labour market numbers give further evidence, apart from showing the continuing strong rise in employment, they show that the benefits of the recovery are not only well spread but believe it or not the highest paid are perhaps lagging behind!

Private sector pay in the last three three months figures was up by 2% - which was ahead of CPI inflation (1.6%). The private sector accounts for 81% of employment. Of this manufacturing was up 3.2% on a year earlier, construction was up 3.1% while wholesaling/retailing/hotels and restaurants (all usually lower payers) was up by 3.5%. These not only outstripped CPI inflation but also RPI inflation (2.5%)

Interestingly finance and business pay was up just 0.1% dragged down by falling earnings in financial services - the opposite of what Labour would have you believe.

The rise in GDP is well spread between the different sectors of the economy and is benefitting the majority of people. The longer the recovery goes on, the more those benefits will spread. Of course no one can say if the recover will continue as we have the election next year with a risk of a change of government and direction and also a possible rise in interest rates.

Don't you just love completely meaningless statements like that

An excellent summary that tallies with my experience. In addition to that, someone I know had to write off £10000 in unpaid fees as she would have been taxed on them after a certain period, even though she had no chance of getting them for the reasons you give. This after the law was changed to tax barristers on billed fees, rather than earned/paid fees.

Unfortunately the media portrayal of fat-cat barristers is now the pervading view, much like welfare "scroungers" and feckless immigrants.

Thats pretty much in line with every other form of self employment where taxation is made on profit based on annual turnover including any outstanding creditors at year end.

I hope you are right, however stats on earnings are, I believe, still largly derived from quarterly surveys of a selected range of businesses by the ONS, my business was one of them and indeed one of the questions was "Are you more optomistic" which in itself is pretty meaningless because you wouldn't be investing your own money, your house, and the family horse on something that you weren't optomistic with in the first place.

It always puzzled me why the ONS relied on a survey targeted at one specific employee within the business (a random sample but one that your stats had to be based on constantly after that) and not genuine monthly income tax returns, presumably the ONS never had access to those records and presumably HMRC still don't give them access - so we're stuck with a system that measures whatever you feel like putting on the form without ever having to prove what you've just written but with the threat over your head that if you don't send it back then it was a criminal offence.

Rather amusingly the person in my business that they selected as a sample was my brother and of course we always told the truth about his earnings and optomism.