Justice Secretary Chris Grayling: Criminals should be made to pay legal costs

 
WEST END FINAL

Get our award-winning daily news email featuring exclusive stories, opinion and expert analysis

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

Britain's highest paid criminal lawyers are to have their fees slashed by 30 per cent as part of a government bid to save taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds.

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said the cut was being introduced because the most expensive “Very High Cost Criminal Cases” were eating up a “disproportionate” amount of legal aid.

He said some trials were costing as much as £15 million with the best paid lawyers earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.

So to save public money, he said that lawyers’ fees, which can be as high as £500 a day for advocacy and £150 an hour for preparation, would be reduced by nearly a third.

The reform, announced today in a government consultation, is one of a package of measures intended to save £220 million from the £1.7 billion legal aid bill by 2018. Other changes include overhauling the fees paid to barristers in crown court hearings so that it becomes less profitable to prolong cases. Competition will also be introduced to drive down costs by reducing the total of 1,600 law firms and other organisations that conduct legal aid work.

The moves are likely to attract strong criticism from barristers and solicitors, whose leaders have already expressed concern about the impact of legal aid reforms that came into force this month.

But Mr Grayling said he was determined to stop public confidence in legal aid being “destroyed” by excessive costs and loopholes which were being exploited by criminals.

“Some lawyers earn hundreds of thousands of pounds from just one or two cases, and these cases can themselves cost up to £15 million each,” he said. “We cannot close our eyes to the fact legal aid is still costing too much. It is not free money, it is paid for by hard-working taxpayers, so we must ensure we get the very best value for every penny spent.”

Today’s consultation says that “Very High Cost Criminal Cases” — which usually involve fraudsters, drugs barons or other organised crime bosses — cost taxpayers about £92 million in 2011/12.

One barrister earned £320,000 from just two such cases, while in 2010/11 three barristers earned £1.5 million between them. Officials said that the planned 30 per cent fee cut and other changes will mean that a barrister who currently earns £235,000 in legal aid during a year will instead receive around £165,000.

Further reforms announced today will introduce a residency test to stop newly arrived migrants receiving civil legal aid and restrict the right of prisoners to use legal aid to bring claims against the Government.

It will also become harder to obtain public funding to bring judicial review cases and civil legal aid claims.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT