Crime Team AGFS announcement
14 Jun 2018
Following the narrow vote by the Criminal Bar Association’s (CBA) members to accept the proposed offer from the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) in relation to criminal defence fees, Garden Court North Chambers’ Crime Team is now accepting instructions in cases with representation orders dated 1st April 2018 or after. We thank our instructing solicitors for their support throughout our action.
However, the criminal justice system remains in crisis and as Angela Rafferty QC, the Chair of the CBA, observed yesterday, acceptance of the MOJ’s offer “is the beginning and not the end of our campaign to improve the broken system we all work in every day. We still face exceptional difficulties, as do our solicitor colleagues. This will not fix the terrible conditions, the unhealthy and unreasonably onerous working practices and the general decrepitude.”
The size of the vote to reject the offer should serve as a warning to the MOJ that they have so far demonstrated little understanding of the depth of the crisis in the entire criminal justice system and that they need to take urgent action to address our continuing grievances – grievances that are wider than just our remuneration and which aim to ensure that the criminal justice system ceases to fail complainants, defendants and the wider public.
