Issue 145  6th June 2020

This consultation response is written at a time of national and international crisis. Reform of the Advocate’s Graduated Fee Scheme (“AGFS”) is very important to members of the Criminal Bar Association (“CBA”) and to criminal practitioners more widely. Irrespective of the difficulties that the country is facing, there is an obvious public interest in ensuring that there is an adequately funded and sustainable system in place to remunerate criminal advocates...

The consultation proposals amount are welcomed as a modest improvement in those discrete areas identified as “accelerated asks”. They represent a temporary sticking plaster, and significantly more is needed in the future: they are insufficient to establish a properly funded and functioning criminal justice system. Rates of pay for defence advocates remain unacceptably low. Significant improvements will be needed in the wider CLAR on various issues, including brief fees, hourly rates and importantly, annual inflation based reviews in order to create a funding system which is fit for purpose.

Ministers are considering renationalising the entire probation service in England and Wales, the Guardian understands, in the latest twist in a long-running saga to unwind Chris Grayling’s disastrous changes to the sector. Under Grayling’s widely derided shake-up in 2014, the probation sector was separated into a public sector organisation managing high-risk criminals and 21 private companies responsible for the supervision of 150,000 low- to medium-risk offenders.

Last year the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) announced that all offender management would be brought under the state-run National Probation Service (NPS), while contracts for rehabilitation services such as the provision of unpaid work and accredited programmes were to be offered up to the private and voluntary sector. But the Guardian can reveal that the government suspended the competition for contracts last week and after an internal MoJ review it is considering renationalising probation services in their entirety.

The first day of a block listing pilot to help magistrates’ courts hear more cases safely during the Covid-19 pandemic went well, the managing partner of the first law firm participant has said. Firms involved in the pilot will have their cases heard in one go, minimising the number of people in court. Testing began last Friday, when the Kent branch of Tuckers had 13 cases heard at Medway Magistrates’ Court. One courtroom was dedicated to hearing the firm’s cases. One defence advocate and a prosecutor attended in person, another defence advocate appeared remotely. One of the clients appeared remotely using the Cloud Video Platform, another appeared via videolink.

An investment of up to £6m in new software will give a better picture of capacity across the estate, meaning cases are more likely to be heard on time.

Scheduling and listing is currently managed using a variety of systems from paper-based files to tools based on Outlook diaries. The new software will increase the quality of service offered to the public and legal professionals. It will support better use of hearing spaces; reduce administrative tasks so that skilled staff can focus on the more complex areas of hearing management; and provide greater confidence that hearings will proceed when scheduled.

Referrals of suspected modern slavery victims dropped for the first time in four years during the start of the coronavirus crisis, as experts warn the pandemic has meant exploitation is more hidden and has made it more difficult for people to escape their abusers.

The National Referral Mechanism (NRM) — the UK’s framework for identifying victims of trafficking — received 2,871 referrals of potential victims in the first quarter of 2020, a 14 per cent fall from the previous three months, according to new government figures. It marks the first time there has been a decrease since 2016, with the numbers having risen every quarter until now and hitting a record high last year when more than 10,000 potential victims of slavery were identified.