England: Barristers seek 15 per cent pay rise

They also want the UK government to establish an independent pay review body to try and bring an end to the repeated industrial disputes that resulted in their strikes in 2014 and 2022.

The demands were part of a plan to deal with a crisis in criminal justice detailed by Sam Townend, chairman of the Bar Council.

Under the last government barristers mounted indefinite strikes that led to the delay of hundreds of trials and a huge backlog of more than 65,000 cases. In 2022 they obtained a 15 per cent increase in fees.

Mr Townend, speaking at a fringe event of the Society of Labour Lawyers, which represents around 18,000 members, said the Bar Council was seeking a “15 per cent increase now to reflect the public sector pay settlement which others have had, including, for example, judges”.

He suggested an “independent pay review, or fee review body to end the five to seven year cycle of industrial disputes as fees have failed to respond to inflation”.

Mr Townend, a former vice-chair of the Society of Labour Lawyers, told ministers: “Finally, if I may, a general warning. What the bar, and I think the public, do not want to hear is a plan of austerity-light or a continuity of cuts, just nicer done. That is not the change that was voted for.

“We know money is tight, and we know that it will take time, but politics is about choices. We must have a vision of a brighter future, a hope of a means to get to swift justice, of access to justice, and to turn around the degraded system of justice that the last government so manifestly left us in.”