Criminal law barristers warn of potential judicial review over QASA scheme
Criminal law barristers are prepared to launch judicial review action if the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) goes ahead, legal regulation website Legal Futures has reported.
In a response to the final QASA consultation, the Criminal Bar Association warned that until it was satisfied that the scheme was lawful, its nearly 4,000 members “acting in the public interest, will not engage with implementing it”.
The response claims that:
- There has been regulatory overreach by the Bar Standards Board, which is imposing the scheme through the barristers’ code of conduct. The BSB is bringing in QASA alongside the Solicitors Regulation Authority and ILEX Professional Standards.
- Regulatory changes “must meet such necessity as is identified” and QASA will not achieve the goal of raising standards of criminal defence advocacy.
- The scheme aims to provide “a cloak of respectability” for contracting for publicly-funded criminal defence advocacy funded on a ‘one-case, one-fee’ (OCOF) basis. The Criminal Bar Association warned that if this happened, it would lead to lower standards and “the independent referral bar [would] be destroyed… contrary to the public interest”.
The CBA meanwhile said it “could not countenance engagement with a QASA scheme which included plea-only advocates”. Inclusion of QCs in the scheme was also sharply criticised on the basis that it reduced the rank to a “purely ceremonial honour”.
The scheme is set to be introduced in January 2013.
The full Legal Futures story can be read here.
