Holding a trial is extremely expensive, and is not going to get cheaper. Not only does the Human Rights Act add a new, time-consuming dimension to both prosecution and defence; but high-profile cases, involving fraud, terrorism or organised crime, are often complex, may involve at least half a dozen defendants and require sophisticated security arrangements.

Some trials, especially those appropriately known as very high-cost cases that are estimated to last 41 days or more, become so mired in bureaucracy and legal confusion that they drag on for many months or collapse under the weight of their own complexity. More than 50 per cent of Crown Court legal expenditure is consumed by these trials, which make up 1 per cent of cases, and the Government is under pressure to reduce costs and manage the process more efficiently.

In particular, several big terrorist cases have been delayed because of foot-dragging by defence lawyers who appeared intent on prolonging pro- cedures. The Government is therefore proposing to give judges the power to order the withdrawal of a defendant’s representative where there appears to be a conflict or interest “or where it is considered that the barrister or solicitor lacks sufficient capacity, which threatens the efficient conduct and progress of the trial”.

Such an order could be made at any stage before or during the trial, and the judge could call for comments from those involved. If he goes ahead with sacking the defence lawyers, the defendant would have three weeks to find other counsel. He would not normally be allowed to pick a lawyer who was already acting for a co-defendant.

This is dangerous territory. The Government understandably wants to stop these protracted trials — there are currently 83 — spiralling out of control. It must also be infuriating to find that a trial that has already lasted for months is further delayed by incompetence or by a conflict of interest. But giving judges the power to sack the defence lawyers strikes at the heart of an accused’s rights to proper representation.

It is also a worrying precedent. The Government insists that it wants only to speed up complex trials and manage them more effectively. But there are other ways to achieve that end. If it is the barrister who is abusing court proceedings, a judge ought surely to have sufficient experience and discretion to reprimand the counsel himself or rule out inadmissible remarks and tactics. If it is the solicitor’s firm where there is a conflict of interest or lack of capacity, that should be dealt with by the Law Society, the body responsible for upholding professional standards.

Equally worrying is the way that this change has been introduced. The Government says that it wants to soli-cit opinion from all interested parties. But it clearly does not want much public debate: the proposals have been slipped out in August, with no prior announcement, amid hopes that they can be dealt with in hugger-mugger.

There may, indeed, be a problem with terrorism trials where all the defendants insist on representation by a firm that they consider sympathetic. But to introduce such an abrupt break with legal tradition in order to deal with an individual firm is foolish and unnecessary. Most solicitors and barristers may think this has little to do with them. They are wrong. It touches the tradition of criminal justice.They should speak out against the idea now.