THE criminal justice system faces widespread disruption next month when QCs join hundreds of barristers in refusing to appear in criminal trials.

The threat of chaos across England and Wales, with trials being halted or adjourned, comes after the collapse of talks between Bar leaders and the Lord Chancellor and his officials on rates of pay.

Hundreds of solicitors will also back the barristers. The Law Society will say today that solicitors are entitled to refuse to step into trials to replace barristers.

The nationwide action — which now looks certain to go ahead — would have the same impact as a strike, although it is not co-ordinated and the Bar insists that it is not industrial action as barristers are selfemployed and cannot strike.

Many trials and pre-trial hearings will be postponed and judges will be laid off.

Last week David Spens, QC, the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, wrote to 4,000 barristers specialising in criminal cases saying that he will refuse work under the new costs regime.

The Lord Chancellor, he said, had declined to withdraw or defer cuts in legal aid rates that were announced in July without warning. “I regard this as unacceptable.”

From October 1 fees for representing defendants will be cut by between 1 and 46 per cent. “The result,” Mr Spens said, “is unilaterally to impose a severe and arbitrary impact on the livelihoods of a substantial number of barristers when there had not been the slightest intimation that any such outcome was in prospect.”

Mr Spens, listed last week as being in the top ten legal aid earners, accepted that the decision to decline new work from next month was far easier for him than for juniors as he had cases already in the pipeline. However, his decision will act as a signal to other QCs to support junior barristers, who handle the smaller trials on rates that have been frozen for eight years.

In a second letter Guy Mansfield, QC, the chairman of the Bar, told all heads of chambers that talks over the pay cuts had effectively broken down.

He said that the Bar had argued that the cuts announced in July were “un-necessary, inappropriate and ill-timed”. They introduced a discrepancy between prosecution and defence work, reduced the mark-up for longer cases and were creating “justifiable anger amongst criminal practitioners”.

But the Lord Chancellor had maintained his position that the “same quantum of savings had to be found” and that the only solution was to replace one cut with another of equal value. Mr Mansfield added: “This was, you will understand, not acceptable.”

The savings are being imposed as a result of an overspend by officials on the £2 billion legal aid budget.

The Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, argues that the cost of criminal legal aid has risen steeply in recent years and that the average payment to individual barristers has also gone up. He has set up a full-scale review under Lord Carter of the funding of criminal cases, but that will not report until January.

A rally on Friday of hundreds of barristers from the Northern Circuit at the JJB Stadium in Wigan was told that, for some hearings, barristers were earning as little as £12 an hour. If they did preparation work for a trial that did not go ahead because the defendant pleaded guilty at the last minute, they were paid £46.

The guidance from the Law Society says that, if courts ask them to perform the advocacy duties of barristers who fail to turn up, they can decline.

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