Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the change in the number of full time and part time criminal barriers was from 2019/20 to 2020/21.

Data on the number of criminal barristers is available in the published Data Compendium which you can find here [link] on the Criminal Legal Aid Independent Review page. We are working on making the 2020/21 data available.

As part of the Criminal Legal Aid Review, MOJ worked with the Bar Council and other stakeholders to combine key datasets which were summarised in a published Data Compendium. This shows that the number of self-declared full practice criminal barristers in England and Wales who carried out some publicly funded criminal work, was 2,780 in 2018-19 and 2,690 in 2019-20 (Table 5.3). The number of barristers who completed any public criminal work in 2018-19 was 3790 and 3680 in 2019-20 (Table 5.3). We are working on making the 2020-21 data available.

The pandemic and the drop in the number of cases in the Crown Court in recent years will have had an impact on the numbers of criminal barristers completing work, which has been reflected in the figures. This is because legally aided work is demand led and volumes depend on the number of cases requiring a barrister. Authorisation to practice data from the Bar Standards Board also suggests that some criminal barristers have been diversifying their legal practice away from crime.

We are reforming the criminal legal aid sector to put it on a sustainable footing for years to come. Criminal legal aid lawyers are set for the biggest pay boost in a decade as we are spending an extra £135 million every year – in line with an independent review of the system.