UK Law Articles
These articles are reproduced from old newspapers. Whether you are looking for old articles about the Lord Chancellor's Department, or trying to find stories on solicitors, judges or courts, the law teacher article database is here to help you. You will find these articles useful for writing your law essays, law dissertations and law coursework.
The Times
February 11 1999
Bar could pay taxpayer's bill for new QCs
BY FRANCES GIBB, LEGAL CORRESPONDENT
BARRISTERS who are promoted to Queen's Counsel are earning an average of nearly £250,000 a year by the time they are appointed.
The selection process can cost the taxpayer £80,000 a year, but costs the successful applicants just £150. However, a question tabled in the Commons by an MP who used to be a solicitor has brought a reply that the system may be changed.
The figures for what barristers earn before being made QCs were released to Andrew Dismore, Labour MP for Hendon. They are bound to fuel the case for the QC selection system to be funded by barristers. At present the lengthy annual selection procedure known as the silk round occupies several months of civil servants' time and is borne by the taxpayer. But earlier this week the Lord Chancellor indicated that he and his Minister of State, Geoff Hoon, wanted to look at recovering the cost of the system from successful applicants. Lord Irvine of Lairg said: "There is an analogy in the way that the civil courts recover their costs through fees charged."
About 10 per cent of the 8,000 barristers in private practice have taken silk. On average barristers apply 2½ times each but some have applied as many as 25 times. Unsuccessful applicants were earning far less on average than successful ones, with average gross earnings of £165,000, confirming the belief at the Bar that earnings are a factor in the chances of success.
Mr Dismore, who used to brief barristers, said that the whole system needed to be made much more transparent so that people knew why they were turned down.
There also needed to be a system of checks on the competence of QCs. "The Bar says this is a kind of Kitemark but there is no way of knowing whether a QC is still up to the mark, no means of appraisal or even an L-plate system. Once appointed, they can go on until they are 90."
More than 100 MPs have signed a motion tabled by Mr Dismore seeking a review of the silks system as part of the present reform of the legal profession.
A spokesman for the Bar said that barristers would be perfectly happy with paying for the Queen's Counsel selection system. "We have suggested this to officials ourselves, some time ago," he added.
General Pinochet has run up an initial legal bill to the British taxpayer of more than £100,000, not counting the two hearings before the House of Lords, Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, has told the Commons. In a parliamentary reply to Cheryl Gillan, Conservative MP for Chesham and Amersham, he said that fees of counsel totalled £123,625, but £18,000 was recoverable under a costs order made against General Pinochet in the High Court, leaving a bill of £105,000 so far. Costs for the House of Lords hearings - estimated to be at least £500,000 each - have yet to be decided. Judgment is expected in two or three weeks' time.
