Debate contribution: Criminal Bar Association: Withdrawal of Services

Debate contribution by Mrs Naomi Long on 12 January 2026.

MLA

Mrs Naomi Long

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

12 January 2026

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Ministerial Statements

Heading

Criminal Bar Association: Withdrawal of Services

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5311906

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I set out a few reasons why mediation is not the answer. First, the action was announced within four days of the criminal Bar agreeing the road map and that the working group would continue to take the issues forward. There is no consistency. You cannot negotiate with people who move from here to there and from there to here so that you cannot tell what the next ask will be. On every occasion when people have raised issues with me, I have tried to lean in and deal with them, but it cannot keep being a moveable feast. I sit with one group from the Bar who tell me one set of issues and agree that we need to deal with them, and then, when that group resigns, another group from the Bar comes in and we end up getting another narrative altogether. Mediation will not fix that. That is the first thing to say. Secondly, some of the issues here are non-negotiable. I cannot give an uplift to fees without evidence. I have a duty to ensure value for money. Those are non-negotiable points. The issue of paying people out of the public purse twice for the same time is non-negotiable. Mediation will not solve that. Thirdly, I went to Judge Burgess and asked for his advice on mediation. I did so out of courtesy, because he has invested in the process intensively over the past year and, I would argue, has brought forward significant change not just for the criminal Bar but for the Bar as a whole. His advice was that the first thing that would happen with mediation is that people would be asked for the very evidence that they have not presented to the working group. That block to resolving the issue will not go away because there is mediation. That is the challenge that we face. In 2016, when there was mediation with the Department, the scenario was different: the Department was planning to apply significant cuts to legal aid and went for mediation in the absence of any other structure. It actually reduced the cuts that it was planning to legal aid. The situation is different.

The truth about younger members of the profession is that they do not earn enough money because they do not get enough work. It is not the fees that are the problem but the hoarding of cases by senior members of the profession and the fact that junior barristers do not get the opportunity to work. The refresher fee pilot was designed explicitly to ensure that we try, at each court tier, to move people up the court tiers so as not to have senior barristers dipping in and out for work in the Magistrates' Court and to ensure that that pathway is clear for junior barristers to gain experience. They can then get further experience as junior counsel in the Crown Courts and take over in that way. That was the purpose of the refresher fee pilot, but we could not get agreement, because people still wanted to get a full-day fee and, during the time that they were being paid, to hop about other courts and claim additional fees for that work. That is not sustainable or negotiable: it cannot happen.

I mentioned the various third-sector organisations — the community and voluntary groups — that already provide that service, whether that be the victim and witness care unit in the PPS, Victim Support, the NSPCC young witness service, ASSIST NI, Nexus, Women's Aid or others. All those organisations are in constant contact with the PPS and trying to reach out to each person about their case in order to give them the necessary reassurance and support. You are right that it is a profound disappointment. There are a number of cases that have been identified publicly, such as the murders of Natalie McNally and Chloe Mitchell and others, in which people have been waiting for a long time to see justice done. They will be delayed. Cases are being delayed in which people are still at risk of harm. From my perspective, there are two things. The first is that we will be meeting voluntary and community sector partners. I have invited them, along with the PPS, to meet me to discuss where they may be able to provide more support as an interim measure. The second is that the PPS and others, including Victim Support and the victim and witness care unit, have been looking very carefully at the range of cases being delayed in order to identify the most sensitive cases, the cases in which the victims and witnesses are most vulnerable and the cases that have been in process for the longest time in order to determine whether, at the very least, a derogation could be negotiated on those cases. Members will recall that that was tried last time, unsuccessfully — I think that, in the end, only one case received a derogation. I do not wish to prejudge the outcome, however, and hope that, notwithstanding my desire for the Criminal Bar Association to resume full service with immediate effect, it will, at the very least, look favourably at the cases identified and allow them to proceed through the courts.

879 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:17 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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