Bar Council urges 6% increases to guilty plea and daily attendance fees
Criminal legal aid proposals from the government have been criticised by the Bar Council as “not backed by evidence” and “fundamentally unfair”.
The Bar Council made the comments on 27 August 2026 in response to a much-delayed Ministry of Justice consultation on reforms to the Advocates’ Graduated Fee Scheme (AGFS).
The government has proposed increasing fees for guilty pleas by 30%, while making no increase to daily attendance fees for trials. The Bar Council has rejected that approach and called instead for both fees to rise by 6%.
The 6% increase was recommended by the Criminal Legal Aid Advisory Board AGFS working group following its analysis in January 2026.
The Bar Council said the government should explain the evidential basis for departing from the working group’s recommendation, particularly its proposal for a 0% increase to daily attendance fees.
The representative body also raised concerns about the effect of the proposals on cases already in the criminal courts backlog. It said the proposed increase would not apply to ongoing cases, meaning any increased funding would only be realised in future years.
It described that approach as “fundamentally unfair”, noting that “no other profession is paid out of public funds in this manner”.
The Bar Council said criminal legal aid last received a cash injection in 2022, following Sir Christopher Bellamy’s Independent Review of Criminal Legal Aid, which identified a legal aid and access to justice crisis.
Public funding for justice in England and Wales fell by 22.4% in real per-person terms between 2009-10 and 2022-23. The Bar Council said inflation has since meant that legal aid fees are now, in real terms, no better than they were before the 2022 increase.
On 2 December 2025, the former Lord Chancellor announced additional investment of up to £34 million, including VAT, each year in criminal legal aid fees to address a shortage of criminal barristers. The Bar Council welcomed that investment but described it as only a relatively small step.
Bar Council Chair Kirsty Brimelow KC said the proposed lack of an increase to daily attendance fees would disproportionately affect rape and serious sexual offences cases because these are usually trials.
She also said the number of criminal KCs had decreased by around 25%, arguing that the proposal would not attract them back to criminal practice and could lead more to leave.
The Bar Council said this could mean more adjourned cases for complainant victims.
It also called for the government to apply the proposed increase to the existing 80,000-case backlog rather than only new cases. Brimelow said otherwise it would be incorrect for the government to say it was “pulling every lever” to reduce the backlog.
The Bar Council’s consultation response makes four principal calls: reinstating the working group’s recommendation of 6% increases for both guilty plea and daily attendance fees; applying all fee increases to ongoing cases and the backlog; treating the full £34 million as additional investment, with the £3.6 million 2022 spending review shortfall funded separately; and establishing an independent fees review body, or similar mechanism, to keep criminal legal aid fees in line with inflation.
For barristers, the central issue is therefore not simply the proposed increase to guilty plea fees, but whether funding for trial work will also rise and whether increased fees will apply to cases already progressing through the courts.
The Bar Council said an independent fees review mechanism would help prevent criminal legal aid fees falling behind inflation and reduce the risk of repeated funding crises.