Dominic Raab: I wasn't wrong to oppose barrister pay demands

Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has accused criminal barristers in England and Wales of doing "significant damage" to the legal system by striking over pay earlier this year.

He told a committee of MPs the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) had behaved in an "irresponsible way".

The strike was suspended in October after the government offered a new pay deal.

The CBA says the action was necessary to prevent the collapse of the criminal justice system.

The strikes began in June after years of complaints from barristers that cuts to legal aid - which makes up most of their pay - had squeezed their income.

The industrial action was stepped up in September, when the CBA started an indefinite, uninterrupted strike.

But in October, barristers voted in a ballot to accept a 15% pay rise, pausing long-running strike action that had delayed court cases.

The deal was struck by Brandon Lewis, who was brought in by Liz Truss to replace Mr Raab as justice secretary, during her brief period as prime minister.

Mr Lewis offered barristers a package of measures which went much further than what had been put on the table by Mr Raab, who was brought back as justice secretary by Rishi Sunak.

The deal included an immediate 15% rise in fees for government-funded defence work. There was also a promise that this would apply to 60,000 cases in the unprecedented national backlog.

Mr Raab was questioned about his handling of the pay dispute by MPs and peers at a session of the justice select committee on Tuesday.

The justice secretary and deputy prime minister had not met the CBA during its industrial action, but junior ministers had done so regularly.

Given the dispute was swiftly ended by his short-lived successor Brandon Lewis, Labour's Lord Turner asked Mr Raab if he was up to the job of justice secretary.

Lord Turner asked: "If you'd not been sacked lord chancellor, they'd still be on strike, wouldn't they?"

In reply, Mr Raab said: "I made my position clear, I don't look back on it and think that I was wrong."

He added: "I certainly don't believe for a moment that that was a warranted strike. I think it did significant damage. I think the CBA behaved in an irresponsible way."

Kirsty Brimelow KC, chairwoman of the CBA, said barristers will "continue to work constructively with the Ministry of Justice to implement long term reform to defence legal aid".

She said the pay deal was "a landmark movement from government but it remains a first step towards properly funding the criminal justice system".

But she said the CBA's strike action this year was "sadly was urgent and necessary and taken by the profession with a heavy heart".The whole system, she said, "remains on a cliff edge". "The Criminal Bar Association continues to welcome a meeting with the secretary of state and lord chancellor in order to work alongside him as it is doing with the Ministry of Justice," she said.