May Adjournment

Debate between Ian Mearns and Bob Stewart

Thursday 3rd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Bob Stewart]

Indeed. I think this is one of those debates.

Let me get back to the main point, which is that it is a bad omen if young men and young women trying to be criminal law barristers are finding it very difficult. I am making this speech because earlier this week, I met a young barrister from my constituency who has had to leave the criminal Bar because she simply could not afford to live while working within the system. She was originally from the midlands, from a family of farmers, and she and her siblings were the first generation of the family to go to university. Her parents were totally supportive of her wish to be a barrister, a dream she told me she had had since she was 12 years old. She loved lawyer dramas on television, and her mother told her that her urge to be a lawyer had probably come from watching too much of the American law drama “Ally McNeal”, because she had a superb mobile phone.

[Ian Mearns]

“Ally McBeal”.

[Bob Stewart]

I stand corrected. It is hard to keep going.

My constituent studied law at Liverpool University and then applied for the Bar exams. Fully supported by her parents, she reluctantly came to London because there were more pupillages here. In 2008 she took the Bar exams, which cost her £15,000 of debt, not including accommodation. I gather that only about a third of people who pass the Bar exam now manage to get pupillages, and it took her three years to get hers.

During that time, my constituent worked for various agencies and did paralegal jobs to get relevant experience to help with her application. For some of that time she was on the minimum wage, but she eventually managed to get a criminal paralegal role in north London that paid about £14,000 a year. She did that to gain experience and advance her chances of getting a pupillage. However, the experience that really managed to get her a pupillage was doing voluntary legal work abroad. She was able to get a scholarship to cover her flights from the Inns of Court—well done them—and she managed to get someone to help her pay the rent on her flat in London while she was abroad. That allowed her to exist on that money while she was out of the country, because she was in free accommodation.

The young lawyer finally started her pupillage in October 2011. Although she had been warned that she would receive very little money, she was ignorant of just how little it would be. She told me that, during her first year, she received £16,285.38, but her travel expenses of well over £5,000 were not covered, so in effect she had to exist in London on about £10,000. In that year she could take only five days of holiday, she could not be sick, and she worked late nights and weekends constantly. For a young person, she had little social life. She travelled all over the country to various courts, and on most days she had to represent two clients, often in different courts, working through her lunch break and preparing for further clients late into the night.

My constituent told me that there were simply no breaks at all, but it was her vocation and the job she really wanted to do in life. However, she found that she could not live at that pace and, with so very little money, it was just not sustainable. She had to look at a different area of law, rather than criminal work. To start with she thought she could use that to subsidise what she really wanted to do, which was working at the criminal Bar. However, when she moved to a different area of law, her salary tripled almost instantly and she had more time for herself. As a result, she now practises in that area, and has largely left criminal law. She never thought she would make such a decision, but it was largely forced on her by circumstances. She wants to have a family life and bring up children, and she honestly felt that there was little chance of that happening for her at the criminal Bar. How sad is that?

My constituent came to me earlier this week because she feels that what has happened to her is wrong both for individuals and for the profession itself. People who try to be criminal law barristers normally have a massive calling. They know it may not pay half as much as other parts of their profession, but they feel that it is where they can do most good and what they should be doing. Being paid £10,000 for working all hours that God sends, and having to worry so much about money, is simply wrong for someone with responsibilities like hers. Despite the fact that my learned friend—my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh)—existed on peanuts when he was a young barrister, if this continues we will simply not have enough criminal law barristers, and we will certainly not have ones of the quality that defending in the public arena deserves. Is it an exaggeration to suggest that the criminal justice system could collapse? It is certainly in crisis if my young constituent is typical.

My constituent asked colleagues to provide her with their financial experiences as they strove to get into the profession, and she gave me the examples of five of her friends. None made more than £20,000 in their first year, and they all had to spend a huge amount of that on travel. They also had considerable debts to repay. Young criminal law barristers often do not even receive the minimum wage. That is wrong for them and most definitely wrong for a profession that we need to be as good as possible. Justice will be best served when those who argue for it are also the best, and we need well-motivated, driven people who care that we get things right in our criminal courts. Someone needs to look closely at what is happening, so that we do something about it before it is too late.