Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of changes in the level of complaints made to the Bar Standards Board by criminal law barristers over the last three years.

The Ministry of Justice has not carried out an assessment on any factors affecting the level of complaints made to the Bar Standards Board about barristers. The regulators of the legal profession in England and Wales, including the Bar Standards Board, are independent of Government.

There are two routes for complaints about barristers in England and Wales - the Legal Ombudsman and the Bar Standard Board. The Legal Ombudsman deals with complaints about the service provided to the complainant by an authorised person, while the Bar Standards Board deals with complaints where a barrister is alleged to be in breach of the Bar Standards Board’s codes of conduct. The Bar Standards Board publishes data on its complaints in its Regulatory Decision-making Annual Report.