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The Bar Standards Board chair’s description of opponents of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates as “a noisy minority of dissenters” received an immediate high-powered response from criminal law barristers.

In an exclusive blog for this website, Baroness Ruth Deech, chair of the Bar Standards Board, addresses the increasingly strident criticism from criminal law barristers about the impending Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA).

The Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) will start in September, nine months later than planned, it was announced yesterday. The revised timetable was released just hours before heads of chambers met to discuss their response to QASA.

Some barristers are worried that boycotting the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates will lead to their committing a criminal offence by practising without authorisation, the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association has revealed. Meanwhile, the first wave of judicial training on the scheme has been successfully completed.

More time to obtain judicial assessments and greater recognition for QCs have emerged as key amendments to the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates, leaving some of the most contentious aspects – such as plea-only advocates – unchanged.