The representative body for barristers in England and Wales has decried the backlog in the criminal courts and called on the government to review the whole criminal justice system.

In a statement released on Thursday the Bar Council has asked the government to implement a ‘whole system review’ through a Royal Commission to improve the ‘parlous position’ of the criminal justice system.

The body says slashes to funding under austerity has led to ‘structural problems’ including insufficient numbers of courts, lack of staff and advocates required to resolve criminal cases, and that current policy is at a ‘dead end’.

There are currently over 67,000 cases awaiting trial in the Crown Court.

Bar Council Chair Sam Townend KC said: ‘The status quo has a detrimental impact on victims, attrition of witnesses, and innocent defendants are left for years languishing with the charges oppressively held over their heads. The guilty are not being dealt with and the public has lost confidence in a system that is just not working.’

He criticised measures recently introduced by the government such as Operation Early Dawn and early release of some prisoners, saying the system can no longer operate in ‘crisis mode’, ‘lurching from one emergency measure to another.’

The statement follows the Bar Council’s submissions to the Public Accounts Committee’s inquiry on reducing the backlog in Criminal Courts. This inquiry, launched in March 2022, came in response to a growing backlog that was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Criminal Bar Association also submitted written evidence to this inquiry, with their evidence focusing on the lack of advocates to effectively complete trials. They said in 2023 1,436 trials in the Crown Court didn’t go ahead because of the absence of either a prosecution or defence advocate, a 20-fold increased from 2019 when this amounted to just 71 trials.