Thursday, March 20, 2014

Suppressio Veri, Suggestio Falsi (again)

A while back the MoJ released figures purporting to show the earnings of Legal Aid barristers. Not to put too fine a point on it, those figures were skewed: I quote (thanks Rupert, that's another one I owe you):-

"Ministers issued potentially misleading figures about barristers’ earnings to justify cuts to legal aid, the statistics watchdog has said.
In a critical letter to the Ministry of Justice, Sir Andrew Dilnot, the head of the UK Statistics Authority, said that the department had effectively neglected lower estimates of barristers’ average earnings in favour of the higher calculation of £84,000 a year.
Figures published by the ministry in January represented the mean fee income from public funds for full-time barristers, but any barrister with a fee income of less than £10,000 was excluded, the watchdog said. Calculations also included VAT, which barristers must pay to the taxman, and expenses such as travel costs"

And that's from a Ministry that claims the word 'Justice'  for its letterhead. Disgraceful.



10 comments:

  1. And also mean averages are notorious for obscuring the fact that a majority of the sample don't earn nearly as much.

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    1. The median is often a far more useful measurement, since it eliminates (most of) the effect of really extreme outliers.

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  2. As of yesterday's budget the VAT registration threshold is £81,000 and I imagine quite a few barristers will be under that.

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    1. But in my experience all barristers voluntarily register for VAT anyway. I remember doing it in my first year, when my gross fee income was about £12,000, because you will never ever lose a single bit of work from being VAT registered, but if you don't then you'll look so weird that even government / CPS won't book you. Welcome to the 21st century.

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  3. Very important discussion of this issue on http://pupillageandhowtogetit.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/what-next/

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  4. You can't believe anything trotted out by the MoJ- sad but true.

    however, if they had the evidence that Legal Aid is still a gravy train then if published I'm sure they (MoJ) would win the day, but clearly they haven't hence all the lies.

    One thing for sure the courts are going to start feeling it as the "reading days start to kick in"

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  5. On the VAT issue: whilst many barristers do come under the threshold for VAT registration, most register for VAT nonetheless. The reason is that without doing so the barrister can lose out when someone covers a hearing in a case for which he is the "instructed advocate" - ie, the person who puts the bill in at the end. Imagine I am the instructed advocate for the defence in a Crown Court burglary. The solicitors want me to do the trial, but I am unavailable on the day fixed by the court for the preliminary hearing. Another member of my chambers goes to court on that day and deals with the hearing for me. I deal with the rest of the case - which might comprise the plea and case management hearing, a mention hearing due to prosecution non-disclosure, a two-day trial and a sentence. If the person who covered the PCMH is VAT registered, he will bill me £87+VAT=£104.40 for that day's hearing. If am I VAT registered, then I bill for £653+VAT=£783.60 for the case, and (after I have paid my VAT) have £141.50 per day at court to pay my clerks and my chambers rent out of. If I am not VAT registered, I cannot add VAT to the claim, must swallow the extra £17.40 charged by the covering barrister, and so am a slightly less corpulent feline on £137.23 per attendance.

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  6. My thanks to Anonymous for explaining the VAT situation. I wonder if there is a niche market for a set of non-VAT-barristers who only cover for each other and only represent private individuals who would appreciate the 17% (approx) reduction in the bill.

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    1. What if there were? It would just result in the treasury having their bills for CPS advocacy and legal aid cut by 20%, but the treasury then losing the same amount of VAT. It would be a neutral decision for everyone except the barrister losing the 17%. Why would you do it?

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