Legal aid budget cuts: Sarah Forshaw on lawyer protests

Nobody goes into criminal law to make money, said a criminal barrister, who leads the South Eastern circuit and represents 3,000 lawyers.

Sarah Forshaw QC told the Daily Politics that rates agreed in 2007 have been "successively slashed over the years", and there were not "any good applicants coming into the system" because of the cut in fees.

She spoke as thousands of criminal case lawyers did not attend courts in England and Wales, to protest at planned cuts of £220m to legal aid.

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