1,200 criminal lawyers to attend next week's protest meeting

Around 1,200 criminal lawyers, barristers and solicitors, are to attend a protest meeting in London next week, following a demonstration outside parliament to protest against the legal aid cuts. Tickets for the event at the Friends Meeting House in Euston have sold out.

Victims and relatives of some of the best-known victims of miscarriages of justice in recent years will speak at the rally on Wednesday morning, organised by the Criminal Law Solicitors Association and the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association.

Gerry Conlan, member of the Guildford Four, Breda Power, daughter of Birmingham Six member Billy Power, and a relative of Jean Charles de Menezes, killed at Stockwell Tube Station, are due to speak, along with leading criminal defence lawyer Clive Stafford Smith.

Rodney Warren, director of Criminal Law Solicitors Association, said that, after attending a Law Society meeting last night, the justice secretary could be "in no doubt that there is unity across the profession and people cannot see how to make this work".

According to Warren, Chris Grayling made it clear at the meeting that his aim was to cut £220m from the criminal legal aid budget, but he was prepared to "listen to alternatives" to the MoJ proposals.

"He said the restriction on client choice was the only way to drive enough volume for firms to operate, and was a means to an end," Warren said.

"This is too simplistic. You don't have to abolish choice. The most important for the justice secretary and the MoJ is to understand that the current proposals will not work.

"This is about quality of justice in England and Wales - the cornerstone of our community."

Despite the suggestion by Stobart Barristers that it could bid for the new contracts, Warren said big companies were not going to find it "anything like as easy to crack this nut as they think" and were not lining up to do the work.

"It's not about cuts not being made," Warren added. "People understand the austerity issue. It's about cuts being made in a workable way so that justice does not suffer."