Plans are due to go ahead for thousands of trials a year to be prosecuted by non-lawyers, even though the paralegals themselves say that they are insufficiently trained, The Times has learnt.

An internal survey for the Crown Prosecution Service has found that only half the 400 paralegals who will take on the contested — or “not guilty” — trials felt that they had had enough training. A third said that they were under pressure to do court work that fell beyond their abilities.

The draft findings come amid growing concerns about the impact of government cost-cutting on the standards of criminal justice, including the use of junior barristers to defend some of the country’s most high-profile criminal trials.

Hundreds of experienced barristers have already refused to sign-up to proposed cuts in their fees when defending weighty trials such as those involving terrorism, murder and rape.

Only 130 of 2,300 barristers in England and Wales have agreed to a panel that would handle complex trials on new rates of pay, starting at £91 an hour.

Junior barristers will be left to fill the breach. The Legal Services Commission, which runs the £2 billion legal aid scheme, has put the Bar on notice that it plans to allow solicitors to instruct non-panel barristers to do the complex cases if an insufficient number of barristers sign-up.

The row over both barristers’ fees and the use of paralegals is threatening to disrupt the running of criminal courts and has put the profession at loggerheads with the Government.

Both the Bar and the Law Society of England and Wales say that standards in the courts will be undermined by the funding squeeze, which ministers claim is essential for better use of taxpayers’ money.

At present the paralegals — “designated case workers” in the Crown Prosecution Service — have power to conduct a limited range of simple cases where defendants plead guilty, chiefly road traffic offences.

But Clause 58 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill now going through Parliament widens their powers to conduct “not guilty” cases, subject to approval by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

This will allow some 400 CPS staff without legal qualifications to conduct a wide range of “not guilty” trials in magistrates’ courts, including those involving theft, assault, applications for bail and antisocial behaviour orders.

The draft report on paralegals, prepared for the CPS, says: “It is of serious concern that varying levels of pressure are being placed on individual DWCs [designated case workers] by courts and other parties to act outside their remit, although in the overwhelming majority of instances this has been successfully resisted.”

The report emphasises that the return rate was low, at 29 per cent, and that the findings should therefore be treated with care.

The CPS strongly rejected the suggestion that case workers felt undertrained. A spokeswoman said: “DCWs are, as a group, highly regarded by magistrates and do an excellent job.”

She added that the CPS was already conducting a comprehensive review of its training of case workers and had agreed in principle to work with the Institute of Legal Executives to accredit that training programme.

Tim Dutton, QC, chairman of the Bar Council, said: “It is vital that the prosecution of cases is not delegated to lay people who are not properly qualified. Designated case workers cannot owe the same duty to the court as a barrister or solicitor. We are currently discussing these issues with the Government and hope that a satisfactory outcome can be reached.”

On the Bar pay dispute he said that he had written to the Ministry of Justice and the Legal Services Commission to point out the “adverse consequences of their actions for justice and the taxpayer”.

The Bar is pressing for a fee scheme based on work turned out, rather than an hourly rate that created “a perverse incentive to work as many hours as possible”, he said.

Explore Law

• Columnists

• Law Panel

• Law Reports

• Student Law

Times Recommends

• BGC 'set aside £40m to lure Tullett brokers'
• Legal aid review to ensure value
• Fears as 21 magistrates' courts face closure