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Cuts in funding for the courts or legal aid fees risk damaging the diversity of the legal profession, the courts and the judiciary, according to the Bar chairman.

Tim Dutton, QC, who leads the 15,000-strong barristers’ profession in England and Wales, will give warning at the Bar’s annual conference in London today that the cash crisis could turn back the clock to the days when the legal profession was for the privileged.

In his speech he says that a reduction in funds for the justice system and in the number of trainee places at the Bar because of the squeeze on legal aid income risk “undoing the many years of hard work we have been putting into the profession”.

That work has been directed to “ensuring that we are a profession that is fair, that encourages talent no matter where that talent comes from”.

At least £90 million has to be found from the Courts Service over the next three years, and the Ministry of Justice as a whole is having to make savings of £1 billion over its whole department at the same time.

The Law Society, which represents solicitors, has also expressed concern about the impact of the massive cuts. Paul Marsh, the president, has told Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, that legal aid is “already cut to the bone”.

Mr Dutton says that it is in the interests of a diverse society that it should see and be able to enter a strong professsion that can lead to the ranks of Queen’s Counsel and the judiciary.

In promoting the Bar he is “frequently addressing audiences that are multiracial and multicultural, as I did last week in Leeds”. But efforts to encourage people from ethnic-minority backgrounds and those from less privileged backgrounds are at risk through proposed funding cuts, he says.

That justice system “appears, in all of its limbs, to be either underfunded at present, or at risk of being still further underfunded”. For a democracy to be healthy, its justice system must receive a sufficient level of funding “to ensure that it works to the standards expected within the society as a whole”.

In a multicultural society where there may be greater resort to courts, tribunals and arbitrations, it is a given that the justice system has to work at full strength, he says.

Mr Marsh has also raised concerns about reported threats to a new computer system, which he said could imperil London’s position as the global centre for dispute resolution. “The courts and legal aid system have been at crisis point for some time and this could tip both into the abyss,” he said.

The ministry has said that savings will involve “some difficult decisions” but officials would “focus relentlessly” on protecting frontline services.

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