Some 2,500 members of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) are being balloted on escalating a work-to-rule that has been in place for six weeks, The Times reports.

They are in dispute with the Ministry of Justice over paltry legal aid rates. Earlier this year, ministers raised funding by 15 per cent but barristers argued that, in practice, this amounted to a trivial increase.

They say an increase of at least 25 per cent is needed to address the exodus of young lawyers from the profession. The ballot on a full strike will run for a week.

Jo Sidhu QC, chairman of the CBA said that the government’s “refusal to take the urgent action needed to invest in criminal legal aid in order to reverse the exodus of our country’s prosecution and defence barristers is only worsening delays to cases and heaping misery on complainants and victims of crime, whose trials suffer repeated postponements from government intransigence”.