New Bar Chair Andrew Walker QC has celebrated the demise of QASA and sung the praises of self-regulation, in his inaugural Counsel column.
Walker said: ‘The Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates never aimed for greatness—competence was the pinnacle of its ambition… yet it managed to inspire… the unity of all in their desire to kill it off.’ QASA was a scheme to assess quality of criminal advocacy.
However, he said the Bar Standards Board (BSB) wants barristers to take greater responsibility for their own learning and development. Consequently, ‘if we all want to avoid the offspring of QASA—accreditation? Kite marks?—we would be unwise not to accept the BSB’s challenge’.
He said the results of a BSB and Solicitors Regulation Authority survey of Crown court judges on the quality of advocacy are due out soon, and will be an opportunity for the Bar to show ‘that our regulators have no job to do here’.
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