Civil and Criminal Panel Counsel

Civil Panel Counsel

The Attorney General maintains four panels of Junior Counsel to undertake civil and European Community work for all government departments, plus a number of specialist Standing Counsel posts. There are three London Panels (A Panel for senior juniors, B Panel for middle juniors and C Panel for junior juniors) and a regional panel.

The size of each panel is determined by need. Although appointment to any of the Panels cannot be a guarantee that work will be available, it is intended that each advocate appointed should be given at least a minimum amount of work, and a monitoring process is in place for this purpose.

Further information on the Civil Panel Counsel can be found on the TSol website

Criminal Panel Counsel

In April 2001, the Attorney General established a single Unified List (UL) of prosecuting advocates to undertake criminal work for participating government departments throughout England and Wales. The key principles were to ensure that the quality of those advocates presenting cases on behalf of the government was high, that the recruitment process should be transparent and fair, that the list should be drawn from a wide and diverse range of people and that there should be a fair spread of work.

The Attorney General constituted a Management Board for the UL, drawn from the departments and agencies which used the list, to administer it on a day to day basis and deal with recruitment issues. The Board was chaired by Revenue and Customs Prosecution Office (RCPO) with members from Department For Business Innovation and Skills (BIS as it now is), Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Department for Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Department of Health (DH), Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) and Environment Agency (EA).

With the merger of RCPO and CPS in January 2010, the Chair of the Management Board was taken over jointly by DWP/DH and BIS as the two largest users of advocates. Following that and other changes the Board has taken the opportunity to fully review the purpose, function and management of the Unified List.

Letter from the Chair of the Attorney General's Unified List - December 2011