Leading figures at the Bar including former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, Bar council chairman Nicholas Green QC and chair of the Bar Standards Board Baroness Ruth Deech have called for the Bar to take action to improve diversity in anticipation of hikes in university tuition fees.

Former Allen & Overy (A&O) senior partner Guy Beringer QC also spoke at an Inner Temple event last week (18 February), which saw speakers discuss the review of legal education announced last November as well as raise concerns about the impact of higher tuition fees on the already poor diversity statistics at the Bar.

Lord Falconer warned annual fees of up to £9,000 per year at undergraduate level, combined with the costs of the Graduate Diploma in Law and Legal Practice Course, will mean aspiring barristers without parental or other financial support will face a debt burden of at least £50,000 to get to the start of their pupillage.

With the financial burden likely to make the Bar even more unattainable for those from less privileged backgrounds, he called on the Bar to provide more funding. He stressed: "Of all things which determine the success of the Bar, it is the quality of the entrants. If we do not reach significantly into race and economic communities that we are not reaching now we will be damaged in quality soon."

Deech suggested education providers also needed to put something back, arguing law schools should offer scholarships for aspiring barristers.

While the university debt burden is likely to put off less wealthy students from applying to the Bar, speakers suggested overall numbers of aspiring barristers would increase as a consequence of higher tuition fees. Green (pictured) warned that the odds of securing a pupillage would fall as "an even larger number of students will gravitate towards vocational undergraduate degrees such as law."

Other suggestions for improving diversity included more direct communication between law schools, the Bar and universities, as well as the possible introduction of a cap on Bar Professional Training Course places.

In a separate discussion, Falconer warned that the Legal Services Act and alternative business structures risked weakening the ability of the legal profession to monitor and control the provision of legal services. He said: "Its ethics and values will come as much if not more from the investors and managers who will be driven exclusively by the commercial pressure. Good in many respects for the consumer of legal services, but challenging for the preservation of legal ethics."