Holding the Line Against Tyranny and Anarchy (Constitution Committee Report)
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Lord Strathclyde
That this House takes note of the Report from the Constitution Committee The rule of law: holding the line against tyranny and anarchy (13th Report, HL Paper 211, Session 2024–26).
Lord Strathclyde (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to introduce this debate as chair of the Constitution Committee.
Noble Lords will have heard many times politicians and others praying in aid adherence to the rule of law and avowing its importance. Yet very few people seem to understand what it represents and how fundamental it is to our constitution. The Constitution Committee conducted a long and detailed inquiry into the rule of law and published its report towards the end of last year. This was prompted by a sense that the rule of law was being threatened in many parts of the world. We wanted to understand the extent to which we in the UK should also be concerned by that.
It was a privilege to chair the committee during the inquiry, and I am grateful to all those who contributed to it—our witnesses and my fellow members, whose knowledge and experience greatly strengthened the final report, and some of whom are speaking today. I am sorry that time constraints meant that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, had to scratch. They played an important part in our deliberations. I mention in particular our excellent secretariat and clerks, who delivered our witnesses, our drafts and good humour, even when we became embroiled in the weeds of the subject.
Over nine months, we received more than 100 written submissions and heard from judges, practising lawyers, the police, journalists and young people. We deliberately sought views from people not normally asked for those views. The result is a report that seeks to provide an accessible evolution to our understanding of the rule of law, as well as to ask whether we are doing enough to preserve and strengthen it.
The rule of law is one of the defining principles of our constitution. It has deep roots in our history, reaching back centuries all the way to Magna Carta and, many argue, beyond. The rule of law is one of the foundations on which both democratic government and personal liberty depend. That is why we subtitled our report Holding the Line Against Tyranny and Anarchy, recognising that the rule of law protects us from both the tyranny of an overbearing state and the mob rule of anarchy. It guards against both extremes.
It is also more than this: the rule of law underpins economic prosperity, facilitating business and trade. In the UK, it contributes to our global reputation, not least because businesses from all over the world choose to have their contracts governed by English law. Given its importance, it is unsurprising that the rule of law is frequently invoked in this House and elsewhere. We proclaim our attachment to it, and we vow to protect it.
But what does it actually mean? The answer is not always straightforward. The rule of law is a slippery concept that is difficult to pin down. It is also beset by complicated academic and political debates about so-called thick and thin conceptions, which differ over whether human rights and international law are part of it. These debates around the definition of the rule of law give the impression that it is a contested idea, but it is deeply embedded as a British value in ideas of fairness, equality and justice.
Some years ago, the noble and learned Lord Bingham made a key set of definitions of the rule of law, on which the committee sought to build. The committee’s view was that the rule of law is perhaps best understood as a culture. People obey the law because they trust that others will do the same. They accept court judgments because they trust the independence and integrity of the judiciary. They engage in business and trade because they trust that contracts will be respected and enforced.
This culture is under strain. Increasingly, people lack confidence in the rule of law. They see increasing amounts of street crime, shoplifting and bicycle and mobile phone theft, but doubt that the offenders will ever be caught or fear that the police will be disinterested in what they perceive to be mostly irrelevant crime. The perpetrators are rarely held to account. Others encounter lengthy delays in the justice system while being faced with prohibitive costs to access legal advice and representation. At the same time, some politicians and parts of the media tell them that judges undermine Parliament and pursue personal agendas. The collective effort is to weaken confidence in the rule of law and the institutions responsible for upholding it.
One area that particularly concerned the committee was the treatment of the judiciary. Judges, both individually and as a whole, have been increasingly vilified in public debate. They are accused of interfering in politics and of deciding cases according to their personal views. This has spilled over into personal attacks and threats to their safety.
These attacks need to stop. That is certainly not to say that discussion and debate of judgment is off limits, but judges should be able to carry out their job without fear of retaliation. Otherwise, there is a threat to the independence of the judiciary. The Government must set the tone in promptly and clearly dismissing misleading information about judgments. They have a duty to defend the judiciary against unwarranted attacks. The Lady Chief Justice in her evidence was particularly strong on the subject, and we agreed with her. I have little time for judges seeking to expand their own boundaries or indulging in judicial activism, but I wholly accept their constitutional independence.
Access to justice is a further essential part of the rule of law. There is no point having laws and rights if they cannot be enforced and upheld. However, we frequently heard about backlogs, delays and difficulties in obtaining legal advice and representation. The Government must take decisive action to improve access to justice and to tackle delays—not the blunt instrument of scrapping jury trials but exploring creative solutions. Technology has an important role to play in realising efficiencies across the justice system such as digitising remaining paper-based processes. Where appropriate, the use of alternative dispute resolution should be encouraged.
We also looked at the role of Parliament. As we all know, parliamentary sovereignty is the supreme constitutional principle, but Parliament also has a responsibility to the rule of law, especially as we carry out our primary role on legislation. Laws should be clear. They should be accessible. They should be capable of being understood by those expected to obey them. Excessive complexity, performative legislation and the inappropriate use of delegated powers all make these objectives harder to achieve. This Government are not the sole Government to be guilty of doing these things. It has happened with previous Governments too, but we should never stop seeking to improve the quality of our legislation and reducing our reliance on delegated powers. We therefore urge parliamentarians to keep the rule of law front and centre when scrutinising legislation—and the Government when drafting it.
The central message of our report is that the rule of law is not just a constitutional principle but the invisible thread that governs our everyday lives. It is most definitely not just the concern of lawyers. It matters to everyone. That is why we should start with children. It should be better taught and understood in schools. This is what enables citizens to challenge power, businesses to invest with confidence, communities to live in peace and democratic government to command legitimacy. These are what count and help to provide stability in a complex world.
We should take pride in the United Kingdom’s long tradition of respect for the rule of law but, as I said earlier, pride must never become complacency. There can be no doubt that the rule of law faces genuine pressures. Those pressures can be addressed, but only if we recognise them and actively choose to defend the rule of law. I beg to move.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, it was a great privilege to serve on the Constitution Committee and a great pleasure to serve under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, particularly for this important report. As the House might expect, he conducted the committee with tremendous brio and a great sense of democracy within the committee as well. I apologise to the House, because I am bound to repeat and to reinforce much of what he has said about the significance of the report and the way we pursued it.
It is the singular task of the Constitution Committee to hold the elements of constitutional democracy up to the light, to show how it works for real people. This was one of the most penetrating outcomes of that very important report. Six months on, with the Iran war more unsettled than ever and the rule of law increasingly embattled, it is paramount that we in the UK are unconditional in our commitment to the principle and the practice of it at home and abroad.
That is why this inquiry was so important and so timely, but it was a brave choice and a brave chair. It was a very challenging inquiry in breadth and depth, reaching back to the roots of our democracy, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said, but also reaching into a very uncertain future. Tom Paine, whom I lay claim to as another resident of Lewes, would have applauded the title and particularly the subtitle—The Rule of Law: Holding the Line Against Tyranny and Anarchy—because it articulates his own deep conviction in the American context of 1776 that in free countries,
“the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other”.
Two hundred and fifty years on, that is being put to the test every day in the United States; the committee was only too aware of that. As we have heard already, there are passions attached to differing interpretations of the rule of law—the vocabulary of thick and thin—to the extent that it would have been very easy to fall prey to falling into an academic and sterile hole, but we did not. We did debate where the boundaries of the rule of law might fall, but we focused on what the rule of law means as people experience it in their daily lives, and that is why it is important. We also looked at the challenges to the justice system and to Parliament itself. We looked hard at the contract wired into our culture, which has meant that trust in the law to keep us safe has lasted for centuries. But there was no escaping the evidence that this reciprocal culture is at risk. That evidence suggests that disrespect for the law has been emboldened since Covid, with the paradox of draconian legislation that was felt by many not to have been evenly applied.
There is no doubt, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, alluded to, that the infamous attack on judges as “enemies of the people” some years ago gave a green light for attacks on the independence of the judiciary. We were particularly shocked by the evidence he has already cited, and by the very stark statement of the Lady Chief Justice that judges now need to have “moral courage”. I would say physical courage as well, in light of the evidence.
Secondly, the evidence showed that the culture of trust in the law to work for everyone equally is also fragile. To defeat tyranny and anarchy, justice must be seen to work: to be accessible, effective and fair. It is a truism, but like all truisms it is actually true. The evidence suggests that for many people, this is simply not the case. Our witnesses came from across the spectrum—judges and community activists—and all agreed that free legal advice was virtually invisible in some communities. In the whole of Greater Manchester there is only one law centre for 2.8 million people. Most advice is now limited to information; it does not go as far as legal assistance. That failure is compounded by documented cuts to legal aid; the horrendous waiting lists for the courts, including people who are on remand; the physical disintegration—the decay—of the legal estate; and the growth of crimes that are anything but victimless.
No wonder people feel that the idea of justice is meaningless as far as they are concerned. The system itself feels disempowered. Part of the problem is that the law is not taught early enough, widely enough or broadly enough. Our recommendations address all these issues. I have alerted the Minister to a specific question: what happened to the Legal Support Strategy Delivery Group, which was set up by the MoJ?
For this place, the most profound question is: how confident can we be in our own future as the bulwark against tyranny and anarchy? The Victorians were better informed about Parliament than we are. What has happened to the political reporters or the serious commentators? They have virtually disappeared. Do Members of Parliament, or we in this House, know enough about the constitution, the legal system and what constitutes legal certainty, to be clear where the risks are? Do we know who is accountable for safeguarding the constitution? Do our laws stand the test of the basic requirements: that they should be clear, accessible, prospective, predictable, possible to obey, free of conflict? Does Parliament use its power to interrogate Ministers and to hold them to account? If I were marking this paper, I would give the House a C+ at best.
The volume of legislation is only one issue. Take pensions regulation; it has grown from 3,000 pages to 165,000 pages since 1990. Worse is the sheer complexity, which defeats even the most distinguished lawyers. I think with fear of the forthcoming legislation on leasehold reform. The loss of Keeling schedules, the delays in implementing consolidation, and the accumulative legislation required to correct and revise mean that few can find meaning, let alone definitive meaning. On the other hand, equally dismaying are skeletal Bills that evade interrogation, and careless delegation that hides decisions and cannot be changed. These are serious and familiar charges in this House—this is our special subject. We need not to debate more but to act now. As the report emphasises, Parliament must take its constitutional responsibilities seriously and, I add, visibly.
I return to Tom Paine, who said that
“the Constitution of England is so exceedingly complex, that the nation may suffer for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies, and every political physician will advise a different medicine”.
He was right about the constitution but would be wrong about our report, because it was very clear in its diagnosis and prescription. We are seeking not to blame but to identify and incentivise responsibility for ensuring that the rule of law is not an abstract construction but is positively promoted in every respect.
Lord Burnett of Maldon (CB)
I declare an interest as a serving member of the supplementary panel of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
The report of the Constitution Committee, to which I contributed as a member, is a timely reminder of the importance of the rule of law as a vital constitutional safeguard. It is something that is largely taken for granted, but that it has been the subject of so much discussion in recent years is itself a sign of growing concern about its vulnerability. I congratulate our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, on his skilful navigation through a subject that is apt to be diverted into academic byways and alleyways by focusing on the practical. In the few minutes available, I will touch briefly on two subjects: the independence of the judiciary, to which there has already been reference, and a discrete aspect of access to justice.
Judicial independence is central to the rule of law. It is reflected in the judicial oath to
“do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this realm, without fear or favour, affection or ill will”.
Judicial independence enables judges to administer justice impartially and to treat equally those who appear before them. Equality before the law is a cardinal principle. Our report noted the importance of judicial independence—independence from the Executive and Parliament, of course, but also from all who might seek to put pressure on courts, not just politicians. That includes the press, large corporations, trade unions, activists and campaigners. Judges are required to resist all such pressure.
As we have heard, judicial independence is undermined when judges are attacked personally for a decision or their integrity is impugned. An expression of disagreement with the outcome of a case is entirely unobjectionable, but the growth of personal vilification—in which, regrettably, from time to time politicians have joined—crosses the line into a direct assault on the independence of the judiciary. Examples are multiplying. Even this week, a High Court judge was accused by disappointed litigants of a “complete and obvious whitewash”. Judges speak through their judgments and cannot answer back. That is why the Constitutional Reform Act imposes duties on the Lord Chancellor to defend the independence of the judiciary.
The committee recognised that:
“A culture of hostility towards the judiciary has been allowed to develop in recent years because of inappropriate, and often inaccurate, public criticism by politicians”,
and others, with
“inadequate defence from government”.
We distinguish in the report between discussion and debate about judgments and personal attacks on judges or the judiciary as a whole. As the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has noted, such attacks should stop. Importantly, we added that Ministers, particularly the Lord Chancellor, must speak out in defence of the judiciary when it comes under attack. It needed saying, and I fear that obligation will become more onerous as time goes by.
The very existence of a functioning courts and tribunal system, with an independent judiciary, means that most disputes are sorted out before lawyers are involved and before proceedings are threatened or issued, and even when issued, many are resolved without a final determination. But cases which need final resolution by the courts must be capable of being heard in a timely fashion. Timeliness, at least in my opinion, is more important than a fixation on outstanding case numbers.
Now is not the time to talk about the difficulties in the criminal courts. We may yet get an opportunity to do so—or maybe we will not. My views are well known and do not align with the centre of gravity of legal opinion, but my short point is a general one. When Parliament legislates, with the result that new rights and obligations are created, government must ensure that the relevant courts and tribunals are ready to deal with the increased caseload. The late Lord Etherton raised this issue powerfully with respect to the significant changes found in the recent renters’ rights legislation, both as passed and as originally proposed by the last Government. Similar points have been made regarding the employment rights legislation. It is doubtful whether the courts and tribunals that will deal with the resulting disputes can do so in a timely fashion. Legislation and legislating are not the end of the story. If the rights created cannot be readily and quickly enforced, they may turn out to be hollow.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I am told that we should never start a speech with an apology, but I sincerely apologise if I have to leave before the end of the debate to get back up to Scotland—I had not expected the debate to be taken so late. I did not want to withdraw, as I was very keen to participate in the debate on this important topic, as a member of the Constitution Committee at the time.
It is a vital topic, though I was a bit sceptical about it. As members of the committee will know, I thought it would be hijacked by the lawyers into a very dry topic, but it has proved, as the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said, to be a really important issue. This is an excellent report from the Constitution Committee, ably chaired, may I say, by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. He and I have crossed swords in Ayrshire from time to time, but I have great respect for the way he chaired the committee through this report.
The most striking observation from the report is that the greatest threat to the rule of law does not come from a dramatic crisis but can emerge gradually through declining institutional standards, weakened scrutiny and political rhetoric which encourages the loss of faith in our democratic institutions.
Take the case of Henry Nowak. Okay, the police failed in their duty, but they are being held accountable and, as the report says, individual failures within an institution should not be used as an excuse to undermine that institution completely. Sadly, in the Nowak case, before the facts were established, Reform UK immediately sought to use that tragedy to claim, wrongly, that Britain has a system of two-tier policing against white people. That is the kind of dangerous politicking the report warns against.
The committee is equally clear that no individual or institution is beyond scrutiny. The conviction of Peter Murrell for embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP is an example which reminds us vividly of the consequences of the failure of internal governance. This case exposed the prolonged weakness of accountability and oversight in one of our largest parties in Scotland and, with the more recent revelations of over £1 million missing from the Yes Scotland campaign, there is sadly more yet to come. An organisation where the leader and chief executive are a married couple, where anyone who raises questions—as people did—is summarily dismissed and where accountants resign in protest, is an example of the failure of the rule of law. The rule of law depends on transparency, independent oversight and the confidence that wrongdoing will ultimately be exposed, but that is not yet the case in the SNP scandal.
The committee’s most important message is that there is a difference between demanding better of our institutions and encouraging the public to lose faith in them, and that distinction really matters. When police make mistakes, they are investigated. If political parties fail, we should seek to reform them. If Governments overreach, Parliament should take them to task. Those are not signs that the rule of law has failed; they are actually evidence that the constitutional safeguards are working. The real danger is when political leaders suggest that the whole system is irredeemably corrupt or biased. Once confidence in democratic institutions is lost, it is very difficult for it to be rebuilt.
In this country, two of the threats to our democracy are, first, dark money—Russian, of course, but also from the USA, as we heard it in a Statement earlier today—influencing our politics and secondly, sadly, increasing disengagement in elections and politics, particularly among young people. That is why elsewhere, later on in this Session, I will be arguing that we should be closing loopholes in our electoral finance laws—we heard that again earlier today—and I will be supporting the introduction of compulsory voting, which has proved so successful in Australia. The most recent example of a crypto billionaire giving Farage £5 billion is not an isolated case, but it reminds us that there is a real danger of very rich people, both at home and overseas, taking or trying to take control of our democratic institutions unless we take urgent steps to avoid it.
To return to the report, it is about not just constitutional law but constitutional responsibility. It reminds us that the rule of law is sustained by institutions that are accountable, by Parliament exercising effective scrutiny, and by political leaders choosing responsibility over rhetoric. Recent examples—the exploitation of the Henry Nowak case by Reform, the Green Party’s failure to scrutinise candidates, and the corruption and lack of transparency of the SNP—show in different ways how confidence in our constitutional settlement can be weakened. However, the answer is not to diminish confidence in our institutions but to find ways, as the report says, to ensure that our institutions are transparent, accountable and worthy of trust, while resisting those who seek to turn any failures into evidence that the rule of law itself has collapsed. That, the report says, is the road to tyranny and to anarchy, which we must resist.
Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)
My Lords, it is a particular pleasure not only to follow the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who, happily, is restored to full health, but to find oneself on the same side of the argument as him, because for a good many years in another place, I had to suffer being on the wrong side of the argument. That was very uncomfortable. I also join with all the other members of the committee who have spoken in paying tribute to our chair and to the other members.
The other day, I read that Michelle Obama said that she had never met a white man who suffered from imposter syndrome. All I can tell you is that when the noble and learned Lords on our committee got going, I certainly felt imposter syndrome. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and the noble and learned Lords, Lord Bellamy, and Lord Burnett, are all wonderful, but they are also practical people as well as being very good lawyers. We have heard from two of the other members already, and we can all be proud of this report.
It is fitting that we debate this fundamental matter in the same week that we grieve for Lord Mackay who, if you wanted an embodiment of what the rule of law meant—practical but also learned—he was it. I will not go into too much detail, because I would get in trouble with former colleagues, but there were a couple of occasions in the Cabinet in which I was privileged to serve with him when more robust colleagues were going off in one direction or another. That beautiful Scottish brogue brought them back on to the safe line. Nobody wanted to argue with him.
I will make three short points and, although I endorse everything that has been said, I will not repeat what has been mentioned so far by colleagues. First—and this reflects something just spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes—there is a terrible cliché about at the moment that everything is broken in this country. Whenever we say that, we give succour to our enemies, both abroad and at home. The rule of law is not broken here. That is not to say that we should not be very careful to identify where new threats may come from, as this report does, and where corrections to present failings should be undertaken. But let us have enough of that cliché. We have the rule of law and we must protect it.
Secondly, for most of the last century, when civilisation faced destruction, either by Hitler or by Stalin, most attention was perhaps paid to the rule of law’s guardian against tyranny. Big Brother was the most potent fear, and it was a reasonable one. The danger of tyranny remains, of course, and a very real danger it is in much of the world. But now we must also watch for the other danger: anarchy. The irony is that our far bigger state has not become an all-powerful Big Brother. Can we really imagine that any of our departments of state would be as efficient as the terrifying departments in George Orwell’s book? I do not think it would actually work; it might even be described as being broken. The point is that as the state has become bigger, the paradox is that it has also become weaker. It has become an enormous juggernaut with its wheels stuck up to the axles in mud. We face that paradox—an enormous state which cannot plausibly reassure its citizens that it knows how to carry out its two central tasks: defence against foreign enemies and satisfactory maintenance of the law for ordinary people at home. It is the report’s concern for maintaining the confidence of ordinary people in the rule of law to which I want to add a little more colour today.
To quote the then Lord Chancellor and present Home Secretary when she was giving evidence to us, we cannot accept a situation where there
“is a sense that someone came in, robbed a shop…and absolutely nothing happened”.
When I asked her if she thought that the illegal arrival of small boats on our shores without apparent consequence undermined respect for the law, she answered yes—and she was right. There is beginning to be a real anxiety that elements of the rule of law are a bit of a bluff.
All is far from lost, though, and the splendid report by the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Herbert, will greatly help to strengthen the police if it is followed through. It is vital that the ordinary citizen understand that the state has not backed off from its fundamental duty to face down criminality, big or small, at home as well as abroad.
Thirdly, the rule of law is based on consent, or at least acceptance. Law long precedes democracy, but without it, in Lord Sumption’s words to the committee, society is
“simply a fight for the more effective deployment of force”.
Consent or allegiance means understanding of and acceptance of the process by which laws are made.
For us, it is Parliament and the ancient and subtle generation of common law. That is why there is a problem with, for example, the ECHR. It is not that the judges are wicked or that all the judgments are bad; many are easily accepted as excellent. The problem is that the citizen’s consent is not embodied in the process by which those laws are developed. There is not—or not yet, at least—a genuine community of Europe which lies behind that body of law in the way that England, Scotland and the whole of the United Kingdom lie behind our law. When the convention stops this Parliament doing things that the people want, people do not understand why.
Now we face an expansion of jurisdiction by the International Court of Justice. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, has written powerfully about this. That is going to drive us mad if we are not careful, and will face us with the same problems. Those who raise these issues are not against the rule of law or the rules-based order in the world; we are warning and anxious that if we simply sign to courts and laws which our people feel do not embody their own feelings then we will end ourselves in difficulty. It is very difficult to leave these things, but it is not a criticism of the rule of law to raise questions about those issues.
The UK remains a bastion of the rule of law. It is well defended by the outstanding practitioners who appeared before our committee, but it is a bastion whose defence we should never take for granted.
Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the honourable—
Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)
Oh! I did it wrong again. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord and to echo his words about the late Lord Mackay of Clashfern—the very embodiment of wisdom and decency, and a great Scots lawyer. It was a privilege to have known him.
It was an interesting challenge to be a member of the Constitution Committee, which undertook the inquiry on which this report is based. We have already heard from some of the distinguished noble Lords who served on the committee. I not only agree with all their points but thank them for all that I learned while sitting in their company during this inquiry.
It is a widely held misconception that examining aspects of the constitution is nothing more than a dry old academic exercise undertaken by dry old academics. It is not. This was a genuine inquiry. We explored a very wide range of issues and aspects, and we asked questions to which we did not already know the answers. We were often surprised by the conclusions to which we came after having considered the evidence.
Why do this report and this debate matter? I will make three brief points in answer to that question. First, they matter because one of our important conclusions was that safeguarding the rule of law is a shared responsibility. That responsibility lies not only with judges, lawyers, Ministers, parliamentarians, civil servants and public authorities but with every citizen. To maintain a free society, we must nurture a widespread culture of respect for the principles of the rule of law. Although this debate might not quite compete for audience figures with England against Norway—it probably will not even compete with children’s television—I sincerely hope that the fact we are having it is a small step in our quest to create a wider understanding of the importance of our constitutional conventions.
I have seen some excellent examples of citizenship education in many schools that I have visited over the years but, sadly, we discovered during our inquiry that this excellence does not occur widely throughout the country. Perhaps the end-of-term report for most schools on the subject of citizenship education would be, “Must try harder”. I am sure that the Minister will respond that citizenship education is a statutory requirement. Indeed it is, but teachers need more help: they need more training so that we can ensure that lessons are being effectively delivered. The committee’s recommendation at paragraph 246, which concerns helping schools to deliver education on citizenship, particularly deserves to be taken forward by the Government. Giving children an understanding that constitutional principles are the very foundations of our free society is the first step in creating good and responsible leaders for the next generation.
Secondly, the rule of law is not merely an abstract concept or a legal doctrine but the constitutional condition upon which our entire democracy depends. It is not, as some ill-informed commentators like to imply, an impediment to effective government. On the contrary: it is the condition that gives government its legitimacy. At a time when democratic institutions across many countries face increasing pressure, it is more vital than ever that the people have confidence that power is being exercised lawfully, transparently and accountably. The rule of law is universal, and nobody is above the law. The Government are subject to the law, just as any citizen is—as several recent cases heard in the Supreme Court have rightly reinforced. Liberty is secured not by the exercise of power but by its restraint through the law. Let us hope that we do not have to encounter an extremist Government here in Britain. We see extremism growing elsewhere right now. Upholding the rule of law—I argue that having this debate is part of that process—is our defence against extremism. The Government cannot bully the people.
Thirdly, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, mentioned in his excellent introduction to our debate, the committee considered Lord Bingham’s first principle:
“The law must be accessible … intelligible, clear and predictable”.
The report expresses concern that legislation has become increasingly lengthy, technically complex and dependent on delegated powers. We are legislators, and we have a duty to hold the Government to account to bring the laws we are making more in line with Lord Bingham’s principle.
Well over 200 years ago, the great William Pitt said that
“where law ends, there tyranny begins”.
I hope that this report and this debate go some way to drawing general attention to that universal and timeless truth.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
As the first person to speak this afternoon who can claim no part whatever in the production of this report, I independently express my view, and the views of many to whom I have spoken, on its excellence and that it needed doing and that what it said needed saying. All those who produced it deserve a great thank you. Having said that, I want to deal with one topic, partly to reinforce the strength of this report in one minute area. I will draw on what I have observed happening elsewhere in Europe, and on how steps have been taken to undermine the rule of law; we must learn from that. The central lesson we learn is that those who seek to undermine the rule of law make the judiciary the prime focus of their plans and actions.
I will give your Lordships three examples. First, you weaken public confidence, primarily through attacking judges through the media, exploiting inefficiency in the courts or delays, and attacking what might seem incautious decisions or incautious extrajudicial statements. The second is undermining the self-governance and unitary structure of the judiciary. The third is appointing compliant candidates to high judicial office and then using disciplinary proceedings and other measures to remove strong judges. These are the means that are used, of which there are readily available examples, particularly in Hungary and Poland, of what has happened in neighbouring countries in the last few years. It has all been done, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, pointed out, subtly, and in some cases with considerable success.
Now, why should we bother to learn from elsewhere? We have our long traditions and our conventions. We have the Constitutional Reform Act; its author, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, is here. So we say, “Why bother?”, but I think we should. I will look at four matters.
First, the area where we really do need action, and where the report underlines the need for action, is communications. The Judicial Office’s press office was set up by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, with the help of Sir Hayden Phillips, just as the Act came into existence. But there is a need to keep it up to date. The media has changed beyond all recognition and therefore I strongly endorse what is said at paragraph 123 of the report in the message it sends to government and the judiciary. The Government, it appears from paragraph 36, have got the message. I hope the judiciary will get it too, because it must appreciate that if it does not take responsibility for the way it communicates, someone else will do it for it. It is an important lesson that must be learned.
The second is the effective and timely running of the courts. Resources play an immense part in the way in which you can administer justice. But judges have a responsibility too—a responsibility from which they cannot run away. They need to put right things that are wrong or systems that do not work. Here, the Constitution Committee, maybe not in this report, but generally, has played an important role by holding judges to account for anything that has gone wrong in the courts. That holding to account is extremely beneficial because it enables the judges, in a neutral forum, as Parliament is for them, to point out what the problems are, which so often are a lack of adequate resources. Here is an important role of the Constitution Committee.
The third matter to which I wish to refer is protection against attacks on judges. The report is more than 100% correct—if there is such a concept—at paragraphs 112 to 114 in drawing attention to this. But it is important that restraint is shown by everyone concerned. The judges have to be as careful as media magnates and Cabinet Ministers should be. It is a very important principle. If there are mistakes made, you put things right quickly, as has been done so successfully by the Lady Chief Justice in recent weeks, and people can see that. Those are things where the Constitution Committee sends an important message and has an important role.
I will touch briefly on other areas where I think we should be careful. First, on appointments, the JAC is extremely important, but its role is not properly understood, and the first step of any Minister who wishes to subvert the judiciary is to get control of appointments. We need to make certain that the appointments commission is strong. Secondly, on discipline, by the system that was devised for disciplining judges, we have shielded ourselves from the accusation that people such as Mr Berlusconi could make—that the judges look after themselves. But the operation of the system needs careful monitoring. The third is self-governance of the judiciary. I strongly welcome what is in the Bill, which I hope will be taken forward at least in this respect, to bring together the courts and the tribunals. It is important that the judiciary is unified.
What conclusion should we draw as to the role of the Constitution Committee? I hope it can, over the years, keep an eye on the examples we see elsewhere and on the matters on which we need to keep an eye. It is very important that, when the heads of the judiciary and Ministers come, a health check is made of each of the aspects that safeguard the independence of the judiciary. Perhaps I could persuade the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and his successors to take up this role, because vigilance, as has been said so strongly, is absolutely essential. We need not merely to say it, we need a mechanism, and that mechanism should be the Constitution Committee.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, the matters we debate today are both sombre and urgent. They are sombre because, as the committee’s report highlights, the challenges faced by the rule of law in contemporary society are very grave. To give only one example, the then Lord Chancellor said in evidence to us that the justice system
“is not worthy of the name ‘justice’”—
surely a breathtaking condemnation of the present state of affairs. They are urgent not least because the evidence to the committee suggested widespread public disillusion with the surely basic idea that the laws that protect us all will actually be enforced and evenly applied.
Today I will highlight the rule of law as experienced by the ordinary citizen in daily life. As the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to whose chairmanship I pay my personal tribute, has indicated, the “rule of law” as a phrase does not just mean protection against the arbitrary power of the state, vital though that is; it is essential to the everyday functioning of a peaceful and orderly society. Every citizen is expected to obey the law, and the counterpart—the compact, the bargain, that underpins the whole of society—is that those who do not obey the law must be held to account. But, as others have said, if that does not happen and laws can be broken with impunity, public confidence in the very idea of a society governed by the rule of law is weakened, leading ultimately to the anarchy referred to in the title of the committee’s report.
As the committee highlighted, the widespread public perception that laws against, for example, shop theft, car theft, phone theft, house burglary and fare dodging are broken with impunity is a major, insidious and, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, pointed out, gradual threat to the rule of law. One could add, for example, fly-tipping, the pollution of the rivers, dodgy vape shops, online fraud, and so on, not to mention the daily spectacle of people smugglers operating with apparent impunity, as the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, rightly emphasised.
Even more important is the principle that the law must be enforced equally and fairly. If the law is perceived to be enforced unequally, that compounds the problem. In particular, as the committee points out, perceptions of bias and discrimination within the police, even if unfounded in fact, corrode public confidence in the rule of law. If we add to these matters the delays in the criminal courts, the delays in the civil justice system and the numerous difficulties of access to justice summarised in chapter 6 of the committee’s report, one can understand the current disillusion of the general public with law enforcement and the effectiveness of our legal system.
I am reminded of those opening scenes in “Measure for Measure”, when, in ancient Vienna, law and order has broken down and, in Shakespeare’s words,
“liberty plucks justice by the nose”.
Angelo is sent by the Duke to restore order, and he cries:
“We must not make a scarecrow of the law”.
It is a vivid image of a legal system that is allowed to become tattered, lopsided and ineffective.
We are not yet, thankfully, at that point. I certainly agree with the noble Lords, Lord Foulkes and Lord Waldegrave, and others, that our system is not broken. But one cannot thrust under the carpet or ignore some of the matters and threats which I have mentioned. In these circumstances, all those in politics and public life should treat the threats to the rule of law that are the subject of this debate with the utmost seriousness. Politically, justice and the rule of law have all too often been an afterthought, coming behind health, welfare, education and so on. But, in truth, the rule of law is the keystone on which everything else depends. Nurturing and protecting that keystone is a matter of the highest importance, not only morally but politically.
Earlier today, as others have already said most movingly, we paid tribute to the life of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who embodied in his office of Lord Chancellor and in his person the authority and dignity of the rule of law. Let us try to live up to the example of Lord Mackay and once again place the rule of law, a healthy justice system, fair and effective law enforcement and access to justice at the core and centre of our public life, with all the resources and attention to excellence that is required. Let us never make a scarecrow of the law.
Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)
My Lords, as the second Member speaking today who did not contribute to this excellent report, I also commend the Constitution Committee. It focuses on the common ground that we have on the rule of law and on practical challenges. I will pick out a few themes.
First, the committee rightly says that judicial review should not be presented as a blocker to government action. The Government, in their response last February, accepted that but pointed out quite fairly that judicial review can cause delays to government projects. They referred to changes they were considering to increase efficiency and certainty. Can the Minister update the House on those plans? This might be quite urgent, because the latest Ministry of Justice figures show some positive trends in the length of civil proceedings—the Government must be commended for that—but also reveal a dramatic increase in judicial review applications in the first quarter of 2026. There were around 1,300 new applications in that quarter, up 98% on the same quarter of 2025, and there was also an increase throughout 2025. Can the Minister tell us more about the reasons for this increase and what the Government are doing to ensure that the courts can cope?
Secondly, as we heard before, attacks on judges undermine the rule of law. The same is true also of attacks on practising lawyers. I am afraid that no political side is immune from those. From one side, there have been attacks on lawyers acting for wealthy clients or sanctioned individuals and, from the other side, there have been attacks on lawyers acting for asylum seekers. All these attacks violate the same basic principle: lawyers should not be associated with their clients. Of course, if there are serious allegations of malpractice, they should be investigated thoroughly and promptly.
There is perhaps another reason why public trust in the profession has been undermined, which has to do with how lawyers engage with the media and on social media. When I was called to the Bar, there were very strict rules on media engagement. We were prohibited from expressing personal opinions to the press in cases in which we were involved and any public commentary that we offered as barristers had to be objective and fair minded. The purpose of these rules was to reassure the public about the independence of the Bar. I am afraid we now see some advocates thinking of advocacy in the American sense, where it means campaigning. In our tradition, the two are not the same; an advocate is not a public campaigner and advocates must maintain their independence. Our right not to be associated with our clients carries a corresponding responsibility, which is to keep a distance from our clients and not to become too closely identifiable with them.
It is also wrong and risks discrediting the legal profession in the eyes of the public for lawyers to describe some legal work—for example, acting for claimants against the Government—as inherently more valuable than other legal work, such as representing the Government in defending those claims. We cannot look to the Government for answers to these challenges because, as the Government say in their response, ethical standards are ultimately a matter for the independent regulators. As the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, pointed out, this is not just about rules or guidelines but about a culture that we are trying to defend. It falls on practising lawyers—many of us speaking today are lawyers—to ensure that standards in that culture do not slip.
The third area I will address briefly is the positive uses of artificial intelligence. One recommendation in the report is that short summaries of judgments be produced in as many cases as possible. This is already the practice of the Supreme Court and a number of other courts do it in high-profile cases. Producing an accurate summary is quite resource intensive. However, high-quality AI summaries can be produced more widely, for example through the “Find Case Law” platform at the National Archives, and some commercial legal databases already do something similar. Does the ministry have any plans in this area? I was pleased to read in the Government’s response about the positive feedback on the new AI capability for generating Keeling schedules. Are there plans to expand the system so that all of us involved in scrutinising legislation can use that kind of facility regularly? Legislative scrutiny is key to the rule of law. We all perform that function here, but we need the help of these very practical tools for assessing legislation quickly.
Finally, there was one footnote in the report with which I disagreed. It stated that some evidence before the committee was sympathetic to including international law within the rule of law, while other evidence, apparently including from myself, advocated the contrary position. That is not quite my position. I agree with everything the report says about our obligation to comply with international law, whether treaties or customary international law, but the question of whether international law in its present state satisfies the conditions of the rule of law is a much more complex one.
I refer to the excellent foreword by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, to a recent Policy Exchange report in which he says that the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on climate change and the litigation that it may pave the way for risks undermining the legitimacy of international law and the rule of law. Indeed, a recent study has revealed that a very reliable predictor of how ICJ judges will vote in a given case is how their home states vote in the UN General Assembly. Imagine if it could be shown in a domestic court that judges’ decisions could be predicted based on where they come from. We would have a rule of law problem.
We must comply with international obligations, support these institutions and continue to promote the international rule of law, but we have to understand that this remains an intensely political environment. The international legal order is still very much a work in progress and, like much work in progress, it can be set back by an excess of zeal.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, I am very glad to be able to make a brief contribution to this debate. I was not a member of the committee—in fact, I have always wanted to be a member of the committee, so I hope my remarks will not rule me out from consideration in future—but I applaud the report and the speech of the noble Lord introducing it. Incidentally, I pay my own tribute to Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who was widely admired in the household in which I grew up.
We are rightly proud of our legal heritage. As a matter of fact, earlier this afternoon we had a debate about the UK’s role in the space economy, and one of the aspects—–Members may not realise—is that, looking ahead, we very much hope that the UK can be a centre for international arbitration and the regulation of space, which is going to become more and more important.
I will direct my few remarks to that part of the report that deals with Parliament and its role in making the law. I was brought up to believe in the supremacy of the House of Commons and parliamentary sovereignty, but I am bound to say that my first visit to the Royal Courts of Justice gave me a very different view of the law. Given the eminence of the legal Members of the House here, I hope they will not mind if I say that my memory is of going to the Royal Courts of Justice with my dad, who had been elected for the fourth time as the Member for Bristol South East and was refused entry to the House of Commons—the only Member in the 20th century to be refused entry, having been elected. In the course of the judgment before an Election Court, which consists of two judges, it was held that the ruling of Mr Justice Dodderidge in 1626 took precedence over the electors of Bristol South East in electing their Member of Parliament. Noble Lords will appreciate that that shaped my view of the law to some extent.
The story of country and Parliament, and power in this country, over the last few hundred years has been one of progress and change from the power of the monarch to the power of Parliament, and now the power of a Prime Minister who exercises so many of the powers that a monarch used to hold and does so in his name. I would argue that the balance of power between the Executive and the legislature has changed, and to the disadvantage of the legislature. This is illustrated by that part of the report which deals with the issue of delegated legislation. It is true that you cannot do everything in primary legislation, but that is not to say that secondary legislation receives the scrutiny that it should. Our inability, in effect, to reject secondary legislation, much less to amend it, is eroding, and could erode in the longer term, some element of respect for the rule of law because Parliament itself is unable sufficiently to exercise control over it.
A few years ago, we had a debate in this House promoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, about the use of skeleton Bills. It was a very interesting debate and I recommend it to anyone. It is true that, over time—I do not blame any one Government for it at all; I am happy to blame them all—the temptation has been to introduce legislation that enables Ministers in particular to have greater powers exercised through secondary legislation. Mention was made of the fact that change can sometimes be slow, but there is a pressure cooker building up here and I cannot predict when it may burst. I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister could address this.
The report lists 11 questions that the Constitution Committee applies when looking at Bills before giving its view, and they are all very good questions. I end by asking my noble friend the Minister whether she could give what I would call an honest assessment of the extent to which these questions are in fact considered by the Government in producing Bills. This House would like to feel that the Government are taking seriously the need for Parliament to be as effective as possible in its scrutiny and to have them exercised accordingly.
Lord Young of Acton (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union.
One of the key findings of this excellent report is summarised as follows:
“Public confidence in the judiciary is vital for trust in the fair administration of justice. This requires that judges make decisions independently of bias and external influence, and that they are perceived to do so. However, the committee stated confidence was being increasingly challenged by political rhetoric that criticised the judiciary, and this was being amplified on social media”.
This is the aspect of the report I would like to talk about today: what is legitimate and illegitimate criticism of the judiciary, particularly the senior judiciary?
In chapter 4 of the report, in the section headed “Attacks on judges and the judiciary”, it rightly says that:
“The judiciary, as with any other state institution, should not be immune from scrutiny or criticism”.
The report goes on to say that, while attacks on judgments are fair game, attacks on judges are not. It particularly condemns attacks that claim a decision is based on a judge’s political views or bias. The Lady Chief Justice is quoted in the report as singling out
“newspaper articles about ‘outrageous judicial overreach’”,
and those which used the words “lefty” and “liberal”, and described decisions as “crazy”. The implication is that such attacks, which attribute political bias to judges, originate for the most part with the populist right, not the left. Frances Gibb is quoted in the report, as saying that, every so often,
“‘you get an eruption—often in the tabloid press—against judges’”.
However, it scarcely needs pointing that such attacks come from both sides of the political divide. I am thinking in particular of the attacks on the Supreme Court for the decision it made in the For Women Scotland case. Maggie Chapman, a Green MSP, who was the deputy convenor of Holyrood’s equalities committee at the time, accused the Supreme Court justices of “bigotry, prejudice and hatred”. We heard similar criticisms, if not quite so extreme, from Stonewall, Consortium LGBT and the Good Law Project. More recently, following this week’s judgment in the case against Associated Newspapers, the Duke of Sussex and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, issued a joint statement attacking Justice Nicklin and accusing him of a “complete and obvious whitewash”, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, pointed out.
I share the report’s view that, if the public are to maintain confidence in judges and the judiciary, there should be no perception of political bias. However, are such accusations always based, in the words of the report, on
“inappropriate, and often inaccurate, public criticism by politicians and journalists”
based on misinformation? Last year, Robert Jenrick MP, then the shadow Justice Minister, pointed out that over 30 immigration judges have links to open borders charities. He pointed out that one serving judge openly celebrated on social media the defeat of the last Government’s Rwanda plan. Surely this activity has played a part—perhaps a small one, but a part none the less—in the perception of bias in the decisions of the Upper Tribunal.
More pernicious are the requirements, as part of the process for selecting members of the senior judiciary, that applicants affirm their support for diversity and inclusion. In the Judicial Skills and Abilities Framework, against which the Judicial Appointments Commission assesses applicants, one of the effective working criteria is:
“Takes an inclusive approach to those with differences from themselves … Is able and willing to challenge inappropriate behaviour by others”.
Under leadership skills, it says applicants are expected to:
“Ensure an inclusive culture for all, irrespective of background”.
I am sure most noble Lords do not regard such requirements as political, but I remind them that Reform UK, for all its recent setbacks, is still leading in the polls. I suspect that many supporters of that party would regard these criteria as political. Do we not want supporters of right-wing parties to have confidence in judges and the judiciary?
The commitment that applicants for Silk are required to make is stronger still. The KC Competency Framework has five competencies. Competency D—
“Diversity action and understanding”—
requires that an applicant:
“Demonstrates an understanding of diversity and cultural issues, respects the needs and cultural wishes of others and is proactive in addressing the needs of people from all backgrounds”.
The indicators include:
“Takes positive action to promote diversity and equality of opportunity … Confronts discrimination and prejudice when observed in others; does not let it pass unchecked … Acts as a role model for others in handling diversity and cultural issues.
Is there not a risk that these requirements will contribute to the perception of bias, whether accurate or not? Take the requirement that applicants for Silk must take positive action to promote diversity. To some, that will sound like code for “take positive action to promote people who are not white men”.
The requirement to respect
“the needs and cultural wishes of others”
is, I submit, something of an ideological litmus test, requiring those wishing to take Silk to affirm their alignment with the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion. Note: it asks applicants not simply to tolerate the cultural wishes of others—which may be a wish that women should cover their heads—but to respect them.
It is worth bearing in mind that the latest batch of High Court appointments all took Silk before they were appointed. They all passed this ideological litmus test. Is it not wanting to have your cake and eat it to, on the one hand, insist that members of the senior judiciary should affirm their commitment to EDI at various points as they clamber the judicial pyramid—a contested ideology, I think it is fair to say—and, on the other, condemn journalists and politicians for launching political attacks on senior judges?
In 2024 the Bar Standards Board consulted about introducing a new duty to promote EDI in its code of conduct. That was rightly condemned by a broad coalition within the legal profession, including the Law Society. Surely the same requirement has no more place in the KC Competency Framework than it does in the BSB’s code of conduct. I was, I am afraid, disappointed that the report did not recommend its removal from the KC framework as well as its removal from the Judicial Skills and Abilities Framework.
I share the concerns of the report that critics of judges, and the senior judiciary in particular, should play the ball and not the man, but if we want to achieve that ambition, we have to stop insisting that the man affirm his commitment to a politically contested ideology.
Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury (CB)
My Lords, I echo other non-contributors who have expressed appreciation of the outstanding report produced by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and his committee. I thank them for the very substantial work that clearly went into it. The wide scope of the rule of law, and the multifarious topics it covers, were well illustrated by the excellent speeches that preceded this one. I agreed with virtually all that was said—“virtually” being a cautious lawyer’s word in these circumstances.
The rule of law is not only an essential ingredient; it may be the most important ingredient of a civilised, just and peaceful society. It is, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, mentioned in his speech, of serious economic value to people. The 2024 Nobel Prize was awarded to three economists who demonstrated that the rule of law and sound institutions are fundamental to sustained long-term growth. This is supported by a 2015 survey of more than 300 large international companies carried out by the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, of which I have the honour of being president, and the Economist Intelligence Unit. The survey established that the rule of law was the third most important factor in deciding where to invest, behind the ease of doing business and a stable political environment—and both of those are strongly influenced by the rule of law.
However, the rule of law is as potentially precarious as it is precious. Thus, it is not something that has much traction with the average citizen. Ask him or her, “Which is more important—that the UK retains the rule of law or that England win the World Cup?”, and I fear that the latter might be the runaway winner. Particularly in a democracy, what the average citizen thinks is pretty important. We need to explain to people, above all the young—as a number of people here, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Laing of Elderslie, have emphasised—why the rule of law matters and what it can do for them. As the committee rightly records:
“Public legal education is a key enabler of a rule of law culture”.
Education in this context should concentrate not on high-falutin’ principles but on practicalities that non-lawyers care about. But education is a longish-term project, and we have to face the fact that, with a general election no more than three years away, we may be in a precarious situation.
The precariousness is all the greater under the UK’s unique constitutional arrangements. Unlike almost every other country, we have no codified, overriding constitution; instead, as the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, said, we have parliamentary supremacy, which means that Parliament—in practice, the other place—can do what it wants. Any safeguard, whether statutory, judge-made or founded on convention, could be swept away in an afternoon by a simple majority of constitutionally challenged parliamentarians.
We do not have separation of powers. A Prime Minister and a Cabinet can often get Members of the other place to vote the way they want, which reinforces the precariousness. If an illiberal Government ever commanded a majority, remarkably little—by way of checks—stands in their way. If the rule of law can be trampled on by the head of the Executive in a country such as the United States, with its overriding constitution and its separation of powers, how much easier would it be to trample on the rule of law in this country? The flexible constitution that has served us so well for over three centuries may also contain the seeds of its own destruction.
I mentioned the relative absence of checks on the Executive. One such check is the Human Rights Act, a topic on which this report, otherwise very thorough, is strangely quiet. In a country without overriding constitutional principles, the existence of a statutory document that enshrines fundamental individual rights is essential for the rule of law. The indirect incorporation of the European convention into our law by the cleverly drafted statute ensures that fundamental rights are enshrined in our domestic law and can be reinforced by the courts but without impugning or impinging on parliamentary supremacy.
Although I do not agree with every Strasbourg court judgment and I believe that the convention could do with some overhauling, I am very much against withdrawing from the convention. If we decided to join Russia and Belarus in being the only European countries outside the convention, we would be undermining the rule of law in the UK if we did not have, as we withdrew, an equivalent set of human rights involving similarly effective, constitutionally appropriate judicial powers.
Talking of judges, I do not have much to add to what has been said by previous speakers, but it is essential that we maintain the independence of the judiciary at all levels and in all ways. As the US experience has again shown us, it is essential that we keep party politics away from the judiciary and the judiciary away from party politics. Judges have no democratic legitimacy and should be appropriately cautious about stepping into policy issues. Sometimes they are called to do so—as with the two Miller cases where they had to face a dispute between the Executive and the legislature. Apart from in such cases, they should keep out of political issues.
I have little to add to what has been said, apart from adding my fond memories of Lord Mackay of Clashfern. If ever anyone stood for the rule of law in an acceptable, coherent and attractive way, it was him. It is appropriate that we are having this debate in the week when he sadly died.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, I have too little personal experience of Lord Mackay to be able to say anything substantial. But as a former church leader speaking to him as a wee free, we had animated and friendly conversation on more than one issue. At that level and in those terms, I add my own expression of admiration for, and enjoyment of the memory of, Lord Mackay.
I am a member of the Constitution Committee, the fourth to speak in this debate. We are restoring the focus. For a report of this kind to have generated a debate of this kind, with this divergence of views, is a tribute to the report. I thank all those who have spoken. I said in my membership of the committee that I am not from a political background; others around the table were. I am not from a legal background; others around the table were. So I must be vox populi—except that I had the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, who never hesitates to be the vox populi himself. It has been, for me, a learning experience. The noble Baroness, Lady Laing, talked about being a member of a committee where she had as much to learn as to contribute, and I certainly feel that way myself. Indeed, I felt it was like a prolonged seminar. I remember signing up for a lengthy seminar series on 14th-century Icelandic literature in 1962. I felt then as I feel now: that the learning I acquired in the course of that has equipped me for life in all its shades and colours.
It has been a privilege to be part of the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. I thought seriously about adjectives for him: “genial” is one and “skilful” is another; the third, he will have to wait for when we cross in the corridors. The learning and experience around the table, the opportunity to have breakfast with the judges of the Supreme Court—things such as that have registered in my memory. They have made me, as an ordinary member of the public, far more aware of these luminaries who appear in the press, who have now become personalised by those simple events.
In contributing to this debate, I do not want to add to any of the substantive things that have been said about judges, for example. I want to fix my attention on solicitors. The Law Society sent us a briefing. It said that, in general, this is a pretty good report, but there was one point at which it raised a question that I will lay before Members now. We heard from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, a moment ago about the extent to which we ought to listen to and interpret things that come out of Strasbourg. I am a member of the delegation that goes from this Parliament to Strasbourg, to the Council of Europe. Just over a year ago, it produced the Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer, or, in short, the Luxembourg convention. It was aware that across Europe—and we are not immune in this country—lawyers, solicitors, are on the front line facing people’s opinions, violence and abuse when things happen such as the 2024 riots in the north of England after the dreadful tragedy there.
Lawyers are reporting in greater and greater numbers that they are being subject to the same kind of popular, violent and abusive comments as judges. So we must think about them. I ask His Majesty’s Government and my noble friend the Minister, why, if we could sign the convention a year ago when it was produced in Strasbourg, we have not yet ratified it. Until we ratify it and take it into our own system, the solicitors it seeks to defend will not have the defences they are looking for in the protocol.
Finally, I turn to something rather more personal, and I make no apologies for it. It is a little story from my own life, but it is an elephant in the room that I feel I must bring into the debate. I mentioned it when we were with the judges, my friends—I consider them to be that—from the Supreme Court. I just love working in a cross-party group: it is marvellous, when we are so party-oriented, to have that opportunity, so I mentioned it there too.
My first memory of a court, unlike my noble friend Lord Stansgate, was not the Royal Courts of Justice; it was Llanelli Magistrates Court. It was way back in 1947, when I was five years of age. I was on one side of a big mahogany door—that is what registered in my memory—on the other side of which my parents were fighting out their marriage. A divorce ensued, and my mother brought us up—just the two boys—in one simple room for the rest of our life there. But I do not tell this story to invoke tears, pathos or anything like that. It is simply that, when my mother died—and I am going back home in a month to commemorate the 50th anniversary of her death—her estate amounted to one cardboard box of documents. One of those documents, which I had never seen before, was from my father’s solicitor. It indicated that, since his client had proved to the satisfaction of the court that my mother was the guilty party, he was writing to tell us that we—my mother and her two boys—must get out of the family home within a fortnight. That shaped and coloured the rest of my life.
I tell this tale for a simple reason. We heard about access to justice in the second speech; access to justice is one thing, but fairness for the people involved in that justice is another. Money enters into things at that stage. My father could afford a lawyer and my mother could not. She was the guilty party, and she was therefore obliged to raise two boys in abject penury during their formative years.
Let us look at these things in the round. Let us offer solicitors the protection they want, but never forget that glib phrases such as “access to justice” need to be quantified and measurable.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, I am not a member of the Constitution Committee, but I was its first chair. I welcome the committee’s excellent report and endorse all the recommendations it makes. As I shall argue, it deserves a wide audience.
The committee provides a first-class analysis of the meaning of the rule of law. It is a concept that is core to liberal democracy. As the committee recognises, the basis of it predates the development of democracy by centuries; it is at the heart of the liberal part of the phrase. It can be traced back to the origins of the English polity and, I would argue, is recognisable in the coronation oath of the 10th century.
As the report recognises, in essence, there are two problems in upholding the rule of law: one is in the failings of the institutions of the state to ensure that it is upheld and, crucially, seen to be upheld; the other is a public lack of knowledge not so much of the core concept but of its centrality and the means by which it is upheld. The failure of public institutions to uphold the rule of law, be it through partiality or inadequate resources, gives succour to those who seek to undermine confidence in the British political system. This is exacerbated by the nature of social media and AI.
Two weeks ago, we debated the challenges posed to our system of government by disinformation, not least disinformation disseminated by bodies opposed to our way of life. Disinformation is a major challenge to a democratic polity. People now have short attention spans and often do not bother to interrogate the credentials of those posting claims online. We are generating a gullible society; the long-term implications are horrendous.
I argued then that the response needed to be not only reactive, countering disinformation, but proactive, ensuring that we have a population that understands and appreciates the value of our system of government—not just the way it operates but the values that underpin it.
As the report argues, we need to ensure that all those who are engaged in upholding the rule of law—the courts, the police, Parliament and other public bodies—do so and are seen to do so. We need to address both the resources, not least the physical resources, and the personnel, ensuring that those who are engaged in public life are appropriately trained, fully understand their task and are well led.
In terms of policing, I very much welcome the report of the Police Leadership Commission, chaired by my noble friend Lord Herbert and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. We need to ensure that the courts and Parliament do their job effectively and that each understands and respects the position of the other. The relationship should be one of democratic dialogue, not one of competing authority.
However, the key point I wish to make this afternoon is that these changes, while necessary, are by no means sufficient. Here, I follow the comments of my noble friend Lady Laing. The report concludes by stressing the need for public legal education. That needs putting within the broader remit of citizenship education. Ensuring that citizenship education is embedded in our education system is crucial for the well-being of the British polity. As I said in the debate on disinformation, we are in reactive mode in dealing with disinformation by malign agencies, but we must be proactive in ensuring that we have an informed population, understanding not just how the system works but why it matters to everyone. Citizenship education is an essential tool in restoring public trust in our institutions. That trust is undermined by how some public servants behave, but also by ignorance and a willingness to believe false claims spread through social media.
I welcome what the Government have announced about citizenship provision for 2028, and I welcome the resources provided by Oak National Academy, but the key point is ensuring not just that those resources are available but that schools have the ability—and the incentive—to teach it effectively. It needs to be taught by trained citizenship teachers, not teachers drafted in from other subjects. It needs to contribute to league tables. No school should be rated as outstanding or good unless it is delivering citizenship to the highest standard.
Citizenship education needs to extend beyond schools. It needs embedding in the wider society. We should be ensuring that what is in this excellent report, or at least a summary, reaches far and wide, to civic bodies and basically any organisation that draws people together. It should be required reading for anyone applying for citizenship. More challengingly, we must reach those who do not usually engage in civic activities. In many respects, those are the people we most need to reach.
This report deserves more than simply being debated in this House and then left to gather dust. We need to take it as a manifesto for action. The Government need to act on it. We have the government response to the report, which is welcome, containing as it does a series of actions to address the first problem I mentioned, though not addressing it holistically, and addressing the second, not quite as an afterthought, but in four short paragraphs at the end. The key issue is to recognise the sheer importance of problems to the health of our political system. There needs to be more joined-up thinking from the top, treating the issue for what it is: a national crisis.
Lord Moraes (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Norton. This is one of those places—probably the only place—where you follow a speaker who was actually on your reading list for constitutional and administrative law. I do not know why I feel the need to say that I passed—no distinction, by the way, but I did pass. I know that the noble Lord was a very young professor, writing at a very early time—certainly when he appeared on my list.
The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, talked about how this report was put together. I must be speaker number eight or nine who is not on the committee, but I am willing to see how valuable the report is because it does something very difficult, which is to look at the thin and thick concepts of the rule of law. On the one hand is the profound idea of what the rule of law is at the highest level, the Bingham level, and on the other there is the day-to-day stuff that people have to deal with, and which my noble friend the Minister has to deal with in her department: delays, access to justice, access to legal aid where it is available—the nitty-gritty stuff that people have to deal with, and have had to deal with for a long time, but now it becomes more acute and difficult. The report brings together both these things, and noble Lords have spoken eloquently about it.
So much has been covered. I will alight on one experience of mine that might contextualise what is happening here in the UK, to give some perspective. In the 2010s I was chair of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee in the European Parliament. I know that sounds very boring. Unfortunately, under the treaties it gives you formal powers, along with the Commission and the Council, to investigate rule-of-law breaches, or alleged such breaches. Again, that sounds fairly mild, but there is nothing mild about it. It required months of going to countries such as Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and, yes, even Malta, where there were genuine rule-of-law crises. Under the treaties there was an obligation to address and investigate those crises.
I want to give the House an idea of what the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, mentioned about saying that our system is broken and comparing it with what is happening in some countries. He did us a favour, by the way, by saying that up front. When you visit those countries, you find that there is a deep anxiety, even among those who support the Government, who may be moving to a more autocratic position. That is an important point because it speaks to the independence of judges from party politics, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, mentioned. Independence is not a perfect state for judges in Poland, Hungary or Slovakia. By the way, in Slovakia it was a centre left Government who were in crisis, so it is not all about party politics and the right or whatever.
In Poland I talked to judges, lawyers, community groups, businesspeople—anyone who was interested. Article 7 of the treaty was first invoked because of the crisis of the rule of law in Poland, which today is much repaired. They said, “Look, we feel very anxious about this”. Why? It was because the older generation had emerged from communist states where there was no independence. State judges, state police and state institutions are the very opposite of independence. So even those who wanted to move in a more autocratic direction were deeply anxious. For the younger generation, as both the report and the Government’s response have said, the rule of law is a live issue. It is about the economic health of the country, not just cultural and identity issues. They believe that, when their country is looked at in a certain way, it inhibits investment in, and a certain image of, their country. That is also important, and I saw it when I was in those countries.
We went to countries such as Slovakia, where there was a rule-of-law crisis because of widespread allegations of government corruption, corruption among judges, and so on. Investigative journalists were murdered when they were investigating it; it is real stuff. When you examine what is going on, you find that people often mention Lord Bingham and the Bingham Centre, and what they want and respect is a model that is about independence. They do not believe that would be perfect, and this speaks to the point about whether or not judges are party political, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, said. They want judges to be as independent as they can be—they are human beings, after all—but the issue is not to be overtly party political in their systems. That is the point, and that is all they were asking for.
In Poland, they did not want a set of judges who were pro the Government at that point to be replaced by a set of judges who were pro the opposition. No, they wanted judges who were as independent and as objective as possible. That would restore the rule of law, and it would affect the enforcement elements of the rule of law, the police and all those agencies that had been a real nightmare under communism—these were now post-communist states. Those were the lessons I learned, and they contextualise what is happening here.
To return to what the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, said about everything being broken, there are clearly issues that my noble friend has to deal with—delays, legal aid and all sorts of other issues. These days, the Ministry of Justice is not an easy department in this context. It has to fight for resources.
The rule of law is not some nebulous, abstract concept. I spoke to my son before this debate. I should not do this, because he has just finished his GCSEs and he really does not want me to talk about what I am doing in the House of Lords. I said to him, “You’re 16, you’ve just finished your GCSEs. What is the rule of law? What does it mean to you?” I regretted asking, because I thought he would just not answer. But he did: “Oh, it’s an idea”, and then he paused, as teenagers do, and said, “It’s rules”. Then he paused again and said, “In our country, we’re good at them”. I thought this was really interesting. In every country I visited where the rule of law mechanism was under attack, people cited the United Kingdom as having a robust set of institutions. There are some problems, but they can be corrected. This report, in my opinion, really contributes to that journey.
Lord Shinkwin (Con) [V]
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, and I join other noble Lords in paying tribute to our much-loved noble friend, the late Lord Mackay of Clashfern. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Strathclyde on the powerful call to action that he and his committee have produced in this report.
Naturally I agree with my former tutor and noble friend Lord Norton of Louth that this is a major report, not just in terms of its 93 pages and almost 30 recommendations but in its significance. It does, as noble Lords and my noble friend have said, deserve a wide audience. In the few minutes allocated, I will focus on the conclusions and recommendations that relate to a section of society all too often regarded as insignificant. This is absolutely not a criticism of the report, but it underlines my point because, as far as I can see, disabled people did not figure in it at all. I am not suggesting that there should be some tokenistic checklist of protected characteristic groups who must always be mentioned, regardless of the subject matter. Rather, I would suggest that many disabled people’s life experiences would actually support some of the report’s observations, conclusions and recommendations.
I will focus my remarks on paragraphs 26, 49 and 50 in particular. With regards to paragraph 26 and the role everyone has to play in upholding the rule of law and the importance of our understanding
“what a society that displays the rule of law looks like in practice”,
paragraph 49 hits the nail on the head. It states that it is about the value system that underpins the rule of law. It is surely sadly right that, as the report argues, if the core values of equality, fairness and justice
“are not present (or are perceived not to be present) in our society, then the rule of law … is liable to be degraded and to break down”.
I give one pertinent example of a wheelchair user, dressed in a suit and tie, who was wheeling across Parliament Square only last month. Three teenage lads passed by; each laughed at him in turn, and one was heard to say to the other two, “Have you seen that video?”—shocking perhaps, but not unusual for this individual and, I would suggest, for many disabled people whose disability makes them look different. What was clear in that moment was that these young people had absolutely no concept of the values of respect, equality and fairness that inform the rule of law culture. Indeed, such concepts might just as well have been so abstract as to be completely alien to their thinking.
That is how far we have regressed as a society in the 31 years since your Lordships’ House passed the Disability Discrimination Act. That is how much the rule of law culture has been degraded, undoubtedly aided by the subversive subculture of ridicule and hatred spawned by social media, whose role in misinformation is highlighted in paragraph 117. Social media seemingly grants a licence to laugh at and, in some cases, to dehumanise other human beings on account of their difference. Being a Peer of the realm affords no protection from prejudice. I know because I was the wheelchair user being laughed at.
I also relate, as someone with a mobility impairment, to paragraph 50 and how confidence in the rule of law is challenged by perceptions of disrespect for the law, particularly when this is seen within those institutions that play a role in upholding the rule of law, such as law enforcement. I know I am not the only Member of your Lordships’ House who must wonder why on earth the police, for whom I have the greatest respect, are failing to enforce the law with regard to cyclists going through red lights and cycling on pavements, both of which pose an enormous risk to disabled people and non-disabled people and both of which are illegal. It would only take an inexpensive, well-publicised social media campaign, backed up with real penalties, rather than just warnings, being awarded to law-breaking cyclists, including those using e-bikes, for the public to get the message: this is the rule of law on the roads, enforced by those with responsibility to uphold it—the police. You have absolutely nothing to fear as long as you do not break it.
In conclusion, the judiciary is quite rightly at the apex of society; it deserves our respect. But surely an equally crucial indicator of how much the rule of law is respected in practice is the degree to which it, and the culture and value system underpinning it, are upheld in situations affecting the most vulnerable members of society, not those with the most power. The report may not mention disabled people specifically, but that does not make its conclusions and recommendations any less relevant or important. I thank the Constitution Committee for its work and hope very much that the Minister will show in her reply that the Government are determined to respond positively in practice.
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, in this debate. In a world where so-called “strong men” are ruling with tyranny and anarchy around the globe, in total disregard of the rules-based international order, we should consider ourselves hugely fortunate to live in a country where compliance with the rule of law is still considered important. The Constitution Committee’s report is an invaluable reminder of the central part the rule of law plays, or should play, in the way our constitution works in practice.
Because the rule of law is so critical, and compliance—or non-compliance—with it has consequences for all of us, I am going to start at the very end of the committee’s report, which recommends a “huge improvement” in the way it is taught as part of citizenship education. That point has already been made by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Laing, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, and the noble Lord, Lord Norton. I am not going to repeat the points that they have made, albeit that was the first part of my speech—that is one of the hazards of coming towards the end of the pecking order.
I should declare an interest, since my Private Members’ Bill would require citizenship to be taught by trained teachers at all the key stages of the national curriculum. I will elaborate on why citizenship education is so important. Engaging our young people with the constitution will help to combat their apathy towards politics and politicians—a point that I think the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, made earlier. Recent surveys reveal that they feel deeply disconnected from the political establishment, and that some are even disillusioned with democracy itself, feeling that politicians largely ignore their needs. Perhaps this explains why only 37% of 18 to 24 year-olds voted in the last general election.
Part of the problem is that, as ONS statistics show, there is a low level of trust in the political parties. This carries the danger that our young people will be drawn to a more authoritarian system and to populism, as is happening in countries such as the USA, the Netherlands and Germany, among others. This was the warning from the noble Baroness, Lady May, in her memorable Lord Speaker’s Lecture last year. One reason why there is scepticism about the political establishment is that parties do not keep the promises they make. As Lord Bingham said in his definition of the rule of law—which was quoted by the committee—Ministers, in whatever party, must exercise their powers for the purpose for which they are conferred. To my mind, that includes not just the well-known Padfield principle in public law but keeping faith with undertakings. Breaking promises undermines our democracy and leads to the political turmoil we have seen over the last 10 years, where the only stable thing in No. 10 has been Larry the cat.
There are many examples over both Conservative and Labour Administrations, but I want to point to Henry VIII clauses. Shortly after Labour came into office, we were told by the Attorney-General, in an impressive Bingham Lecture on the rule of law, that there was a need to consider the balance between primary and secondary legislation and the use of Henry VIII powers, since it raises real questions about how we are governed and therefore affects each and every one of us on a daily basis. We were told the Government would lead by example, yet—through no fault of the Attorney-General—Henry VIII clauses are “increasingly being … used” by departments
“to make policy that should more appropriately be made by primary legislation”—
the committee’s words, not mine. Governments, of any colour, who fail to deliver on what they have said undermine trust in our democracy, which is inextricably linked to the rule of law.
As we know, Henry VIII clauses can be used to amend primary legislation, but, like all SIs, they are subject to significantly less scrutiny than primary legislation. As we know, they cannot be amended but only struck down—but when was the last time any SI was rejected?
One is spoilt for choice in terms of recent examples of Henry VIII powers, but just look at those which apply by virtue of Section 54 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act. These are Henry VIII powers that are well concealed in other legislation by being applied via the back door of Section 54 to a vast array of new statutory provisions by virtue of amendments to that other legislation. Legislation should be clear and accessible, as we have heard.
This brings me to my last point, which is that legislation is difficult to navigate, even for lawyers, let alone laypeople. The fact that many Acts of Parliament consist largely of amendments to previous legislation makes the task doubly difficult. The recent Representation of the People Bill is a classic example of a Bill heaping yet more complexity on to an already hugely complex Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. Again, the Constitution Committee has said that legislation should be clear and accessible.
To conclude where I started, we need to engage our young people with our precious constitution, combat some of their apathy towards politics and politicians, restore public trust in our political leaders and make the legislative process clearer and more accessible. All this would help enhance interest among our young people in citizenship issues, including the rule of law, and help create the political leaders of the future.
Lord Blackwater (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, but it is alarming that respect for the rule of law, once unquestioned, should be increasingly fragile, and that this vital requirement of our ordered and free society is under threat. If belief in the rule of law is eroded, that society becomes less free and less ordered, endangering us all.
This thoughtful report—and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Strathclyde and his committee on their work, and him on his excellent speech introducing this debate—mentions the most egregious problems. They are summed up by what has been perceived as “two-tier justice”. There is much debate to be had about whether those perceptions—of the police as enforcers of our laws, and of the judiciary, who dispense justice—are real or illusions. The report mentions crimes far too familiar, such as mobile phone theft, Rolex rippers and the epidemic of shoplifting, which appear to continue with general impunity. I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Shinkwin mentioned that posse of cyclists around England, not just in London, who seem to think the rules of the road do not apply to them.
The “tyranny” in the subtitle of the report may, for the moment, be hyperbole, but the “anarchy” is brewing nicely. The report, as my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, has said, gives a very good definition of the rule of the law. However, to communicate the idea unequivocally and effectively, it must be kept simple. Let me presume to suggest what the decent, law-abiding majority of our people understand by the term, the better to understand how to reverse erosion of the ideal.
First, there must be a body of law that we widely accept. Such laws have authority if they have long existed as part of the common law, handed down by courts and accepted by Parliament and people; or, they will have been passed in the other place and agreed by this House before receiving the Sovereign’s assent. That process leaves, or should leave, no cause for complaint.
Secondly, the police must enforce the law with absolute equality. Respect for the rule of law cannot endure accusations of two-tier policing. We must not, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said earlier, prejudge the inquiry into the conduct of officers in the shocking case of Henry Nowak, murdered last December. However, many have seen the bodycam footage, which raises deeply disturbing questions about training and the attitudes and practices encouraged by senior officers. It is vital that these questions are answered.
Thirdly, as well as people having ready access to justice, the judiciary must be perceived to operate entirely impartially and not as activists—an accusation thrown at some immigration judges. The recent disquiet about lenient sentences for two teenage rapists, now reversed by the Lady Chief Justice, has highlighted problems with sentencing that ever more rigorous guidelines were supposed to have eliminated.
There is no evidence that our laws lack authority, but there is plenty that they are inadequately enforced. The public want blatant lawbreaking rigorously punished, otherwise anarchy will grow, as more people see less reason to conform. I understand entirely how difficult correcting this will be. Though financially overstretched, Britain needs more police, more prisons and a swifter criminal justice system, with more courts and more judges. Given the need to increase our defence budget, this accentuates the urgency of cutting the welfare bill to realistic levels so that that money can be found.
In my lifetime, confidence in the police has declined gravely. Stories of disgraced officers feature in our media depressingly often, whether extreme cases, such as that of the appalling Wayne Couzens, or the Walter Mitty chief constable who lied about serving in the Falklands. But there are other damaging perceptions. Something is wrong with priorities when precious resources are, for example, wasted sending police to caution people for being rude on social media, as happened just a week ago to a man in Chiswick, or when police are perceived as missing in action, as shown in footage broadcast last weekend of thugs fighting in broad daylight in the streets of once-sedate Bournemouth, with a drug deal being done openly in public there. Equally, as has been mentioned, people wonder why shops whose main function appears to be money laundering are allowed to proliferate in our high streets.
Our present Home Secretary seems a woman of ability and resolve. However, we plainly have some amoebic senior police officers, into whom she should urgently put some backbone. In that context, I was delighted to read the report on police leadership by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and my noble friend Lord Herbert of South Downs, which I hope we shall have a chance to debate at length.
As we have heard, the Constitution Committee’s report mentions political rhetoric and social media criticising the judiciary. Free expression is implicit in a free society, however much some may dislike it. None of us is perfect, and, as the occasional revision of lenient sentences shows, this includes judges. But I entirely agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, that personal vilification is entirely unacceptable. The Lady Chief and the MoJ should reflect upon why judges are criticised and how better to obviate such criticism.
Lawlessness is deeply demoralising. It is also increasingly dangerous. A fundamental message should go out from this debate that the rule of law will fall into contempt if police will not or cannot make it their priority to enforce existing laws, and if courts cannot rapidly and effectively process the criminals they catch—and, if guilty, punish them in a fashion that protects and remoralises the public.
Lord Beith (LD)
My Lords, there has been unanimity around this Chamber in welcoming the fact that we are debating the rule of law in the week in which we honour and commemorate a great upholder of the rule of law, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. There is also a degree of unity around the Chamber in welcoming the report and the work and leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who has enabled us as a committee to produce such a welcomed report.
What is the rule of law as it is understood in the British constitution? It is not the rule of lawyers and it is not the takeover by judges of the policy-making role of political leadership. It is, primarily, the mechanism by which the use and misuse of power are regulated. That applies to the use of power by the state but also to the use of power by commercial businesses on which we rely to deliver public services, and sometimes to protect us from aggressive neighbours. We expect a lot from it. As Lord Sumption has put it,
“the rule of law is a body of principles without which we cannot exist as a society because, in their absence, human relations are nothing more than a contest in the deployment of power”.
Although the rule of law helps us to safeguard democracy, the two concepts are not the same. It is at least theoretically possible for the rule of law to operate in a society in which laws are not made democratically. We had that with the suffragettes, for example. We had the rule of law for centuries before most people could stand for election or vote. If laws are not democratically or fairly made, the rule of law can become the enforcement arm of the oppressor.
However, there are those, particularly some in political leaderships, who see the rule of law as an impediment to the pursuit of political objectives. They resent and rail against judicial review of executive action, which they see as inhibiting the rapid implementation of policies they believe they have a democratic authority to pursue. But judicial review of executive action does not turn the judge into a policymaker; it allows the judge to determine whether the Executive have the legal power to do what they propose, whether they have followed accepted procedure and whether it is manifestly irrational.
In considering the rule of law, it is important to recognise that it sits alongside the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Parliament is free to make whatever laws it chooses, and no Parliament can bind its successors. We do not have a written and entrenched constitution. The day job of the committee, as I sometimes call it, is to look at all legislation to see what constitutional implications it has, and to alert the House to dangers and constitutional threats such as those explained by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, in the way legislation is constructed.
The belief that no one should be above the law or beyond its scope is fundamental to the way British people understand our democracy. I say that no one should be above the law because people are far from confident that that is true in practice. We saw that during the Covid pandemic, when the public were being instructed not to visit their dying relatives in care homes, while those who issued these instructions were having parties in Downing Street. “There’s one law for them and there’s one for us”, was the cry. The eventual fining of Ministers and officials for the parties was a needed corrective.
There was further damage to the rule of law during Covid, because Ministers and officials made statements which confused legal prohibitions with mere guidance, leading the police to impose fixed-penalty fines which were later overturned when they came before the courts. The concept of the rule of law suddenly acquired visible significance in the lives of citizens. I suggest that President Trump’s intervention in the matter of a red card being suspended illustrates how suddenly an issue will present the fact that observing rules and making sure that they apply to everybody is fundamental to the way our democracy works.
Governments need the rule of law. Often, they find it irksome or inconvenient, but without it, governance would become impossible. In words used by the committee, the rule of law is holding the line against tyranny and anarchy. Governments ought to be more careful with their actions and their words to support, rather than undermine, the rule of law, even unintentionally.
Too often Governments see laws as a way of signalling disapproval of actions or behaviour. Law defines penalties and punishments for failures to obey it; it is not a press release or a policy statement. Yet new laws are brought before Parliament on the basis that the Government must be seen to be doing something about an acknowledged problem. Even when there is no prospect that the new law will usefully add to the substantial amount of law already on the statute book, Governments say that “this law will send a powerful signal”. That is not what laws are for; they are to determine conduct and penalise people who do not carry out that conduct.
The rule of law is not simply a legal principle; it is a culture. It depends on acceptance that we are each obliged to obey the law, and an expectation that other people will do so. When one drives a car along the road or, as the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, pointed out, when one goes in a wheelchair down the street, it is a reasonable expectation that all but a few of the other drivers and pedestrians will keep to the law and observe the Highway Code. Otherwise, I would not want to risk getting behind the wheel or crossing the street. For most people, most of the time, it is not fear of getting a legal penalty which governs their behaviour; it is a culture in which we expect the law largely to be kept.
The Constitution Committee sets out in detail, which has been explained by noble Lords in this debate, the various principles involved in the rule of law. It is easy to see ways in which we fall short of these principles. Delays and backlogs in the criminal courts are appalling, and access to civil justice is restricted by delays and by the cost. Yet we have genuinely independent judges who are unbiased and not subject to control by the Executive.
We have complex ways of making the law—statute law, regulations, statutory guidance and common law—and that complexity makes it difficult and costly for individual citizens, so people depend on the voluntary sector of law centres and Citizens Advice, which cannot meet all the demands. We may have to develop artificial intelligence tools to help fill this gap. AI is already widely used to process routine legal work. Early legal advice can often avoid much higher costs in the courts and should be a priority.
What can the Government do to protect the rule of law? They should defend it and the judges who carry it out; they should educate people about it in ways which have been put forward in this debate; they should improve access to the law; and they should make better and preferably fewer laws.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for securing what has been an excellent debate. I join other noble Lords in thanking members of the Constitution Committee, many of whom are currently in their place. I must say, in a similar vein to the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, and the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, who talked about legal eminence, that it is a huge honour and privilege to be speaking in a debate on the rule of law following no fewer than four noble and learned Lords, as defined by the Companion due to their previous seniority and renowned expertise within the judiciary.
At the start of this Parliament, the Government declared that the rule of law would be the “lodestar” of their term—words which commanded support from all sides of your Lordships’ House. But surely the true measure of government is found not in ministerial opening speeches but in the legislation that follows. With all due respect to this Government, there appears to have been a deviation from that very lodestar.
The committee reminds us that the rule of law performs a dual function. It protects citizens against arbitrary power, but it also protects society against disorder and lawlessness. It is the line held against both tyranny and anarchy. It is difficult to point to a better illustration of the first danger than the Government’s courts modernisation Bill. His Majesty’s loyal Opposition readily acknowledge the serious pressures facing the criminal courts. Victims deserve timely justice and defendants should not wait years for their cases to be heard. Surely constitutional rights should not be treated as administrative burdens. The noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, gave your Lordships an insight into the potential power of AI and the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, flagged digital technology to reduce waiting lists. Is this something the Government are working on?
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, referenced the constitution which has served us so well for three centuries. The right to trial by jury has outlived centuries precisely because it represents a profoundly important foundation stone; namely, that justice is not administered solely by the state but with the participation of the public themselves. It is one of the principal safeguards against the concentration of state power. Yet the Government now propose to remove that safeguard for significant categories of criminal offences, not because the constitutional principle has changed but because a number of Ministers—purportedly not all—regard it as more efficient to do so. Efficiency is indeed a legitimate and worthy objective of government, but efficiency has never been the highest constitutional principle. If it were, many of our liberties would long ago have disappeared. The noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, were correct when they said that the system is not broken. The UK is a brilliant country, but, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, advised, a health check on the judiciary is a most sensible proposal.
The committee also reminds us that the rule of law requires legal consistency and coherence. The noble Baroness, Lady Laing, rightly proposed that people must have confidence that power is being exercised fairly and equally and there must be a widespread culture of respect for the law. Citizens should be able to understand what the law requires and why Parliament has legislated as it has. Citizens are entitled to expect that one Act of Parliament will not contradict another enacted only weeks before. Yet too often the perception is that the Government’s legislation appears to have been drafted in departmental silos rather than according to any co-ordinated approach to criminal justice or constitutional government.
When justifying the stripping back of the right to jury, the Lord Chancellor claimed that defendants were “gaming the system” by electing for Crown Court trials for relatively minor offences. The Minister for Courts publicly asked, “Do we think that someone who has stolen a bottle of whisky from a mini-mart should receive the right to trial by jury?” But in the Crime and Policing Act, the Government included a section specifically to designate low-value shoplifting as a triable “either way” offence; in other words, there is a right to jury trial. If the Minister could clarify the Government’s position, many noble Lords would be grateful.
If the Minister for Courts believes that shoplifting offences are examples of minor offences for which jury trial should be removed, but just months later another Minister believes that low-level shoplifting offences are sufficiently serious to justify expansion into “either way” territory, it is understandably challenging to reconcile the Government’s position. Some would suggest that this is a Government legislating without a coherent direction on criminal justice and is a suboptimal way to uphold the rule of law.
If the courts modernisation Bill demonstrates one threat to the rule of law, the Government’s sentencing reforms illustrate another. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, reminded us that perpetrators are rarely held to account. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, mentioned disrespect for the law. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, ended his contribution by flagging that the system is undermined if rights are not enforced. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, talked about widespread public disillusion; laws must be actioned and evenly applied. The noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, highlighted a shop being robbed and nothing happening. The noble Lord, Lord Blackwater, summarised it with a laser focus when he flagged that it is alarming that the law, once unquestioned, is now fragile. There is an epidemic of shoplifting and the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, reminded us of the posse of non-law-abiding cyclists all over the country.
Without wishing to state the obvious, laws that are not enforced or whose consequences become increasingly remote inevitably lose their deterrent effect. The Government’s new presumption against short custodial sentences rests on the proposition that imprisonment should become an exceptional rather than ordinary response to a significant range of offending. This means that some shoplifters who now have the right to a trial by jury will waste time and resources in the Crown Court, only to be given a suspended sentence and face no prison time—surely we should ask: does this make sense?
The committee rightly reminds us that the rule of law depends not only on citizens obeying the law voluntarily but on public confidence that the law will be upheld fairly and consistently. Rights cannot exist without responsibilities, and nor can legal obligations exist without meaningful consequences. The rule of law must be respected and non-compliance must carry a real expectation of sanction.
Public confidence is further eroded when, on those occasions when offenders do receive custodial sentences, prisoners who should be behind bars are mistakenly released. The public are entitled to expect that criminal justice is administered fairly but also competently. Under this Government, releases in error have more than doubled. At the end of last year, a convicted sex offender was released by mistake. The Lord Chancellor expressed considerable remorse at the individual’s release, promising to remove him from the streets as soon as possible, yet under this Government’s new sentencing reforms, those convicted of such a crime will not go to prison in the first instance. This raises serious questions. Is it a coincidence that the previous Safeguarding Minister resigned and has publicly called for exemptions to the Government’s indiscriminate early release proposals? Indeed, the Prime Minister in waiting has quite rightly expressed apprehension at the prospect of sex offenders being released early this autumn. It should be no surprise that, in the other place on Tuesday, the Motion from His Majesty’s loyal Opposition regarding early release was carried through unopposed and, in fact, supported by a number of Government Back-Benchers.
Finally, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, referenced Shakespeare in 1584. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, talked about American independence in 1776. The noble Baroness, Lady Laing, referenced William Pitt in 1801. If I may, I will finish by referencing Edmund Burke, a renowned political thinker from the 1700s, who observed that society is a partnership not merely between the living but between those who are dead, those who are living and those yet to be born. This country’s constitutional arrangements are part of that inheritance. They have evolved over multiple centuries because they reflect lived experience and deep wisdom concerning the relative balance between liberty and authority. That balance is never maintained by accident. It is because the rule of law guards against both tyranny and anarchy that it remains one of the defining principles of our constitution. That is why respect for the rule of law is critical and must be adhered to, as has been so well put by many noble Lords today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Baroness Levitt) (Lab)
My Lords, I begin, as have so many of your Lordships, by saying a few words about the late Lord Mackay of Clashfern. Many have spoken of his career as having been one of exceptional distinction, and observed that he served this country with great integrity and wisdom. I echo that and add a brief memory of my own. I met Lord Mackay a number of times when he was Lord Chancellor and I was a member of the Bar Council. I say I was a member—I was in fact the most lowly and undistinguished member of the Young Barristers’ Committee, having been called to the Bar about a year before and being still in pupillage at the time. Lord Mackay was unfailingly kind and courteous to me and always asked me what I thought. It really was the mark of the man to notice the least significant as well as the most important. We send the best wishes and great sympathies of your Lordships’ House to his family. He is going to be greatly missed.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for having chaired the Constitution Committee during its inquiry into this important topic and for securing this very interesting debate. The issues debated today seem to take on ever greater significance in modern times. This has been reflected in the contributions of all those who have participated and it has been, as one would expect, a debate of exceptionally high quality. I am grateful to the noble Lord and the members of the committee for their thoughtful report. The Government recognise the growing public interest in what the rule of law means, not only in principle but in our fellow citizens’ experience as they go about their day-to-day lives.
The report rewards careful reading, together with the committee’s earlier work on the roles of the Lord Chancellor and the law officers, and on relations between the Executive, the judiciary and Parliament. These issues, concerning constraints on how Ministers act and how the different branches of our constitution work together, are fundamental to a healthy democracy and the strength of the rule of law.
In responding for the Government, I am not going to repeat everything we have said in response to the report, but I will highlight a number of key themes. I begin with the Government’s commitment to the rule of law. I want to make this Government’s position clear. We have been unequivocal in our commitment to upholding the rule of law from the moment we were elected. We recognise that this commitment is a constitutional responsibility which must be carried into practice. It requires, among other things, the protection of judicial independence and respect for the institutions that sustain democratic life. The rule of law is not merely an abstract constitutional principle. Laws that are fair and clear, and courts that are known to adjudicate impartially, are among the stabilising features of a functioning democratic society. They provide the framework which allows our citizens to order their affairs, resolve disputes, hold public authorities to account and conduct business with confidence. The Government agree with the committee that this is not something we can ever take for granted. Indeed, as other Members of your Lordships’ House have said, around the world we have seen that the rule of law is weakened, or even breaks down, when Governments act unchecked or judiciaries are put under political pressure. The Government’s evidence to the committee referred to what has been described as a “global rule of law recession”. In that context, vigilance is essential.
This Government have described the rule of law as one of the most enduring of British values. It is not uniquely British, of course, but it has long shaped the constitutional development of the United Kingdom and its constituent nations. Over time, safeguards for judicial independence have developed and the limits of executive power have been settled. Those achievements require constant vigilance, as well as careful and disciplined maintenance. The relationship between the Government, Parliament and the courts is central to the health of our democracy. A strong rule of law depends not only on what statutes say but on the habits of restraint, mutual respect and accountability that govern the way the institutions behave towards one another.
Within that framework, the constitutional roles of the Lord Chancellor and the law officers—I notice that my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General has materialised on the seat next to me—are of particular importance. The committee returned to these questions, and the Lord Chancellor recognised the continuity between this report and the committee’s earlier work on those offices. Their responsibilities form part of the architecture through which the rule of law is upheld within government. Indeed, the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney-General have led the way in setting out the Government’s commitment to the rule of law—which started in the very early days of this Government with my noble and learned friend’s Bingham Lecture—both within the United Kingdom and on the international stage.
The noble Lord, Lord Norton, observed that many of our fellow citizens are perhaps broadly unaware of what is meant by the rule of law, but it concerns us all. It is a subject not only for lawyers or constitutional specialists; it matters to every person who expects the laws to be applied fairly, decisions to be taken lawfully, rights to be upheld and state power to be exercised within proper limits. Anyone who buys a house, opens a business, or, as the noble Lord, Lord Beith, observed, falls out with a neighbour, is entitled to trust that society is effectively and fairly regulated by law.
Against that background, I turn to a few of the themes that have been raised by your Lordships during today’s very interesting debate. I start with judicial independence. It is one of the clearest themes in the committee’s report, and the Government are clear in their agreement. Independent courts are of fundamental importance. They are a vital protection against overreach by the Executive, and their impartiality gives the public confidence in our justice system and brings stability not only to public life but to social and, importantly, business relationships.
The Government are concerned about the danger posed by baseless attacks on the integrity of judges. We agree with the many noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord Beith, the noble and learned Lords, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd and Lord Burnett, and my noble friend Lady Andrews that in recent times we have seen a regrettable and intolerable rise in reckless criticism of judges. We see their impartiality being called into question and attempts to bring their independent role into the political fray. The Government are very concerned that abuse of the judiciary, on social media and elsewhere, has led to unacceptable threats to judges’ safety. The Lord Chancellor has spoken out against such attacks and has made clear his concern about attempts to erode public trust in the independent judiciary.
Judicial decisions will often be debated, scrutinised and criticised. We agree with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, that that is entirely proper in a democratic society. However, our position is that such debate must proceed with care, accuracy and respect for the constitutional role of the courts. The committee’s observation, echoed by the Lady Chief Justice, that this is a shared responsibility and that we are stronger together is an important one. I am sure we can all agree on that point.
Where the Government do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, is in his suggestion that the requirement that our judges and KCs have understanding of the principles of inclusion is some kind of ideological brainwashing. I think I may speak for many when I say that I am proud that our judges respect, understand and embrace the values of our diverse society. Our diverse society is not just about colour; it is about disability. I think we will all have been moved by what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, about his experience as a wheelchair user recently. We understand that that understanding in our judges is how we preserve their independence.
I turn to the committee’s consideration of issues relating to legislation, legal certainty and the legislative process. We recognise that the rule of law is shored up by the approach that we take to the ordinary business of governing—in the clarity of the laws that we pass, the discipline of legislative practice, the quality of scrutiny and the strength of institutions. The Office of the Parliamentary Counsel publishes materials and drafting guidance designed to ensure that legislation is clear, accessible and consistent. It gives further support to legal clarity by reviewing Bills to make sure that legislation is comprehensible, including to those who do not have a detailed knowledge of the subject. We also recognise and pay tribute to the essential role played by committees of this House, which carry out scrutiny of legislation as it progresses. That is critical to maintaining the integrity of our legislative process.
The issue of delegated powers was raised by my noble friend Lord Stansgate and the noble Lord, Lord Carter. We take seriously and agree that delegated powers should be properly framed and strike the right balance between what is put in primary legislation and the flexibility that can sometimes be offered by delegated legislation. The Government publish a delegated powers memorandum for each Bill that contains such powers, setting out the proposed powers, their purpose and justification. This memo, alongside the Bill, will be subject to rigorous scrutiny by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.
The committee’s report highlights several important challenges relating to the maintenance of an effective justice system. These were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham. These include delays in courts and tribunals and issues in accessing legal advice and representation. The Government are well aware of the scale of the challenge and are committed to reducing backlogs and improving the performance across courts and tribunals. Steps are being taken to increase judicial capacity. Working closely with the judiciary, the Government are also exploring the scope for achieving greater efficiency through the innovative use of technology across courts and tribunals. That includes AI-enabled tools for tasks such as transcription and document summarisation, with a view to supporting more timely case progression.
We also agree with the committee on the importance of a properly functioning system of legal aid. The scope of legal aid provision is under review. I reassure my noble friend Lady Andrews that there has been considerable investment in the legal aid system. For example, in response to the acute pressures in the housing and immigration sectors, the Government have increased fees in these categories for the first time since 1996. We have also increased criminal legal aid solicitors’ fees and invested up to £34 million a year for criminal defence advocate legal aid fees. The Government agree that people and businesses must be enabled to resolve disputes quickly and fairly.
On the subject of delays in the courts, the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, asked four questions. I am looking at the clock, so I will write to him and place a copy in the Library, as there are answers to all of those but I do not have the time now to go into the detail that I think he would want.
I turn to trust in policing, raised by the noble Lords, Lord Waldegrave, Lord Strathclyde, Lord Blackwater and Lord Shinkwin, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy. We acknowledge that confidence in policing declines if there is a perception that the police are not consistently effective in responding to crime. This can be contributed to by a reduced visible presence in neighbourhoods and lower satisfaction among victims with how incidents are handled. Trust is shaped by how fairly and respectfully people feel that they are treated, particularly in the use of intrusive powers such as stop and search, where perceived disproportionality can undermine confidence among some communities. The Government are rebuilding trust in policing by being more effective in tackling the crimes that have the greatest impact on communities. The police have been successful in reducing knife crime, but we recognise that less dramatic crimes such as anti-social behaviour can have a corrosive effect on confidence within communities. That is why we have brought in a number of new orders designed to reduce this.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Foulkes that the term “two-tier policing” is used mainly to drive division and hatred. It undermines the brave work of police officers up and down the country who do their job, as they should, without fear or favour. Irresponsible claims of two-tier justice are not supported by the evidence and risk undermining confidence in the institutions that uphold the rule of law.
The noble Lord, Lord Carter, the noble Baroness, Lady Laing, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, all mentioned the teaching of the rule of law in schools. The Government completely agree that a healthy democracy depends on informed citizens. It is important to present the rule of law as a foundational principle in this context. Work to improve the education given to young people on these points is well under way. For example, the Attorney-General’s office has been working with the Oak National Academy and the Association for Citizenship Teaching to develop new lesson plans on the rule of law for all key stages, and new lesson plans were launched on 2 July. More broadly, the Attorney-General’s Youth Ambassadors Programme recruits young people from across the United Kingdom and plays an important role in ensuring that the rule of law is communicated across the United Kingdom and beyond in a way that is accessible, engaging and rooted in the voice of the youth.
My noble friend Lord Griffiths asked about the ratification of the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer. I asked for the answer, and all I can say is that we are working towards ratification. I am afraid it is not what my noble friend was hoping for; I cannot give him any more than that at present. My noble friend Lady Andrews asked about the Legal Support Strategy Delivery Group. I am happy to tell her that it next meets on 28 July. The noble Earl, Lord Effingham, I am afraid to say, turned the debate into rather a partisan attack on the Government. I hope that he and your Lordships will forgive me for not going into the issue of jury trials today.
The Government welcome the committee’s contribution, together with the further thoughts that have been expressed in your Lordships’ House today. We will continue to reflect carefully on the recommendations the committee has made. We should not take our courts and tribunals, or the wider constitutional culture that supports them, for granted. Events in other parts of the world show what can happen when public confidence in these institutions is undermined. The challenge before us is not a theoretical one: it is a practical constitutional responsibility. This Government are dedicated to ensuring that the rule of law remains not only a defining principle of our constitution but a lived reality in the governance of the country. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave: Britain is not broken. We are proud of the United Kingdom’s long history of respect for the rule of law, but our pride must be matched by vigilance.
Lord Strathclyde (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and all those who spoke in the debate. I am particularly pleased that the Minister again said that the Government have unequivocal support for the rule of law. I never thought they would not have unequivocal support, but it is good to reaffirm these things. In that context, I very much welcome the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General to our deliberations; it is a pleasure to see him today.
I was struck, early on in the debate, by something said between the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and my noble friend Lord Waldegrave. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is a long-term, well-known, political heavyweight bruiser of the Labour Party and, of course, my noble friend Lord Waldegrave is renowned for his intellectual integrity and great skills, and yet the two of them got together on this committee and agreed wholeheartedly with every aspect of this. None of us should be surprised by this, because the rule of law is genuinely universal. It is part of the reason we are here.
My noble friend Lord Blackwater asked why we are debating this subject. We occasionally do need to reaffirm the underlying beliefs of the rule of law and how important they are. That is why I also very much welcome what the noble Lord and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, said. They joined this debate, saying that they had not been on the committee but felt moved to do so because we discussed some really important matters that needed to be covered. I am also particularly grateful to noble Lords and noble friends who talked about Parliament and legislation, and for what the noble Baroness said about legislation.
I said earlier that we are all guilty of sometimes trying to rush things through Parliament, but the Constitution Committee and some of the other committees in the House are ever vigilant of secondary legislation and Henry VIII powers being taken inappropriately. We all understand the pressures that fall upon government, but it is important that we safeguard our own integrity.
I will just finish by making a final tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who sat on the Woolsack for 10 years as Lord Chancellor, Lord Speaker and head of the judiciary. His integrity shone from every pore and I like to think that he too would have very much enjoyed this debate. I am very grateful to all those who took part.