Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Jay of Paddington and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jay of Paddington]

My Lords, I think I am the first non-lawyer to contribute, very briefly, to this debate. I see the Minister raising his hand and hope he will accept the point I will make.

As the House is aware, I am the chairman of your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution and, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, have written to the Minister in that capacity about this amendment, simply to express the view that the committee, in its meeting last week, endorsed the amendment that has been proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips. I am very grateful to the Minister for writing back to me in a letter, with today’s date, which he concludes by saying:

“I can assure you that the Government remains committed to working with the Court to consider these issues”,

which he says are, of course, complex.

I was therefore a little disturbed to hear from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, in his introduction to the debate, that he felt that his discussions with the current president of the Supreme Court, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, have run into the ground or “come to nothing”, which I think was the phrase he used. I would be grateful if the Minister, in replying, could perhaps elucidate, or expand a little more on that sentence that he has written in his reply to me, that the Government are committed to working with the court to achieve these ends.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood]

My Lords, I, too, feel compelled to say just a word in support of this amendment. I support it for the reasons already eloquently given by my noble and learned friend Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers and other noble Lords and have no intention of repeating those. I echo, too, his tribute to the present chief executive of the court, Jenny Rowe, who has worked tirelessly in setting up the court and progressing it over the three years that it has existed. I confirm—because I remember it all too well—what my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf said about the problem that the present wording of the legislation caused with regard to the chief executive’s role at an earlier stage in the court’s life.

On the critical point at issue, I respectfully suggest just this to your Lordships: constitutionally, it is no more appropriate for the Lord Chancellor to appoint the chief executive of the Supreme Court merely after consulting with the president of that court than it would be for the president of the Supreme Court, after merely consulting with the Lord Chancellor, to appoint the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice. The separation of powers means just that—the judiciary is not the Executive.