Lord Chancellor and Law Officers (Constitution Committee Report)

Lord Bellamy Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2023 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)]

My Lords, I first thank the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, for securing this debate, all noble Lords who have contributed to our discussions this afternoon and, in particular, the noble Baroness and the members of her committee for producing such a valuable report, which has been rightly praised today in this debate and by the Attorney-General recently in another place. It is refreshing to have a report that so carefully examines important questions, hears some very distinguished witnesses and concludes in several instances that the case for major change is not made out, albeit rightly stressing the need for vigilance and for incremental improvements in the system.

I shall first make some general observations about the concept of the rule of law, then comment briefly on the respective roles of the Lord Chancellor and the law officers and finally deal with some other points raised by noble Lords this afternoon. I first disclose, as I should, my own close involvement with the foundation of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, which was established in 2010 within the British Institute of International and Comparative Law in honour of Lord Bingham. The first director of the Bingham Centre was Sir Jeffrey Jowell QC, who was appointed only a few days before Tom Bingham’s untimely death. That centre, which I am glad to say continues to thrive, was set up not only to honour Lord Bingham but to better articulate, defend and promote education about the rule of law. I emphasise “education” since the co-founders, including me, saw above all a constant need to better explain and educate society in the fundamentals of the rule of law. That is a mission that we should all encompass and promote, including the Constitution Committee.

As to the fundamentals, “the rule of law” is a phrase that easily trips off the tongue, but, as the committee rightly points out, the exact extent of the concept is a matter for debate. I was somewhat relieved and pleased to hear that what I am citing is exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, referred to, namely our 16th century friend Thomas Fuller’s famous words:

“Be ye never so high, the law is above you”.


That is surely the core of the matter.

In other words, the Government and all citizens, however powerful, must obey the rule of law. The law of the land is decided by Parliament or by common law and is administered in public by a judiciary that is independent, fearless and incorruptible. Decisions will be not arbitrary but authorised by law and within powers legally conferred. In the words of the judicial oath, the judges

“will do right by all manner of people”

according to law. Those judges are appointed on merit, not on political or other suspect grounds, and they have commensurate security of tenure—a most important point. The security of tenure of the judiciary is the foundation of any legal system. Of course, the orders of the court will be as fully obeyed by the Government as by any other citizen. There should be no doubt about that, even though, formally speaking, there is no coercive power of enforcement again the Crown.

So described, as a number of your Lordships have said this afternoon, the acceptance of such a system by society depends on the people’s trust in and respect for the judiciary and the knowledge that the courts will not hesitate to find against the Government where necessary and that the Government will accept the ruling and not change the law without the authority of Parliament.

That is not in any sense a nebulous concept. Your Lordships, sadly, well know how many countries in the world struggle to get anywhere near that standard. Indeed, I venture to suggest that, in this core sense, the rule of law is at least as strongly entrenched in this country as anywhere else, and has historically been and still is a beacon to many. It is in the public consciousness, if you like, and the DNA. It is in the education and culture of the legal profession; the law officers; Treasury counsel and the many barristers who are part of the Attorney-General’s various panels of advisers; the Government Legal Service, including departmental lawyers; and indeed, it is fully in the minds of the mainstream public civil servants as well.

The crucial point is that all public authorities know that their acts are susceptible to legal challenge and to being subjected to close scrutiny by, if I may say so, judges of outstanding integrity and competence. Having over the years had the privilege of working in or alongside other legal systems in various parts of the world, I respectfully suggest that there are few if any countries where the Government and public authorities are so susceptible to prompt and effective legal challenge. I add—and many noble Lords have seen this unfolding over the years—that we have come a very long way in the past 50 years or so. To be personal for a moment, when I first started at the Bar, judicial review hardly existed. The Government’s legal adviser consisted of one Treasury devil. Former Attorney-Generals were still on the Bench, having enjoyed the sinecure that then went with the office of a nice judicial appointment at the end of your period as a law officer.

We have come a very long way since those days in the 1940s and 1950s. The then judiciary would not have challenged the Labour Government under any circumstances—but the culture of challenge to the Government has developed and extended and is in my submission alive and well. I suggest that the organisations, structures and people I have mentioned collectively represent, or closely approximate to, the bell tower to which the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, referred. There are enormous checks and balances in the system—one sees it every day as a Minister when submissions cross one’s desk and, in every part of government, the requirement to effect the rule of law and the legal framework is in the front of mind. That is the essence of the matter.

One can debate the further content of the rule of law but it would take too long to formulate the various aspects of it, and we have the principles formulated by Lord Bingham, promoted by the committee at paragraph 33. This is not actually my signed copy of The Rule of Law but it is a copy, and it is a remarkable work of exploration and articulation of what we are talking about. However, whereas in this Room we are subject to a picture of the tablets of stone coming down from the mountain, the eight principles of Lord Bingham are not quite yet the eight commandments, if I may say so. They are articulations of principles that need to be debated and elaborated on as the years go by.

If I may, I shall say a few words on one of the most difficult issues, on the international law point—and it is a difficult issue. The Government entirely accept the principle that international obligations should be observed. Indeed, that principle is the cornerstone of a rules-based international order, and plainly in the interests of the United Kingdom. However, it does not follow that international obligations should be justiciable in the courts in the way that I have just described unless Parliament has said so, as the committee rightly recognises at paragraphs 52 and following, particularly as explained by the sadly late Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood in the cornerstone case. There are many other cases to the same effect.

It follows that one cannot automatically treat international obligations not forming part of domestic law as having exactly the same status as if they did. We are dealing here with relations between states. As I think my noble friend Lord Howell pointed out, these are circumstances in which a Government must have a margin of appreciation and must in particular have regard to the views of the national electorate from which alone the Government derive their authorities. Difficulties on the international plane typically arise where: relations have broken down; dispute solving or treaty amendment mechanisms either do not exist or are ineffective; the exact content of the relevant international law is unclear or debatable; circumstances have fundamentally changed since the relevant obligations were entered into; or unforeseen difficulties have arisen and other state parties refuse to recognise or choose to take unreasonable advantage of those changes of circumstance. In those circumstances any Government must, as a very last resort, have the ability to have regard to the public interest, while recognising the need to act as far as possible within the recognised parameters generally accepted in international law.

If I may say so in passing, the difficulty is illustrated in particular in relation to circumstances such as the Iraq war. The then Attorney-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, advised the Government that it was a lawful exercise of the Government’s power. The late Lord Bingham, in his eighth principle, disagrees with that. That is a classic example of how difficult it is sometimes to know what is right, what is wrong and where the line should be drawn in the international sphere. Sometimes Governments have to act in the national interest. That is all I will say in general terms about the concept of the rule of law and the importance of it in our constitution, which is entirely recognised by the Government.

I turn to the position of Lord Chancellor. I first suggest that the 2005 reforms have been, on the whole, astonishingly successful. The key to those reforms was the creation of the Supreme Court and the separation of the functions of the legislature, judiciary and Executive. The Lord Chancellor, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, pointed out, was a defiant embodiment of the rejection of the doctrine of separation of powers, combining in his own person legal, judicial and executive authority. The establishment of a separate Supreme Court and the Judicial Appointments Commission was substantial progress.

The question then is whether the current role of the Lord Chancellor is satisfactory, combining the functions of the Ministry of Justice with what is described somewhat bleakly in the 2005 Act as the Lord Chancellor’s existing constitutional role in relation to the rule of law. In that context, I respectfully slightly caution against a somewhat rose-tinted view of what went on in the past. Within living memory, Lord Chancellor Viscount Kilmuir advised the Prime Minister of the time Anthony Eden that the Suez invasion was perfectly legal, in defiance of the contrary advice from the then law officers. Viscount Kilmuir then proceeded to sit as a judge so disastrously that legislation was immediately introduced to reverse his leading judgment in the case DPP v Smith. There are other examples to that effect.

I remind the Committee that, although we all admire and respect Lord Mackay of Clashfern, relations between the Lord Chancellor and the legal profession broke down entirely when he attempted to introduce legal aid reforms, replacing hourly rates with fixed fees. Relations later broke down entirely between him and the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lane, when he successfully introduced solicitors’ rights of audience in the higher courts, which Lord Lane thought was the beginning of a fascist state, remarking that insidious progress does not necessarily come with a swastika on the armband but by other routes. The history of this office is not entirely clear, and we need to bear that in mind.

The overriding conclusion to which the committee rightly came—and with which the Government entirely agree—is that what is important is not so much whether the Lord Chancellor is a lawyer or a senior legal figure but the character, intelligence, integrity and commitment of the individual concerned. The Government would not necessarily accept that it is desirable in all circumstances for the Lord Chancellor to be a lawyer. One of the most influential Lord Chancellors in recent years was my right honourable friend Michael Gove MP, who introduced a significant and long-overdue programme of digitisation of the court system. He was a highly practical Lord Chancellor who got things done and was not in any sense susceptible to a perception of capture by the legal profession. He was not at all conservative, which many senior lawyers tend to be, if I may say so with respect to the many senior lawyers in the Room. In the Government’s view, it is about the character of the person rather than whether in some distant stage of the past they achieved a formal qualification which now enables them to call themselves a lawyer.

On the perfectly legitimate question of how this part of government machinery should be organised—whether the Ministry of Justice and the Lord Chancellor should have responsibility for prisons and probation as well as for the courts and other aspects—the Government respectfully agree with the committee’s conclusion that the case for change is not entirely obvious, although a future Government or Prime Minister will no doubt reconsider. They are now integrated and there is a huge cost to changing political and administrative structures within government once again. There is a logic to having courts, probation and prisons together. You must have probation and prisons together because they are now integrated under one roof much more than in the past. When you have a Criminal Justice Act, it will typically deal with sentencing, prisons, court processes, rehabilitation and so forth.

There is an internal logic to doing it, but it would be for any new Prime Minister or Government to consider. With respect to the thoughtful contributions from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and other noble Lords, there is a case for considering how we do this in terms of the constitution—whether you want some external body or person and whether they are in the Cabinet or not, and what we do about the constitution in general, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, was asking.

With an unwritten constitution, the tradition up to now has been to let it evolve. On the whole, it has evolved fairly successfully without anyone trying to sort it all out. For some, it is rather messy—but an unwritten constitution is a bit messy. The test is whether it is working well, and one should not reorganise it for theological reasons or out of tidy-mindedness; one should look very carefully for the right balance, very much bearing in mind the importance of not only the administrative efficiency of government but the best ways to protect the rule of law. In that respect, the rule of law and its associated freedoms are also protected by Parliament, the media, public debate and all sorts of other means, as well as the formal processes through which the Government take their legal advice or decide to act in any particular way.

As for strengthening the Lord Chancellor’s role—if I have understood some of the points made—as someone who is a sort of general watchdog or guardian who in some sense sits on the Prime Minister’s shoulder and whispers in his ear, “No, you can’t possibly do that”, I respectfully doubt whether that was ever genuinely the Lord Chancellor’s role. In his evidence to the committee, Lord Mackay basically said—I paraphrase—“I never advised the Government. I might say to the Prime Minister that you need to take advice on it, but I couldn’t, as Lord Chancellor, actually go into the detail of what the advice should be. There were occasions when I had to tell the Government that they needed to take advice, but the giving of advice is for the Law Officers and Treasury counsel, and holding the Government accountable is ultimately for the courts”.

Respectfully, I wonder whether it would be a useful additional element in our constitution to have a Lord Chancellor who had no other departmental responsibility other than to act as some kind of guardian of the rule of law. I suggest that that would almost certainly be unnecessary, given the very detailed structures and processes we already have to protect the rule of law in this country.

It is perfectly true, and on behalf of the Government I would be the first to accept, that one incident some years ago involving the “enemies of the people” was unfortunate. It was very concerning to the judges involved; the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, is here, listening. From a personal point of view, I have always imagined it a rather frightening—that is possibly not strong enough a word—or at least very unfortunate incident. Certainly, in those circumstances, the whole Government, as well as the Lord Chancellor specifically, need to be able to defend the judiciary.

If I may say so, our experience since suggests that, on the whole, that lesson has been learned. Noble Lords will find very muted comments from the Government on subsequent cases, whether it is the judgment of the Supreme Court in Miller 2, the recent judgment on Rwanda, and so on. We now have a completely different atmosphere. That was an unfortunate lapse, which should not happen. It would be one of the duties of the Lord Chancellor to defend the independence of the judiciary, and I am sure the present Lord Chancellor would undertake it with vigour, sincerity and integrity.

Indeed, if I may say so again, as far as I can see, the current channels of communication between the Lord Chancellor and the judiciary seem to work fairly well. The present Lord Chancellor is well aware of the importance of judicial independence and the efficient operation of the court system. The noble Baroness, Lady Drake, asked whether the Government agree with the observation of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, that the position of the Lord Chancellor and the relationship with the judiciary need further reflection. Why not have further reflection on this difficult but evolving issue? There is no reason not to continue to further reflect on these matters.

In that context, one other question that I was specifically asked was whether the updating of the Cabinet Manual will clarify and more clearly define the duties of the law officers. On that point, I am not able to give a full answer today. However, I can say that the Government will review Hansard and consider the ideas that have been raised in this debate and the drafting process in the light of the committee’s report. A draft of the updated memorandum will come to the Constitution Committee and the relevant committees in the other place to consider. That matter will, I hope, be taken forward.

Of course, this becomes a little more difficult in terms of the rule of law. This is very much the case on the international plane but also domestically. Where the rubber hits the road is where the law is not entirely clear, and that is most of the time, actually. It is not the case that everything is entirely straightforward, and that is particularly so in, for example, human rights cases involving social and economic rights, as distinct from classic legal rights under contracts or criminal law. There are many cases where more than one view is tenable. I hesitate to suggest that anything is wrong with the Government’s present legal approach to that difficult situation. Thinking back over one’s career, one has several times lost cases that seemed totally winnable and vice versa. That is the nature of the beast; it is not a science.

Again, to comment briefly from a personal point of view on the suggestion about the Government not putting forward legislation deliberately in breach of international law, yes, there is great force in that. However, possibly the only case where that problem resulted in a legal judgment goes back to the early 1990s, when the Government came under enormous pressure from all parties to save the Cornish fishing industry from the depredations of what was seen as Spanish fishermen illicitly coming on to the British fishing register. This led to the Merchant Shipping Act, which was challenged by the then European Commission. I was led by the then Solicitor-General, and we defended it as best we could. We thought that we were entirely justified in so defending it on the basis of our legal arguments. We lost all down the line, but it raised very starkly the question of what a Government do if they must respond to their electorate on the one hand but find themselves constrained by other rules on the other hand. It is a difficult problem. I respectfully caution against any formal limitation on a Government putting forward to Parliament appropriate legislation in the circumstances.

Have I dealt with everything that I should have dealt with? Forgive me if I have left something out—I am sure that it will be drawn to my attention. Particularly on the thoughtful comments of my noble friend Lord Norton on the constitution, I say that there is scope for further reflection on that. We have the Deputy Prime Minister, and we have different answers and possibly a lack of transparency about exactly who does what. That is something for further reflection. Those are points well made.

Regarding the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, it is not the Government’s position that the Illegal Migration Bill will be in breach of our international obligations. That point has been discussed at length in the main Chamber. The independence of the judiciary is not at risk in any sense and is defended quite appropriately under the present system. As I just said, I will revert when I have further and better information on when the Cabinet Manual will be available.

I have done my best to cover everything, and it only remains for me to say again that the Government congratulate the committee on its report and warmly thank not only the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, but everyone who participated in this debate this afternoon.