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Independence of the Judiciary

I am quite happy to acquit the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey on this one. It was the Government who at the time, on the back of the reshuffle, stumbled on the idea that he had been in favour of for some years. In considering how our separation of powers works, it is important to recognise that it is a bulwark against arbitrary Government. If the legislators get to draft the laws but those laws are interpreted by independent judges, with the purpose of ensuring that the law rules and is applied universally and equally according to the facts, the situation is not reached in which politicians intervene in individual cases or judges make up the law as they go along. That is a very important safeguard. The independence of the judiciary was a major issue that arose from the decision to remove the role of the Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor had stood up in Cabinet for that independence, and that role was also seen as linked with the effectiveness of the legal system. He was therefore a very important person in the scheme of things. After the huge row that engulfed the Government following the reshuffle the role was eventually changed, rather than destroyed. The concordat that was reached puts the Lord Chief Justice at the top of the tree of judges, whereas the Lord Chancellor retains the role of speaking up for the judges and the legal system. It is inevitable, given the Lord Chief Justice’s new role, that he will want to—and should—speak out more in public. I do not altogether agree with the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam about that. Obviously, the Lord Chief Justice must be careful about what he says and how he says it, but I should expect him to say more, publicly, than he previously did. The recent cases that have been decided against the wishes of the Government have been a test of the new arrangements. It is still too early to say whether they will work as well as the old ones, or, indeed, as well as we should all hope. Some Ministers and ex-Ministers simply do not get it. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) attacked judges, in The Sun, for overturning anti-terror legislation in the name of human rights—obviously forgetting that he had been a member of the Government who had put the Human Rights Act 1998 through Parliament. It was not a great surprise that the judges were interpreting that law as they did. Decisions such as the one made in the Belmarsh case and the one, which has been mentioned, made by Mr. Justice Sullivan about control orders, were perfectly understandable and were decided as one would have expected. Many of us certainly said that those outcomes were quite likely. Then Judge John Griffith Williams QC sentenced Craig Sweeney to life and the Home Secretary intervened and asked the Attorney-General to refer the case to the Court of Appeal as ““unduly lenient””, because the operation of the tariff would mean that it would be five years before probation could be considered. Yet the judge had followed the tariff exercise exactly. The great mystery is how someone learned in the law, such as the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird), could have chosen to join that ignorant bandwagon. It was, therefore, a good thing when the Lord Chancellor eventually slapped them down and explained that the judge had acted correctly. He required the hon. and learned Lady to apologise, and that seemed to be a straw in the wind suggesting that perhaps things were going to work. However, it is worrying that we have a Prime Minister who says that our legal world is behind the times in relation to terror legislation, and suggests that judges are getting it wrong, directly or indirectly, while the Lord Chancellor must mop up behind other Ministers such as the Home Secretary and the Under-Secretary. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 provides that all Ministers—not just the Lord Chancellor—are supposed to stand up for the independence of the judiciary. In my view it is too early to say whether the arrangement that we have will work.