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Supreme Court

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, has returned us to an important issue. As I expected, his purpose is not just to get the information requested by his Question, which could have been obtained by tabling a Question for Written Answer, but to suggest that the Supreme Court should remain in the Palace of Westminster. I thought he might go further and suggest that the Supreme Court should not be brought into existence at all, but he has gone only half way there. The noble and learned Lord and I have been involved in many debates in your Lordships’ House. He and I, on many of these issues—for example, terrorism—are comrades in arms. On others, and I am afraid this is one, we find ourselves as opponents. I have always thought that it was absurd that the highest court in the land was technically a committee of your Lordships’ House. That issue is not being raised again today, though perhaps we have come close to it. But the noble and learned Lord says that he accepts that decision. To keep the Supreme Court in the Palace of Westminster would be an entirely unsatisfactory halfway house. So long as the Supreme Court is perching in the Palace of Westminster, it will be seen as part of your Lordships’ House. It will still use perhaps a Committee Room, perhaps the Lord Chancellor’s old Room—certainly something that is a traditional part of the Palace of Westminster—for its hearings. It will still have offices in the Palace of Westminster, or in one of the adjoining buildings in Millbank or elsewhere that belong to the House of Lords. It will still, in that capacity, be seen as an offshoot of your Lordships’ House. But future justices of the Supreme Court, under the Constitutional Reform Act, will not be Members of your Lordships’ House. They will not have a right to sit in this Chamber or to speak here, though no doubt they will have the right to use the refreshment facilities. They will in effect be strangers in their own building, and I do not believe you can have a Supreme Court with the proper authority that it should have if it has no building of its own, no courtrooms and no proper facilities for the judges. Let me look briefly at the question of the conversion of the Middlesex Guildhall. The location is ideal—it is in the heart of the historic centre of government. The building is not ideal—I am not an admirer of it as a piece of architecture. Its neo-Gothic style was already out of date when it was built in 1911. It was built for a local authority, Middlesex County Council. Only later did it become a court, so already it has had one fundamental change of use. The internal fittings, while interesting, are not of great merit. But I think it is capable of conversion into something that would be a more than adequate home for the Supreme Court. It is certainly much better than what the Law Lords have now. The Committee Room, as a court, has very little space for observers or indeed for lawyers. The Law Lords themselves have tiny rooms on the second floor. The refurbishment of the Middlesex Guildhall and providing accommodation for the courts displaced by its transfer to the Supreme Court will indeed cost money—quite substantial money. But is this country so poor that we cannot provide proper accommodation for our Supreme Court? Surely we do not want a Supreme Court stuck in an archaic rut in the Palace of Westminster. The Supreme Court needs to be a proper Supreme Court, with its own building, not an adjunct of your Lordships’ House, and of course the Supreme Court needs to be properly housed and with the proper facilities, which I believe it will get in the Middlesex Guildhall.