---

Lords of Appeal in Ordinary

After all, my Lords, the appellate function, which it has fulfilled with such diligence and attention to detail over many centuries, has been unique to this House. It was never part of the functions of the other place. It is unique, too, in the role that it has fulfilled as an appellate court. Its capacity to combine, within this Chamber, the legal traditions of the three separate jurisdictions within the United Kingdom—England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland—is something that the courts of none of those jurisdictions on its own could have achieved. The Scots insisted, when the Treaty of Union was entered into in 1707, that there should be no right of appeal to any court that sat in Westminster Hall, where the patriot William Wallace was tried and condemned for treason. But that did not apply to your Lordships' House, so there was no obstacle to appeals from Scotland being heard here. The happy result of this combination—this historical accident, you might say—has been of immeasurable benefit to all three jurisdictions, and to the United Kingdom, due to the cross-fertilisation of ideas from these jurisdictions and a carefully balanced harmonisation which this system made possible. The system has been unique, too, in what the Law Lords wear: no wigs, no robes, dressed simply as everyone else is in this House. The authority of the Law Lords is undoubted, but this is due to what they have said and written and what they have done, not to any kind of dressing up. The system has been unique in a respect that, in the end, was to be its undoing: the fact that the Law Lords were entitled to take part in the work of the House as a legislature and of its committees, just like everyone else. As a result of the way the appellate jurisdiction has been operated since 1876, when the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary were first admitted to the House's membership, the House of Lords has become a byword for judicial work of the highest quality. As a brand name it has been unsurpassed. The reputation of the whole House has been greatly enhanced by it, throughout the common-law world and beyond—so much so that the decision to end the appellate jurisdiction caused almost universal surprise overseas. Why give up something that seemed so valuable? Of course, we recognise that the die has been cast and now we must go our separate ways. If I may be so bold, your Lordships are on your own now and, as we take the appellate jurisdiction away with us, so are we. I can assure your Lordships that in the Supreme Court we will carry on many of the traditions that have been built up here by the 117 individuals who were privileged to have been appointed to this office, serving all three jurisdictions, wearing everyday business clothes and aiming to deliver judgments of the highest quality. Noble Lords will, of course, be welcome to come to the Supreme Court at any time as visitors, although preferably not all at once. In recent years it was to the committees, such as the Committee on the European Union and Sub-Committee E in particular, that the serving Law Lords contributed most to the work of the House. In truth, it had become almost impossible for those of us who are still serving, and who would otherwise have wished to do so, to make any meaningful contribution to public business in this Chamber. Changing attitudes made it wise for us to refrain from speaking and voting, and changes in sitting times and the pressure of work on us made this element of self-restraint inevitable. Happily, those of us in the Supreme Court who are already Members of the House will be—if your Lordships will be good enough to approve of the House Committee’s report this morning—allowed back into the precincts as if we were on leave of absence. We also hope to be able to make use of this privilege so that we can maintain contact with what goes on here. We look forward to the opportunity that retirement will offer us, as our disqualification is lifted and we have time to give, to follow the example of our predecessors, who gave— and, indeed, still give—so much to the work of the House in their retirement. For us on the Appellate Committee, as we leave the Chamber in a few moments to resume our judicial duties this morning upstairs in our Committee Room, it is not "adieu"—only "au revoir". There is one last scene to be enacted before we leave. Today, your House rises. We still have 10 days to go before our term ends. There is the saying, "While the cat’s away, the mice will play". Next week, as your Lordships will not be here, we will resume our ancient tradition of hearing appeals here in the Chamber. On Thursday afternoon we will sit here for the last time to deliver our last judgments in the House. Unlike the Last Judgment Day, this is an event the timing of which we can predict with absolute certainty, and we will all be here. Only when our last judgment has been given, at 4.50 pm on Thursday afternoon, will the appellate function of the House of Lords truly pass into history.