Various newspapers have been reporting that the next Attorney General may be Lord Grabiner, a well-known commercial silk, and Labour peer since 1999. For some time I had suspected Baroness Scotland was the obvious NFL Jersey from China choice, but I suppose she might be a candidate for Minister of Justice.
In any case, my money’s on Grabiner now I recall that Gordon Brown’s used him before as one of his “independent experts”.
I very much agree with Iain Dale about the media coverage of the “suspect” Robert Murat and indeed of the Russian man who’s now in the spotlight. I really wish the BBC and other media would think again before going headlong towards an American-style approach to reporting crime stories. I think restraint is in the interests not only of a fair trial (and therefore, of ultimately convicting and punishing those who are guilty) but also more broadly of society as a http://www.magliettedacalcioit.com whole: I think feverish reporting of breaking news contributes to paranoia about crime, especially paedophilia, places unnecessary pressure on the police, and is simply distasteful at a time when parents are suffering enormous distress.
Of course the Attorney General can’t do anything in this case to rein in the reporting: the Contempt of Court Act 1981 only applies to proceedings in this country. The Act does not cover the risk of prejudice to proceedings in Portugal.
Apparently the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has launched a judicial review of the government’s plans to change the way we buy and sell houses in England and Wales with the introduction of Home Information Packs this summer.
Gosh! Everyone’s at this judicial review lark! I think following Greenpeace’s successful judicial review of the government’s energy proposals earlier this year, potential challengers now feel that a judicial review actually has some prospect of http://www.magliettedacalcioit.com success. I note that RICS are arguing there was a flawed consultation procedure – the kind of argument that succeeded for Greenpeace.
RemedyUK was in the Administrative Court at the RCJ today, at the hearing of its judicial review challenge to the government’s MTAS system for appointing junior doctors. Tom De La Mare of Blackstone Chambers is for them, instructed by Leigh Day.
You might think this was rendered http://www.nflauthenticjersey.com/ academic by Patricia Hewitt’s announcement that MTAS is to be abandoned – no doubt that’s what she’d like you to think. But RemedyUK’s website explains that, while the digging may have stopped, what’s at stake now is how to get out of the hole, and then fill it in. This link explains what exactly RemedyUK are asking from the court.
It seems one thing Segolene Royal has in common with her partner Francois Hollande is an intention to
The cause of action is, in effect, violation of private life. It seems they don’t want to prevent publication, but to recover damages.
It’s the first day of the existence of the new Ministry of Justice. I’ve nothing against this, really; it seems to me reasonable enough to organise government in this way. But there are a couple of grumpy things I want to say, nonetheless.
First, that I’ve never http://www.raybani.com/ understood why some lawyers have argued that simply having a body called a “Ministry of Justice” would in itself represent or embody some enormous liberal revolution in favour of the citizen, and have more or less campaigned for one to be set up. It doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to anything. I think the attraction of the name for some lawyers is simply the fact that a Ministry of Justice sounds a bit Charter 88-ish, and a bit French.
Second, it seems to me ridiculous to think this change makes any difference at all to the problems which have faced the Home Office over the last couple of years. To suggest that this little bit of deckchair-arranging helps in any way at all is the kind of thinking indulged in by cheap oakley incompetent, weak ministers who cannot face the fact that real achievement needs work, commitment, resources and leadership. What a jolly good thing John Reid has announced he’s leaving the cabinet.
Finally, I’m very pleasantly surprised to know it’s still possible in 2007 for there to be a new ministry “of” something. It had seemed that this approach had become rude, or inappropriate, and that all newly-named ministries and departments had to be not of, but “for” something instead.
You may be as pleased and relieved as I am to know that the editor of Charlie Hebdo was finally acquitted by the Paris Tribunal Correctionnel of the criminal charges brought against him by Islamic Organisations.
Unfortunately I understand they are http://www.raybani.com/ planning an appeal.
It seems to me this case involves much bigger human rights issues than, say, the case of Brian Haw here in the UK. Let’s hope any appeal is thrown out.
What
I see absolutely no evidence that the attorney did anything other than what all previous occupants of his post would have done, ie to respond to a request from the Metropolitan Police for an injunction. He was, as he has claimed, acting in his capacity as http://www.raybani.com/ an independent lawyer not as a politician. The widespread disbelief which this assertion provokes probably means that the ancient post of attorney general will not survive – or at least not in this form – beyond Lord Goldsmith’s tenure.
I’m sorry to say it, but I couldn’t agree more.
Extraordinary news, this: the Attorney has injuncted the BBC from showing a report about cash-for-honours.
Presumably it’s to prevent what he thinks would be contempt of court – a publication that would seriously risk substantial prejudice (I’m away from law books today, and quoting the test in the Contempt of Court Act from memory, so by all means correct me) to criminal proceedings. Fair enough.
It’s political dynamite, this, though: the Attorney is now linked to cash-for-honours, something he must have hoped would never happen; and what he’s done can so easily be portrayed and http://www.raybani.com/ perceived as aiding a huge “cover up”. Plus, in spite of his office’s insistence he’s acting independently of government, many people will be cynical about that in the extreme. For defenders of his role, like me, this is the nightmare scenario – unless in time everything about this application is made public and this decision is seen to have been right, the incident will end up as the key justification for abolition of the Attorney’s role.
Goldsmith must know what a huge risk he’s taking.
In today’s Times,
First, he says only the politically inactive should be appointed to the post: the Attorney should not be a supporter of the government. He says there should be security of tenure for five years; he says the Attorney should have power to publish his or her advice; and he says the Attorney’s policy role in criminal justice should be given to another minister.
That last one, I agree with. I think the http://www.raybani.com/ Attorney’s role is to be the government’s chief lawyer; and just as a company’s lawyer does not decide strategy, the Attorney should not decide government policy.
I’m not in agreement on his other points, though. I think critics of the Attorney’s role are all forgetting that he is simply the government’s lawyer – not an internal court of legal discipline in government, or in any sense a “safeguard” to prevent the government from doing things. Nor, finally, is he the source of definitive legal rulings binding on the whole country. That’s what courts do.
So, looking at it my way, why should he be politically independent? Independent minded, yes; every decent lawyer should be, and by the way, so should every minister and every MP, all of whom have political allegiances. There really is nothing dirty or corrupt in political commitment, even for a lawyer, and to suggest there is is akin to arguing that if Greenpeace wants to gain public trust, it has to ensure the lawyers it uses, and who gained it a great victory in the High Court recently, should on no account be environmentalists.
I disagree with Pannick on security of tenure, too. There’s no point in having a lawyer if you don’t have confidence in him and his advice. And the only point in security of tenure is that it forces the government to have a lawyer it doesn’t trust. If that happened, government would get its advice elsewhere, and the Attorney cheap oakley would be redundant. Again, I think the right answer flows from seeing the Attorney as just that – an attorney advising the government, not a provider of legal commentary public consumption, or of a paper trail on which to indict the government for its policy choices.
Finally, publication. The only point of this is so we know where the government believes its own legal arguments are weak, and when it has acted in defiance of legal advice or on the basis of equivocal advice. Well, I don’t think the sky would fall in if Attorney’s advices were published. But equally I see no benefit in it, and I’m not at all sure it’s in the public interest. The fact is, anti-war protesters argued in 2003 that the Iraq was was illegal, and they argued in 2006 that it was illegal. In the meantime, the Attorney’s advice was (David Pannick’s mistaken about this) published: and the published advice changed no one’s mind. The reality is that the war was either lawful or not, independently of what the Attorney’s advice was. His advice does not make a war lawful, or unlawful, whatever it says, any more than David Pannick’s advice makes his lay clients’ actions lawful. I don’t understand why I need to see his advice to them in order to criticise what they do, or argue its illegality. Of course seeing his advice would prejudice his Ray Ban outlet clients’ cases and help their opponents: and I think this is the only real point of publication.
Oh, and by the way: on BAe, I find it bizarre that David Pannick is arguing politicians should not be trusted to judge what’s in the public interest. That’s what politicians are there for! And as for cash for honours… what we need is a minor reform, such as removing the need for the Attorney’s consent in this kind of case where government ministers may be charged. Not the kind of ill-considered, unnecessary and (mark my words: it will be) botched surgery that so many people are arguing for at the moment.