Andrew Blick (London, Democratic Audit): I’ve just come from the Grimond Room in Portcullis House, where the Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee had a session with senior members of the judiciary and the Lord Chancellor/Secretary of State for Justice, Lord Falconer. If Gordon Brown is looking for an example of how not to carry out constitutional reform, this is it.
As is now widely accepted the government made a mistake when it rushed through the decision to abolish the post of Lord Chancellor and create an independent supreme court in 2003. It soon became apparent that the task wasn’t as simple as it appeared. An interim arrangement was established in the Concordat between executive and judiciary. Advocates of Concordats as a basis for a more general constitutional settlement should take note as to what happened next – the supposedly beneficial flexibility associated with these agreements means they do not bind the executive.
In January this year, John Reid told the Sunday Telegraph that he wanted to rearrange the judiciary once more by creating a Ministry of Justice. Amongst other things, this move meant that the circumstances for which the Concordat was drawn up would no longer apply. We learnt in today’s committee session that the Sunday Telegraph article was the first the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice heard of the idea. Falconer told MPs that ‘I may have known the day before’. Because of this haste negotiations between the executive and judiciary over vital safeguards are taking place after the Ministry has been set up. And now they have broken down, over Falconer’s refusal to countenance an inquiry into the status of the Court Service.
He said today ‘There isn’t a great crisis here.’ Some would differ; and many more would agree that the government has to do better than this if it is going to take on an even larger constitutional task.
