A Lawyer Speaks: Recent Episodes

Joshua Rozenberg

These podcasts complement A Lawyer Writes: essential updates from Joshua Rozenberg QC (hon), Britain's most experienced commentator on the law.

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Children aged from 10 to 17 are being arrested by the police and detained overnight in adult custody suites because more appropriate responses are not available in England and Wales, a major research project has found. The researchers recommend clearer guidance for police officers and a presumption in favour of less intrusive alternatives.

Six out of 10 children arrested by response officers — even for something as trivial as a domestic tantrum — are released with no further action. But the researchers have found that, far from being a deterrent, detaining children in custody acts as a gateway to the youth justice system.

The researchers conclude that the government’s commitment to a “child first” principle — treating young suspects as a children first and offenders second — will remain no more than a principle for as long as decisions on whether a child enters the criminal justice system are made by police officers who lack the training, guidance, information, institutional support and input from partner agencies needed to make decisions in a fully-informed way.

Academics worked collaboratively on the study with Greater Manchester Police, the Metropolitan Police, Surrey Police and South Wales Police.

Four forces have already accepted an earlier recommendation from the project about the length of time that children should be detained by the police. Although the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 allows adults and children to be detained for up to 24 hours, those forces now work on the basis of a 12-hour maximum for children aged from 10 to 17. In Surrey, this has reduced their average detention period from about 11 hours to just over 7½ hours.

The research was led by Dr Vicky Kemp from the University of Nottingham and Dr Miranda Bevan of King’s College London. Their report — Children and Policing in England and Wales: Adopting a Child First Approach — is supported by the Nuffield Foundation and was published last week.

I interviewed Kemp (pictured) yesterday for the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. My podcast, in which you can also hear from children who spoke to the researchers, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

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Eleven years ago this month, Sir Christopher Pitchford formally opened the Undercover Policing Inquiry. It was expected to take three years and Pitchford was able to continue sitting as an appeal judge.

Nearly two years later he stood down because of ill-health. The former High Court judge Sir John Mitting was appointed to replace Pitchford in 2017. Though the inquiry has not yet concluded, he too is planning to retire after publishing his latest interim report.

According to the Home Office, this is “an opportune moment to reflect on whether the inquiry as currently structured remains the most effective means of achieving its aims”. Ministers are “concerned about the length and cost of the inquiry” — more than £138 million so far.

But victims’ groups say they are deeply concerned by what they fear is an attempt to shut the inquiry down. It has yet to consider some of the most important evidence relating to abuses that took place under the existing regulatory framework, they add. “Police actions to disrupt and stall proceedings… prevented the inquiry from even starting to hear evidence for the first six years and continue to cause delays”.

How much difference would a duty of candour and assistance have made? That’s what a government bill agreed by the House of Commons last week will establish once it becomes law. Andy Burnham said that “in passing this momentous piece of legislation, which will change the way this country thinks about and works towards justice, we are truly rewiring the state and passing power from the authorities to the hands of ordinary people”.

Is he right? An an interview for A Lawyer Talks, I put that question to Andrew Williams (pictured), professor of law at the University of Warwick and author of a new report for the Nuffield Foundation called Public inquiries: are they fit for purpose?

My podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

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LeO “needs to transform”, his handler said this month. LeO, in this context, is the legal ombudsman and his handler is the chair of the Office for Legal Complaints — which, in turn, reports to the Legal Services Board.

One enhancement — if not quite a transformation — is suggested in a report today by Blind Justice UK, a small charity that bases its research on published data. I’ve covered two of its reports so far. One in April accused law firms of selectively promoting their consumer reviews and another in May suggested that regulators could do more to identify potential defaults.

Its latest research credits LeO for a policy of naming all service-providers involved in complaints that have been resolved by an ombudsman’s final decision. But the report criticises Leo for removing these names after a year. Blind Justice UK has identified nearly 11,500 deleted decisions but it estimates the total to be between 24,000 and 28,000. Only 939 can currently be found online.

Why does that matter? To find out, I thought it was time to interview Edward Romain (pictured), the charity’s founder and chief executive, for any episode of A Lawyer Talks.

I’ll be putting his concerns to the legal ombudsman and the Office for Legal Complaints chair after the summer holidays. In the meantime, LeO and his handler have provided me with this comment:

We are currently consulting on a number of proposals covering our scheme rules, case fees and the principle of publishing ombudsman decisions in full. The consultation seeks views on whether publication of all ombudsman final decisions would help consumers make more informed choices, encourage learning and improvement across the legal sector and align LeO with best practice across other ombudsman schemes.

We welcome responses from all interested stakeholders and will carefully consider the feedback received before reaching any decisions. As that work progresses, we will also consider the wider issues that flow from any changes to our publication approach, including how decisions are made available and for how long.

My podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

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The Criminal Cases Review Commission is not a failing institution, inspectors said in a report published yesterday. In the 60 cases they examined, caseworkers had reached the right decisions in their recommendations to commissioners. But in too many cases staff investigating suspected miscarriages of justice went down unnecessary avenues that led to drift, delays and wasted resources.

Dame Vera Baird KC, who became chair of the commission just over a year ago and commissioned the report from HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, told me yesterday that she had accepted all its recommendations. Interviewed for A Lawyer Talks, she discussed the steps she had been taking to bring together a team of caseworkers, team managers, executives and commissioners who had notoriously worked from an office that was almost completely empty every day.

In my column for today’s Law Society Gazette, I examine how things went wrong and analyse Baird’s plans to put them right.

My podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

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“This consultation,” wrote David Lammy just over three weeks ago, “proposes some of the biggest reforms to family law in decades — bringing the law into the 21st century, helping families feel better off and increasing protections for millions.” Top marks if you already know what he’s talking about; family lawyers need not apply.

If you haven’t heard about the justice secretary’s consultation paper on cohabitation, don’t be too hard on yourself; his proposals were slipped out on a Friday afternoon with little fanfare. Because, perhaps, the government was nervous about being seen to undermine marriage? That was the first question I put to Professor Sharon Thompson (pictured) when I interviewed her yesterday for the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks.

As she explained, the consultation paper is not just about cohabitants; the government is also planning to put nuptial agreements on a statutory footing and to codify the law on financial remedies following marriage or civil partnership. Will we see legislation along these lines? Or should ministers take another look at the details?

Thompson is professor of law at the University of Cardiff and author of a well-timed new book called The Road to Equal Partnership: Reforming the Financial Consequences of Divorce, just published by Bristol University Press. As you can hear, she has some interesting views on the government’s plans.

My regular podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com

The employment tribunal system is broken, lawyers dealing with workplace disputes will tell you. It can take three or four years to get a hearing and the delays are expected to get much worse next year. Throwing money at the problem is unlikely to work, even if there was any to spare. But a new academic study of the problem may have some of the answers — both for people who use the tribunals and for those who run them.

Reimagining Employment Dispute Resolution and Enforcement has three authors: Dr Maayan Menashe, who’s senior lecturer in law at City St George’s, University of London; Sarah Fraser Butlin KC who practises from Cloisters chambers; and Catherine Barnard, professor of European Union and employment law at the University of Cambridge.

Barnard (pictured) is an old friend and I was delighted to interview her yesterday for the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. My podcast interview — recorded at breakfast time, as you may hear — is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com

There can’t be many compensation claims with legal costs in the millions and damages in double-digit billions. Perhaps one of them is Trump v BBC — I have updated yesterday’s piece to include the judge’s threat to throw out the case after the president’s lawyers missed a deadline. But not even Donald Trump is claiming as much as arbitrators have awarded the former majority shareholders in Yukos Oil — which was Russia’s largest privately owned energy business until the Putin government appropriated its assets between 2003 and 2007. With interest, the amount they are now owed is more than $66 billion.

Risking millions in the hope of recovering billions is not for the faint-hearted. I wrote a detailed account of the Yukos claim at the beginning of 2008 and returned to it in 2016, then in 2021, in 2024 and once again in 2024. But it was not until I read Suing the Kremlin, a new book by the former BBC Moscow correspondent Martin Sixsmith, that I began to understand how a few individuals acquired unimaginable wealth and why some if them paid for it with their lives.

Sixsmith shared his insights into the case — and gave me his view of the outcome — when I recorded this week’s episode of A Lawyer Talks at his home in London. My podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com

While ministers insist that the only way of ending delays in the Crown Court is to limit the use of juries, a judge responsible for non-jury trials has achieved what’s been described as an “inspiring success” in reducing backlogs.

Through collaboration across the criminal justice system of Scotland, Aisha Anwar KC (hon), sheriff principal of Glasgow and Strathkelvin and president of the Sheriff Appeal Court, has managed to cut the number of cases awaiting trial in the summary sheriff courts from over 30,000 during the pandemic to 9,000 at the last count. Scheduled summary trials are now 27% below the pre-pandemic baseline.

It was Lord Pentland, Scotland’s most senior judge, who described the summary case management project led by Anwar as an inspiring success that demonstrated the value of close engagement between the judiciary, prosecutors, defence lawyers, police and the court service.

When Anwar joined me to record an episode of A Lawyer Talks last Friday, I asked the sheriff principal whether she thought something similar would work in England and Wales. We also found time to talk about the lighthouses that she had been due to visit that afternoon.

My podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com

Gray’s Inn is paying tribute to an illustrious former member, 400 years after his death. Sir Francis Bacon was one of the most influential figures in British intellectual history and a lawyer whose life and career were deeply intertwined with the inn of court where he felt most at home.

At a dinner in hall tonight, Professor Alan Stewart (pictured) — one of the leading experts on the former lord chancellor’s multifaceted achievements — will be speaking about Bacon’s lifelong association with the inn that he joined in 1576 and where he was living shortly before his death 50 years later.

Stewart, a professor of literature in New York, kindly agreed to share some of his thoughts with me for the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. He argued that Bacon could properly be regarded as a true Renaissance man. I suggested that his willingness to accept favours and his attempts to live above his means made him sound surprisingly modern.

Readers may remember that I previewed tonight’s celebration of the inn’s former treasurer (elected head) in a short film earlier this year. That’s still free to view:

My podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. But others can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com

In a judgment published last Thursday, a circuit judge sitting in Walsall explained that he was referring two solicitors to their regulator because false AI-generated case citations had been submitted in an appeal he was hearing.

“Lawyers who cite fictitious cases must face serious consequences,” said Judge Grimshaw, “and in the current environment, where this is a problem that is significant (and indeed seems to be growing), the guidance in Ayinde indicates that judges should take a robust approach.”

Mahmood Hussain, a consultant at AML Legal in Dudley, had acknowledged that documents citing false judgments had been prepared with the help of a paralegal. The judge observed that an appeal bundle and a covering email had apparently been signed by Kossar Qureshi, the firm’s director.

It’s a cautionary tale for solicitors. But the perils of using artificial intelligence may be even greater for barristers. To help them balance risks and rewards, their regulator will be launching new guidance later today. Strikingly, it encourages members of the bar to take a risk-based approach when using new technology.

To set the scene, I’ve been discussing the new guidance with the Bar Standards Board’s director of strategy, policy and insights, Ewen MacLeod (pictured), on the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks.

My weekly podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com

As presaged in the King’s speech, the government’s Courts and Tribunals Bill was reintroduced in the House of Commons yesterday. It picks up where it left off, though no date has yet been announced for the bill’s report stage and third reading.

Will the government’s plans to limit jury trial ever reach the House of Lords? Or will Andy Burnham’s bid for the Labour leadership mean that we end up with a more modest set of reforms? That’s one of the questions I explore in my analysis of the government’s legislative programme for the Law Society Gazette.

After writing the piece, I tried out some of my ideas on Kirsty Brimelow KC, chair of the bar (pictured). Far from exploiting the political turmoil that was deepening even as we spoke yesterday afternoon, the barristers’ leader said stability was to be preferred.

I took the opportunity to ask Brimelow about her comments on Rajiv Menon KC, the defence counsel who is waiting to hear whether his remarks to a jury will lead to contempt of court proceedings, a disciplinary investigation or no further action. Readers will recall that I wrote about the issues last week and again this week.

Brimelow said on Wednesday that she hoped this “troubling episode” was now at an end. Did that mean she thought barristers in a criminal trial could legitimately ignore directions from a judge on what a jury could be told?

You can hear Brimelow’s response in the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. My weekly podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com

The international legal order is facing profound disruption, a leading lawyer said last night. Professor Lord Verdirame KC said that institutions created or expanded after the end of the Cold War in 1989 had “too often responded with misguided moralistic fervour and interpretative maximalism, stretching mandates beyond what states consented to and thereby inviting the backlash that now jeopardises their legitimacy and survival”.

Verdirame, a practising barrister, professor of international law and non-affiliated peer, was delivering a lecture to the Society of Conservative Lawyers in memory of its long-serving member and honorary secretary Pamela Thomas. The society will be publishing his lecture in due course.

In an interview yesterday for A Lawyer Talks, Verdirame discussed the pivotal role of the United States and the current limitations of international law. “The international legal order is not falling apart,” he said. But it was now in crisis.

My weekly podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com

A year has passed since the UK Supreme Court decided that when parliament used the terms “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 it was referring to biological sex, not acquired gender. That seemed clear enough, but some academics appear not to have understood it.

How can that be? And will things be any clearer next month when the government publishes the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s long-awaited code of practice on services, public functions and associations?

To discuss those questions — and the unexpected importance of personal pronouns — I went to see Dr Michael Foran, an associate professor of law at Keble College Oxford. His new book, Sex, Gender Identity and the Law, is formally published by Cambridge University Press on 7 May. You can hear our conversation in the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks.

My weekly podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page. And my interview with Lord Hodge, the judge who wrote the ruling, is here.

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A former chair of the bar has called for a wide-ranging review of the way that expert evidence is used in the courts of England and Wales. Speaking to one of the City of London livery companies just before Easter, Sam Townend KC said the use of experts had led to “something of a crisis in judicial and public confidence”.

He told the Worshipful Company of Arbitrators that the development of the professional expert witness in recent years challenged the principle that such evidence should be independent. As examples, he referred to the trial of Lucy Letby and the use of psychologists in family cases where so-called “parental alienation” has been alleged.

Townend has been speaking about his concerns in the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. Update 9 June: his lecture has now been published.

My regular podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com

Sir Andrew McFarlane never expected to become a barrister. He had no particular interest in family law until he took the case that changed his life. His rapid promotion from the High Court to the Court of Appeal came as a surprise. The post of president of the family division was not one he aspired to. And he certainly did not expect to serve as the senior family judge of England and Wales for as long as eight years.

All this he tells me without any sense of humblebragging or false modesty. But there is one achievement that he looks back on with pride. It was a major reform that is bound to feature in the tributes he’ll receive at a valedictory ceremony later today. But I suspect it went unnoticed by most court users at the time.

Better known is his support for pathfinder courts, as they were described for want of a better term. Earlier this month, the justice secretary announced that child-focused courts, as they are now to be called, will be introduced across England and Wales once the necessary funding can be found. In the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks, McFarlane explains how a simple innovation has led to a wholly different dynamic in the family courts.

My regular podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com

New sentencing laws take effect next week. Judges and magistrates in England and Wales will be able to suspend sentences of up to three years. And courts will have to suspend sentences of not more than 12 months unless there are “exceptional circumstances”.

Because very short sentences are generally thought to be counter-productive, supporters of the reforms say we should all be safer as a result. And, at least to begin with, the prison population should begin to come down. But Andrea Coomber KC (hon), chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform (pictured), told me there were provisions in the Sentencing Act 2026 that may endanger the very people they are intended to protect. And Baroness Carr, the lady chief justice, made it clear that other provisions in the legislation could be used to undermine the important role played by sentencing guidelines.

You can read about Carr’s concerns in my column for this week’s Law Society Gazette.

And you can hear Coomber’s criticisms in the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. My weekly podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com

The rule of law, as a phrase, is opaque, the head of civil justice said this week. As Sir Geoffrey Vos explained, “non-lawyers and even many lawyers think it is about the enforcement of law against citizens rather than enforcing, or rather upholding, the rights of citizens against the state.”

The master of the rolls wondered if we could find a better term for the concept. He offered no suggestions himself. But if lawyers were going to continue using the phrase when speaking to those outside the legal profession, he thought they should at least say what it meant.

Vos continued:

We should explain that, as proponents of the rule of law, we are proponents of the clear and accessible predictability of the legal system, that we support open justice and access to fair justice for all, that we are seeking to protect the fundamental rights of all, and we support those states that exercise proportionate and accountable power over their citizens in good faith and those states that comply with their obligations under national and international law.

We should, perhaps, also explain that what we are talking about is not for the benefit or self-aggrandisement of the lawyers, but for the benefit of all citizens — to enable them to live and let live in a tolerant society where their rights are respected. It is, as I have said, all about tolerance and respect — not about protecting lawyers or even judges.

The second most senior judge in England and Wales was speaking at a meeting of the Alliance for Lawyers at Risk, a charity that brings together prominent members of the British legal community to support lawyers and human rights defenders throughout the world who face personal danger because of their professional work.

The alliance makes an annual award in memory of Sir Henry Brooke CMG (1936-2018), who was vice-president of the Court of Appeal from 2003 until his retirement in 2006. Brooke’s parents were both appointed to the House of Lords, as was his brother. A former president of the Society for Computers and Law, he launched a legal blog in 2015 that remains a model of its kind.

This year’s Henry Brooke award went to Ruth López (pictured), described by the judging panel as one of the most prominent and courageous defenders of the rule of law in El Salvador. Her investigations, the panel added, have brought to light issues such as unlawful spyware surveillance, political patronage networks and unconstitutional legislative measures that restrict and undermine public access to information.

Vos presented the award to Lopez’s husband. That was because her work as director of the anti-corruption and justice unit at Cristosal, a regional human rights organisation working across El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, led to her arrest and imprisonment last May. She has not been tried or convicted.

Action taken against López by the authorities in El Salvador has been widely condemned by lawyers’ groups. Last July, the American Bar Association selected her for its annual international human rights award.

To learn more about the Alliance for Lawyers at Risk — what it does and what impact its work can have — I spoke yesterday to its president, Dominic Grieve KC, the former Conservative MP who served as attorney general from 2010 to 2014 and then as chair of parliament’s intelligence and security committee.

While interviewing Grieve for the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks, I took the opportunity to ask him what he made of the advice thought to have been given to ministers by Lord Hermer KC, the current attorney general, on the lawfulness of military action against Iran by the US and Israel. That issue struck me as particularly timely ahead of a forthcoming discussion between Professor Lord Verdirame KC and Professor John Bew CMG:

My weekly podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.

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“Any decision about the care and treatment of a mentally incapacitated adult, including the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, must be taken in the patient’s best interests,” the Court of Appeal said on Tuesday. “There is no carve-out for ‘clinical decisions’,” the court added, overruling a decision by a highly experienced Court of Protection judge.

That conclusion is so broad that it cannot possibly be correct, a leading lawyer in the field of health and social care told me yesterday. Victoria Butler-Cole KC said the ruling means that practical advice issued by the British Medical Association to assist doctors when making decisions in the best interests of incapacitated adults is now wrong. She thought the ruling would cause widespread difficulties and should now be considered by the Supreme Court with the benefit of more time and full legal argument.

The one person who won’t benefit from any further appeal is the man at the heart of this tragic story. Robert Barnor, 68, suffered extensive and irreversible brain damage after a stroke nearly a year ago. He died last Friday, hours before a judge was due to consider whether a hospital’s decision to withdraw life-saving kidney dialysis would be in his best interests.

You can hear my interview with Butler-Cole (pictured) in the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. My weekly podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rozenberg.substack.com

How is it possible to enforce a judgment from the courts of one state against the government of another? That’s the topic I discuss on this week’s episode of A Lawyer Talks. My guest is Jehad Mustafa, a partner at Farrer & Co who specialises in state immunity, and we spoke at the solicitors’ historic (and partly stone-floored) offices in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

He and I discussed two rulings delivered last month:

In Ghanem Al-Masarir v Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the High Court awarded more than £3 million in damages to a UK-resident critic of Saudi Arabia who claimed the Saudis had hacked his phone and sent people to beat him up in the street.
In COL v The United Arab Emirates, the High Court awarded more than £145,000 to a woman from the Philippines who was found to have been the victim of modern slavery after she had worked as a domestic servant for a UAE diplomat in London.

Another case mentioned in our discussion was Federal Republic of Nigeria v Ogbonna, decided by the president of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in 2011 (though reported in 2012).

What are the chances of individual claimants being able to recover even a penny of the compensation they were awarded against foreign states? The answer is more encouraging than I had thought.

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After months of uncertainty, the government is pressing ahead with its plans to curb the right to trial by jury in England and Wales. Legislation is to be introduced “next month”, a minister says. Sir Brian Leveson expects the government to publish its bill even sooner, he tells me in this week’s episode of A Lawyer Talks.

The former head of criminal justice was talking to me about the second and final part of his report on the criminal courts, which recommends no fewer than 135 efficiency improvements. But inevitably we spent much of the interview discussing the structural reforms Leveson had recommended in part one of his review last July.

The most eye-catching of these is a new bench division of the crown court, which will try cases without a jury. Leveson thought it should consist of a judge and two magistrates but the government says it will be a judge sitting alone.

He was careful not to comment on the government’s proposals — or indeed on whether ministers might let magistrates sit in the bench division if concessions have to be made in the House of Lords. But Leveson was perfectly happy to tell me why he stood by his original recommendations — those that ministers had accepted and those they had not.

My column for this week’s Law Society Gazette looks at how Leveson’s initial proposals were handled by the government. It also reports how he feels about the government’s decision to remove a defendant’s right to choose jury trial on charges that can be tried in the magistrates’ court. He would have limited the right to elect trial by jury rather than abolished it outright.

Pieces I write for the Gazette are always free to read. The Gazette also carries a two-page analysis of Leveson’s latest recommendations by Monidipa Fouzder.

My weekly podcasts are a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

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This year will be a tipping point in which the majority of the legal industry will be AI-powered, a leading solicitor said in a comment released for publication this week. But what does that mean?

Is artificial intelligence going to take over from the real thing? Will lawyers no longer be needed?

“We predict that AI will create a huge dividing line between small, innovative firms that use it to rapidly accelerate and more traditional firms who choose to remain set in their approach,” explained Jonathan Waters, who founded Helix Law as a boutique litigation practice nearly 15 years ago.

But what will the clients make of it? They may associate AI with non-existent cases cited by hapless lawyers or career-ending errors made by law enforcement chiefs.

To find out, I invited Waters to join me on A Lawyer Talks. His answers were both surprising and reassuring.

My weekly podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can listen a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

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As the High Court begins hearing allegations today that the publishers of the Daily Mail hacked into phones used by the Duke of Sussex and other public figures, I thought it would be a good time to look at the most successful phone hacking operation ever carried out by law enforcement organisations in the United Kingdom and across Europe.

Between 2016 and 2020, drug dealers and others involved in organised crime were using what they believed to be a secure messaging service called EncroChat. The system was cracked as a result of work by the Netherlands Forensic Institute. As a result, nearly 40,000 smartphones were infiltrated by the authorities and some 2,200 offenders were convicted in the UK alone.

But although courts in England and Wales found ways of declaring the evidence admissible, prosecutions were far from straightforward because the law does not allow material intercepted in the course of transmission to be used in evidence. Without intercept material, prosecutors have to rely on phone hacking — so-called “equipment interference” — to dig out stored data. But that’s not something the agencies like to talk about.

Among those calling for intercept evidence to be admissible is Professor Peter Sommer, an academic specialising in digital forensics, cyber security and electronic communications. In a recent paper, he drew on his experience as an expert witness in criminal prosecutions to explore some of the problems now facing the courts.

You can hear Sommer outlining his concerns — and explaining how EncroChat was cracked — in this week’s episode of A Lawyer Talks. My weekly podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can listen a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

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Reducing the availability of jury trial is neither principled nor pragmatic, the incoming chair of the bar argued last night. In her inaugural address, Kirsty Brimelow KC said her first priority was to lead the Bar Council’s opposition to planned Ministry of Justice reforms.

She said:

The constitutional principle is deep — with its importance being cemented in 1670 when Edward Bushel and his fellow jurors, a disinterested group of property owners, would rather have gone to prison than convict the Quakers Penn and Mead of causing tumultuous assembly by preaching in Gracechurch Street…

The pragmatic points are that the reduction of juries would have no impact on the existing backlog as it would take effect towards the end of this parliament. Impact even then is highly uncertain. Meanwhile energy and focus are drained from implementing the urgent reforms now that would decrease the backlog.

You can hear Brimelow outlining her priorities in the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. As well as criminal justice reform, we discussed increasing the age of criminal responsibility; lawyers under attack; bullying and harassment at the bar; human rights; and violence against women and girls. I was particularly interested in Brimelow’s experience of witchcraft.

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Gibraltar’s senior police officer was “in effect… forced out” of his job in 2020 as a result of assertions by the British overseas territory’s acting governor Nick Pyle and the chief minister Fabian Picardo KC that they had lost confidence in him, an inquiry by a retired British High Court judge has found.

In a 700-page report published by the Gibraltar government on 23 December, Sir Peter Openshaw said he had no doubt that the real reason Picardo had lost confidence in Ian McGrail, the police commissioner, was that the Royal Gibraltar Police had obtained a search warrant against Picardo’s friend, James Levy KC, which the chief minister was “determined in one way or another to thwart”. Levy denied any wrongdoing and was never charged.

Picardo had misled the police authority, the inquiry found: “by suppressing the truth, he was in effect suggesting a falsehood”.

Openshaw said that although McGrail realised his position had become untenable after the governor and chief minister had lost confidence in him, he retired only because he believed he was being unfairly and unlawfully compelled to do so. He felt he was being put under improper pressure to alter the course of a live criminal investigation.

The former judge found that Picardo had behaved grossly improperly when he tried to interfere in an active criminal investigation. But when Openshaw’s report was published two days before Christmas, Picardo announced that he had been vindicated and the Gibraltar government had been exonerated.

The chief minister said:

Crucially, the report completely exonerates the government from the many spurious allegations made against it. I am also very pleased that the inquiry chairman has found that I genuinely believed the then commissioner of police lied to me. My reading of the report, therefore, is that it vindicates my position on this crucial issue.

Most of the barristers who took part in the inquiry are based in London. McGrail was represented by Adam Wagner KC from Doughty Street Chambers (pictured at the inquiry). On the latest edition of A Lawyer Talks, he told me about the inquiry’s findings and gave me his reaction to Picardo’s comments.

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With parliament and many of the courts not sitting, I can’t promise to publish a report every day over the next two or three weeks. But I don’t want 2025 to fade away without marking the 25th anniversary of White v White, a groundbreaking ruling from 2000 in which the UK’s most senior judges said that the division of joint property on the break-up of a marriage should be checked against the “yardstick of equality”.

The judgment was hugely influential but not widely reported at the time — perhaps because the lawyers concerned, and their clients, didn’t speak to journalists. But times change and earlier this month I went to interview Mrs White’s solicitor at the offices in Lincoln’s Inn where his firm — Payne Hicks Beach — has been based since 1770. On the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks, Simon Beccle told me about Pamela White and the irony of her victory a quarter of her century ago.

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In its report earlier this month on the collapse of a high-profile Chinese espionage case, parliament’s joint committee on the national security strategy found evidence of questionable decision-making, misaligned expectations and failures to take potential opportunities that could remedy problems.

“Some aspects are best described as shambolic,” the report added. “The government and Crown Prosecution Service must reflect… on how best to uphold public confidence in the integrity of the system in the face of public concern.” Ministers have until 3 February to respond.

In the meantime, I have been discussing the committee’s findings with Nick Vamos, a former head of special crime at the Crown Prosecution Service and now head of business crime at the law firm Peters & Peters. As you can hear in the latest edition of A Lawyer Talks, he was surprised at how badly his former employers had handled the case. Vamos explained how the CPS had got it wrong — even though we still don’t understand why.

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People respond to outcomes rather than reasoning, the deputy president of the UK Supreme Court told me last week. Lord Hodge was reflecting on the reaction to the court’s ruling in the For Women Scotland case, where he gave the leading judgment.

“We decided the question of statutory interpretation,” he explained, “and have left it to others to work out the consequences. And of course the Equality and Human Rights Commission has the unenviable task of giving guidance on this matter.”

The court delivered its ruling in April and the commission’s guidance has still not been approved by ministers, much to the frustration of its former chair Baroness Falkner of Margravine.

In the course of a wide-ranging interview for A Lawyer Talks, Hodge told me why he thought former judges should not comment on matters of political controversy. But he regarded it as acceptable to talk about the rule of law. I had to weave my way carefully round the restrictions but in the end I had a much better understanding of what the UK’s second most senior judge thinks about the great issues of the day, across the UK and beyond.

And since Hodge is not planning a formal valedictory speech when he retires at the end of this month, I took the opportunity to ask him for his reflections after 12 years in the Supreme Court — and his unique transformation into an English lawyer.

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We still don’t know why leaked government plans reported on Tuesday of last week — “juries will decide only murder, rape or manslaughter cases” — were so different from what ministers announced this Tuesday.

It turns out that jury trial will be retained for cases where the likely sentence is over three years and for all indictable-only offences. Examples given by the government include murder, manslaughter, endangering life, rape and other penetrative sex offences, aggravated burglary, blackmail, kidnapping, people-trafficking, rioting, terrorism offences, grievous bodily harm with intent, the most serious drug offences and some weapons offences.

So there are two possibilities: either the leaked document seen by other reporters was not an accurate account of the government’s plans or it was correct at the time it was circulated and ministers then modified their ambitions.

When I interviewed the courts minister Sarah Sackman MP on Wednesday, I asked her which it was. On the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks, you can hear how she answered.

I also took Sackman through detailed plans set out by the justice secretary in a written ministerial statement on Tuesday. During the interview, I began to understand why David Lammy had told MPs that we would have to wait until the next general election, due in 2029, before we could expect to see a fall in the crown court backlog.

I analyse Sackman’s account of the government’s wide-ranging plans in my latest column for the Law Society Gazette.

In my column, I also argue that public involvement in the criminal justice system should not be regarded as an immutable absolute. Putting it another way, I am not convinced by those who claim that we can substantially reduce the current unacceptable crown court delays without making significant structural changes. If you disagree, listen to Sackman and then add a comment below.

Lammy’s statement should be read in full. For convenience, I have extracted the half-dozen proposals that I asked Sackman to explain or justify:

Magistrates’ courts’ sentencing powers will increase to 18 months, with provision to extend to 24 months if necessary to relieve pressure in the crown court.
The right of defendants to elect for a jury trial will be removed, meaning that it will be for the court to determine where a case will be heard based on the severity of offences.
The appeals process from magistrates’ courts will be reformed so that automatic appeals to the crown court in criminal cases are replaced with a permission stage, limited to points of law.
A new bench division will be established in the crown court for triable-either-way cases with likely sentences of three years or less, heard by a judge alone.
Jury trials will remain for indictable-only offences and cases with likely sentences over three years.
A small number of serious, but particularly technical and lengthy, fraud and financial cases may be heard by judge alone in the crown court, subject to certain requirements and at the discretion of the court.

What emerges from the interview, it seems to me, is that there is still a lot left to play for.

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Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, violated security protocols and endangered troops by using a personal device to share sensitive operational details on the unclassified messaging app Signal, according to reports in the US media of a forthcoming finding.

Meanwhile, Hegseth is apparently trying to distance himself from allegations that he ordered a second military strike on a boat carrying drug smugglers in the Caribbean, unlawfully killing two survivors of an earlier attack.

For the past three months, US forces have been targeting small boats thought to be ferrying narcotics to countries in Latin America — from which they could reach the United States. More than 80 drug smugglers are said to have been killed when their vessels were hit by US missiles.

Where does this leave Hegseth and the naval commander responsible for the operation, Admiral Frank Bradley? Are they responsible for breaches of international humanitarian law? Could they be charged with murder? And what effect has the incident had on relations between the US and the UK?

These are among the questions I put yesterday to John Bellinger, former legal adviser to the US State Department during the George W Bush administration and now a senior fellow in international law at the US Council on Foreign Relations. We met to record the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks during his visit to London.

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Brexit has had an impact on everyone who holds a British passport but on none more so than those UK citizens who worked for the European Union and found themselves out of a job after the United Kingdom left the EU in 2020.

It was therefore gratifying to see Middle Temple paying tribute to two senior members who had served in the EU courts by commissioning a painting of them. As you can see, it’s a custom that the inns of court have been following for centuries. This double-portrait is by Fiona Graham-Mackay.

At a brief ceremony on Tuesday, Dame Eleanor Sharpston DCMG KC, who served as an advocate general at the Court of Justice for almost 15 years, and Ian Forrester KC, a former judge of the EU’s General Court, were introduced by Lady Justice Thirlwall, this year’s treasurer of Middle Temple.

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What is property? It seems a simple enough question. I own my clothes. But do I own my body, my ideas, my country? If I own my bicycle and it’s stolen, can I get it back by cutting the chain that the thief has used to secure it? My personal data may be better protected than my bicycle — but do I own it? And what about natural resources? Does anyone own them? Can private ownership bring public benefits? Are there limits on what we should own?

These are among the profound questions that Professor Dame Sarah Worthington DBE, KC (Hon), FBA addressed in her Hamlyn lectures, delivered earlier this month. I asked her for some answers yesterday when we recorded this week’s episode of A Lawyer Talks.

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The rule of law must be protected against further erosion, an all-party parliamentary committee warns us today. Failure to do so, says the House of Lords constitution committee, risks the rise of extremist political parties, ultimately creating space for dictatorship. I was one of many who gave oral evidence.

My analysis of the committee’s report— called The rule of law: holding the line against anarchy and tyranny — will appear in tomorrow’s Law Society Gazette.

For today’s episode of A Lawyer Talks, though, I interviewed the committee’s chair, Lord Strathclyde (pictured), at the House of Lords. The chimes you’ll hear in the background, I should explain, are not those of Big Ben; it’s the ubiquitous House of Lords annunciator system.

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CoCounsel is the name given by the content and technology company Thomson Reuters to its artificial intelligence assistant for legal professionals. But Pablo Arredondo, who developed its precursor with his colleague Jake Heller and then sold it to Thomson Reuters for $650m, is not so sure about the choice of name now. And while he fizzes with excitement at finding what AI can do, he is more aware than most of its limitations.

Arredondo, who’s vice-president, CoCounsel, at Thomson Reuters, has a unique perspective as a successful lawyer and an award-winning technology developer. He spoke to me from California for the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks.

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Hugh Mercer KC has sat as the UK judge at the European Court of Human Rights for little more than a month. But there will be a general election in less than four years’ time and two major political parties are seeking to have Judge Mercer kicked off the court before he completes his nine-year term of office. Does he still think applying for the post was a good career move?

That was one of the questions I asked him last week when we met to record the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. It was no surprise to find that Mercer thinks the UK should remain signed up to the human rights convention — which celebrates its 75th anniversary tomorrow — but some of his reasons were not what I had expected.

We also discussed a claim in May by nine Council of Europe members, led by Italy and Denmark, that his court’s rulings had made it too difficult for them to deal with what they described as irregular migration. To what extent could the judges take account of the mood among European nations when deciding cases of this sort?

Being the most junior member of the 46-judge court, Mercer was naturally cautious. But as someone who was on the other side of the bench until recently, his response was particularly interesting.

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Democracy is under challenge in the west, a former president of the Supreme Court told me this week. Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, who was the UK’s most senior judge from 2012 to 2017, said the level of disappointment in governments — almost across the Western world — seemed to be pervasive and increasing. People were turning to populist alternatives and, he added, populism tends not to respect the rule of law.

Neuberger (pictured) gave me a wide-ranging interview ahead of a lecture he is delivering at the Old Bailey tonight to mark the launch of a series of events called Justice for All. He will be considering the rule of law and its place in a fair and functional society.

“Improving the rule of law ultimately comes down to political will and the appointment of strong ministers with real commitment and experience,” he says in his lecture. How, I wondered, could we encourage ministers to do what was right? That, he replied, was a very good question.

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A former diplomat who served at the British embassy in Beijing has cast doubt on what’s thought to have been a major allegation in the failed prosecution case against two men who were accused of spying for China.

Professor Kerry Brown, a leading sinologist who would have been called as a defence expert if charges against Chris Berry and Chris Cash had not been dropped, thought it was entirely implausible that Cai Qi, a member of the standing committee of the Chinese Communist Party politburo, had arranged to meet Berry at a restaurant in eastern China and then been kept waiting for 40 minutes because of traffic delays.

Brown was speaking to Ken Macdonald (pictured) and Tim Owen for an episode of their Double Jeopardy podcast released yesterday. The two KCs suggested that Brown’s expert report, disclosed to the Crown Prosecution Service shortly before the trial had been due to open, might have persuaded the director of public prosecutions to drop the case.

But, as Macdonald told me yesterday, that theory raises more questions than it answers. In an interview for A Lawyer Talks, I asked the former prosecutor about implications of Double Jeopardy’s double scoop.

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“Politically motivated attacks on the legal profession are irresponsible and dangerous,” representatives of all 250,000 lawyers in the United Kingdom said this week. These attacks, they added, “weaken public trust and confidence in the rule of law and erode the very foundations of justice that underpin fairness and democracy”.

In a joint statement, the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Law Society of Scotland, the Faculty of Advocates, the Bar of Northern Ireland and the Law Society of Northern Ireland said:

Barristers, solicitors and judges have been subjected to violence, death threats and rape threats. Some have faced threats to their family members. We have repeatedly seen law firms and offices be set upon by protestors. We are deeply disturbed by this rising tide of intimidation targeting those who serve our justice system and uphold democratic principles.

Lawyers should never suffer adverse consequences because they are identified with their clients or their clients’ causes. Lawyers are not their clients. Those who are unpopular or despised are still entitled to access the courts just as much as anyone else. Nobody is above the law, including politicians. Nobody is beneath the law’s protections.

As the statement acknowledges, it’s not just the lawyers who have come under attack in the past couple of weeks. Judges are particularly vulnerable to ill-informed criticism from those seeking political advantage.

For a unique perspective on the challenges now facing the judiciary I spoke yesterday to Professor Sir Ross Cranston, the only person alive to to have served in the legislature, the executive and the full-time senior judiciary of England and Wales.

In a wide-ranging interview for A Lawyer Talks, Cranston discussed the themes of his new book, Judging, published this month by Oxford University Press. He made the case for a new offence of traducing the judiciary, which could be committed by those who make false allegations of corruption against judges online.

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The Department for Business and Trade is currently reviewing the opt-out collective actions regime in competition law, a legal structure that enables consumers to claim compensation from corporations that are accused of abusing a dominant position in the marketplace. A recent example was the claim brought against Mastercard on behalf of up to 44 million consumers by the lawyer Walter Merricks, who discussed the outcome with me on A Lawyer Talks in May.

Launching a consultation two months ago, the government said:

We are committed to consumer protection and want to ensure that the regime has achieved, and continues to achieve, these objectives. This government is focused on economic growth; and a regime that is proportionate and focused on returns to consumers where they are due is good for growth and investment.

However, we are aware of the potential burden on business that increased exposure to litigation can present. Finding the right balance between achieving redress for consumers and limiting the burden on business is essential to ensure that businesses can operate with certainty, whilst providing a clear, cost-effective, route for consumers.

How should we calibrate the balance between corporations and consumers?

Representing the consumers’ side is the Collective Redress Lawyers Association. It wants to ensure that people harmed through anti-competitive behaviour can secure compensation through the courts.

Banging the drum for business is a group called Fair Civil Justice. It argues that collective actions in the courts should be a last resort, not the first port of call.

Most cases settle. But how much of the compensation should go to individual consumers and how much to the lawyers and the funders without whom these cases would never get off the ground?

Settling a class action originally valued at £14 billion earlier this year, Mastercard agreed to pay £200 million. But when the available balance is shared out, each consumer is expected to receive no more than £70 — and perhaps as little as £45.

On the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks, I discussed these issues with David Greene (pictured), senior partner at the law firm Edwin Coe and a co-president of the Collective Redress Lawyers Association. He offered a robust — but not unqualified — defence of the legal regime introduced 10 years ago.

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It would be “shame and a mistake” for the United Kingdom to leave the European convention on human rights, the UK’s former judge at the human rights court told me last week. Tim Eicke KC, who was elected to the court in 2016 for a nine-year-term, spoke to me from Essex Court Chambers, the barristers’ set to which he returned earlier this month.

As the judge “elected in respect of Northern Ireland” — plus the rest of the UK — Eicke (pictured) said he was particularly concerned about the effect that withdrawal from the convention would have on the Belfast Good Friday agreement.

He also referred to a report this month from the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, which examined how the human rights convention has been covered in the UK. According to the report — but contrary to the impression given by some media outlets — the human rights court had found against the UK in only 13 removal cases since 1980, just four of which concerned family life.

In a wide-ranging interview for A Lawyer Talks, we discussed the government’s plans to limit the application of article 8 of the convention with the aim of deporting more illegal migrants. I also wanted to know why Eicke had applied for the Strasbourg job in the first place and the constraints it had imposed on his return to practice. And he explained why human rights judges from across Europe took such a close interest in the UK.

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Think of an international court that can stop foreign manufacturers selling pirated copies of British inventions in the UK. It’s a court whose proceedings are largely conducted in English and where UK lawyers abound.

This is a court whose use of English legal principles has contributed to its success since it opened for business a couple of years ago. But its caselaw must do without the insights of British judges because the United Kingdom is not one of its 18 members. That leaves Britain as the missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle, according to my guest on this week’s podcast.

Rob Jackson, pictured at his office in the City of London, is a patent attorney and a partner in the intellectual property firm Dehns. The court he’s referring to is the Unified Patent Court.

Why did the UK withdraw from the agreement setting up the court? Should we try to re-join? Could they let us in? How much of an advantage would that be to British businesses?

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Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights would be completely contrary to the UK’s national interests, the attorney general said yesterday.

Addressing the House of Lords constitution committee, Lord Hermer KC said withdrawing from the convention — and the 46-nation Council of Europe that administers it — would be entirely counterproductive if we were seeking practical answers to irregular migration.

The UK had already signed agreements with France and Germany that would “increasingly have real practical impact in addressing small boat crossings”. But it was “inconceivable that our partners would have entered into those agreements if we were not members of the Council of Europe — if we were not signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights”.

Hermer confirmed that the government was looking at how article 8 of the convention, which protects private and family life, was being applied by courts in the UK. He suggested that domestic courts were not keeping up with developments at the human rights court in Strasbourg.

That court’s case-law was “very permissive”, he explained:

It accords states an enormous margin of appreciation as to what they can do in the asylum and immigration space. And that is something that has developed as the principle of subsidiarity. It has developed particularly over the last five or six years. And I am concerned to ensure that domestically we have kept pace with that.

Some of our colleagues on the Council of Europe have, I think, more effective, more robust mechanisms that are compliant with article 8 that we need to look at. And so we are kicking the tyres hard at every level.

We’re looking at caseworker guidance. Are they getting it right on Article 8?

We're looking at the immigration rules, the body of secondary legislation that governs this. Have they got it right?

If we need to, we will look at primary legislation to ensure that we're getting it right.

And we are also adopting a very proactive litigation strategy. I when I came in, I was disturbed to learn that often Home Office officials wouldn't attend first-tier tribunal decisions — let alone was there in place what I would consider to be a fit-for-purpose litigation strategy, identifying the points that were important to the government, appealing cases that really should be appealed.

So we’re changing all of that…

The prime minister has, though, been absolutely crystal clear that we will not be leaving the European Convention on Human Rights. Now there are a number of reasons for that. But at the heart of it is because it would be completely contrary to the national interest of this country were we to do so.

Hermer’s argument was that there was no need to seek amendments to the human rights convention. These took too long to implement. The government’s priority was how article 8 was being applied by our own courts. One of the problems was “an enormous backlog in the asylum and immigration system, which we are seeking to address”

I discussed Hermer’s comments during a wide-ranging interview yesterday with Sam Townend KC, a former Labour councillor who chaired the Bar Council last year. We also discussed Sir Keir Starmer’’s appointment of a new secretary of state and two new ministers at the Ministry of Justice. And we considered Baroness Harman’s review of bullying, harassment and sexual harassment of barristers, which Townend set up as leader of the profession last year.

Speaking to A Lawyer Talks, the former chair of the bar urged caution on replacing some jury trials by a judge and two magistrates. Townend — pictured alongside a paining of Donald Keating QC, a former head oi his chambers — also suggested ways of improving the legal profession’s regulatory structures.

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In July, a little-known body headed by the second most senior judge in England and Wales launched a public consultation on new ways of ensuring access to justice.

The Online Procedure Rules Committee — chaired by the master of the rolls, Sir Geoffrey Vos — was created by parliament three years ago to make rules for legal proceedings “to be initiated by electronic means”. But instead of trying to create a costly new digital court, the rules committee is trying out its powers to set standards for existing online dispute-resolution services.

These services are often provided by commercial or financial organisations, alongside with online advice. But they can be hard to track down if you don’t know what you’re looking for. And if they can’t solve your problem and you need to take things further, you have to go through the whole process again and start your claim from scratch.

What the legislation now allows for is the transfer of information from private dispute-resolution services to public courts and tribunals. That will be done electronically. But in order for it to work, the private pre-action services will have to talk the same language as the public courts and tribunal service.

That means setting a single standard for all private dispute-resolution services to use. At its simplest, it would require all users to fill in their first name followed by surname and “1 September” rather than “September 1”.

Under regulations made earlier this year, the rules committee can make rules for:

civil and tribunal proceedings in relation to property; and
family proceedings for a financial remedy

The Online Procedure Rule Committee wants to know what people think of its pre-action model and there are still a couple of weeks or so before the consultation closes.

For the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks, I’ve been discussing the reforms with Dr Natalie Byrom (pictured), honorary senior research fellow at UCL Laws. We discussed the Online Procedure Rule Committee — OPRC for short — as well as alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and online dispute resolution (ODR).

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Encouraging your future spouse to sign an English prenuptial agreement before you marry has always been a bit of a risk — as Jenny Alzena Helliwell discovered last week. Lawyers for her former husband Simon Graham Entwistle persuaded the Court of Appeal to set their pre-nup aside because she had deliberately failed to disclose nearly three-quarters of her personal wealth.

The couple’s divorce became notorious last year after Entwistle — arguing that he would now need to spend £26,000 a year on a “meal plan” — told Mr Justice Francis that he couldn’t even cook an omelette. After Entwistle had initially said that his former wife should pay £10 million to cover his financial needs, the exasperated judge awarded him £400,000 (and some culinary advice) less £75,000 costs.

Will this judgment have implications for other couples who have signed pre-nups? Do they need to get them checked for material disclosure now that this one has been declared ineffective? And will Entwistle end up with egg on his face if he keeps litigating?

In the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks I discuss these questions with Nicholas Bennett (pictured), a barrister who specialises in this area of family practice.

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Donald Trump is not the only prominent figure who may be regretting his dealings with the disgraced financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In October 2019, Barclays Bank sent a letter to the Financial Conduct Authority assuring the FCA that the bank’s chief executive, James Edward “Jes” Staley, “did not have a close relationship with Mr Epstein”, who had died in prison two months earlier. Staley’s “last contact with Mr Epstein was well before he joined Barclays in 2015”, the letter asserted.

A month ago, the Upper Tribunal tax and chancery chamber “found that Mr Staley knew, when he approved the letter, that its contents were factually inaccurate”. For that reason, it declined to interfere with the FCA’s decision in May 2023 banning Staley from performing any senior management role in regulated financial services. He had resigned from Barclays in October 2021 after being told of the FCA’s preliminary conclusions.

The FCA confirmed its decision last week after Staley had run out of time to appeal. He must pay a penalty of £1.1m by next week.

Should the Financial Conduct Authority punish financiers for non-financial misconduct? And what implications does this case have for other professionals — lawyers, for example, whose regulators may seek to regulate what used to be regarded as their private lives?

Those are among the questions I raised in the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks with David Hamilton, a partner at Howard Kennedy who specialises in financial services enforcement and compliance (pictured). We discussed whether the FCA had struck the right balance between protecting consumers and encouraging investment.

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Reforms to the way sexual assault cases are prosecuted and tried in the courts of England and Wales are recommended in a report today by the government’s reform advisers.

The Law Commission’s proposals are intended to provide better protection for complainants while maintaining fair trials for defendants. For the first time, complainants would be given legal advice and representation at hearings to decide whether to disclose their personal records and evidence of their sexual behaviour.

If ministers agree, reforms would be introduced to ensure that the defence could present relevant evidence without relying on rape myths and misconceptions and without causing unnecessary trauma to the complainant.

For the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks, I have been discussing these recommendations with Professor Penney Lewis (pictured), the criminal law commissioner responsible for the project. Our ambition was to sum up her 620-page report in a conversation of half an hour.

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“The present way in which trials are organised, allocated and tried is no longer sustainable and, if continued, will lead to the collapse of the criminal justice system,” Sir Brian Leveson says in his report today on the criminal courts of England and Wales.

Leveson was invited to carry out his review by the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood. She welcomed his 400-page report and promised to do “whatever it takes” to bring down the backlog of cases awaiting trial.

Thanking the former head of criminal justice, Mahmood said, “We will now consider all his recommendations and will respond, in full, ahead of legislating in the autumn.”

As expected, the former head of criminal justice is recommending that more cases should be decided by magistrates and fewer cases should tried by a judge and jury. He proposes a number of ways in which this can be achieved:

Remove the right for defendants to elect (choose) trial by jury in cases that can currently be tried either by magistrates or in the Crown Court (“ether-way cases”) and where the maximum penalty is two years’ imprisonment.
Reclassify some either-way cases as summary only, which means they would no longer be eligible for trial in the Crown Court.
Create a new “bench division” of the Crown Court consisting of a judge and two magistrates, which could try all either-way cases and would deal with defendants expected to receive no more than three years’ imprisonment on conviction.
Allow defendants in the Crown Court to elect trial by judge alone, subject to the judge’s consent.
Require serious and complex fraud cases to be tried by judge alone.
Allow courts to direct trial by judge alone in cases of exceptional length or complexity.

We discussed all these options in depth when I interviewed Leveson yesterday for the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. But we didn’t spend too much time on his recommendations for encouraging greater use of out-of-court resolutions — alternatives to prosecution — even though that part of his report had been leaked to the Daily Mail in what was seen as a classic “dead cat” distraction strategy.

Initial reaction to Leveson’s proposals has not been entirely supportive — although I received a pretty dusty answer when I suggested he was taking on the entire legal establishment. To give those most affected by Leveson’s recommendations a chance to study the report — and listen to his only in-depth interview — I’ll leave coverage of the responses until tomorrow.

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When parents split up, it’s often the children who suffer most. But over the past three years or so, family judges have quietly developed an entirely new way of focusing on the most vulnerable members of a family. Rather than being litigant-led, it’s child-led.

To find out how the Pathfinder scheme works — and why it’s not available in large parts of England — I dropped in yesterday to interview the most senior family judge in England and Wales.

For the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks, Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the High Court family division, told me about what he and his fellow judges regard as the future of private family law.

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Critics who imagine that we can secure our borders against migrants simply by leaving the European convention on human rights have overlooked another major international agreement that the UK signed at around the same time.

The United Nations refugee convention of 1951, extended in 1967, gives important rights to people who have a well-founded fear of persecution in their own countries. In particular, refugees must not be sent back to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom.

Speaking in the House of Lords on 2 June, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven KC (pictured) said that at the time the convention was agreed in 1951 there were thought to be around 2.1 million refugees under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Last year, according to the UNHCR, there were no fewer than 43.7 million refugees.

The former director of public prosecutions said:

It is in the light of the changes since 1951 that I believe the rubric of the refugee convention must be considered. It says that anyone with a well-founded fear of persecution in their place of abode is entitled under the convention to asylum when they arrive in a contracting state, but that characterisation applies to literally tens of millions of people worldwide and may plausibly be claimed by tens of millions more.

Macdonald suggested that the UK might need to “revisit” the refugee convention. But how could that be done? And what might happen if we don’t?

Those are among the questions I put to him yesterday when we recorded the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks.

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In recent weeks we’ve seen cyber attacks on bodies such as the Legal Aid Agency and companies such as Marks & Spencer. But many other attacks are simply not made public. How should organisations defend themselves against risks to their data? And should they pay ransom demands in the hope of getting it back?

These are among the questions I have been discussing on the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks with James Moss, director of cyber investigations at the international law form Addleshaw Goddard (pictured). He’s a former director of enforcement at the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which, as he explains, is expected to take on new powers and responsibilities under the government’s planned Cyber Security and Resilience bill. Ministers are also considering whether to ban some ransom payments — a proposal that, as he explained, may prove controversial.

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What impact has English common law had on the legal system of Israel? That’s the question Lord Pannick KC discussed yesterday with Dorit Beinisch, president of the Supreme Court of Israel from 2006 to 2012.

The answer turned out to be considerable. During the British mandate period, there were appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. For decades after Israel’s independence in 1948, Israeli lawyers relied on used well-worn English textbooks — Salmond, Wade, De Smith — and cited leading English precedents. Senior judges from the United Kingdom often referred to Israeli cases during the years when there were regular exchanges between the two jurisdictions.

The leading barrister and the former judge were in conversation at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as part of the Lionel Cohen lecture series — established in 1953 to honour Lord Cohen of Walmer, a law lord from 1951 to 1961. The discussion, attended by two of Cohen’s grandsons, marked the 75th anniversary of the university’s law faculty; the Hebrew University itself is celebrating its centenary this year.

Although Pannick led the discussion, he also answered questions from Israeli judges and academics at the seminar who demanded his insights on aspects of English law and on cases he had appeared in. Beinisch particularly admired Pannick’s success in persuading the UK Supreme Court to overturn Boris Johnson’s attempt to prorogue parliament for five weeks in 2019 — the sort of decision that she thought her own court would not have been brave enough to take.

It was a fascinating discussion on many levels — there was discussion of judicial appointments, checks and balances, Gouriet v HM Attorney General — and you can hear it by clicking the ► symbol above.

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The Parole Board should increase the number of public hearings it holds each year, an internal review has recommended. It’s one of the ways that the board hopes to achieve greater public understanding of its work.

The Parole Board is an independent body whose members make judicial decisions on whether people who have committed serious offences or who are assessed as potentially dangerous need to stay in prison for the protection of the public.

But the public have little idea of how panels of board members question prisoners and assess risk. Some people think the Parole Board has a say in all prisoner releases; others believe it can shorten sentences passed by the courts. But neither is true and the review suggests that greater openness can reduce allegations of secret justice.

It was carried out by Peter Rook KC (pictured), who’s vice-chair and the senior judicial member of the Parole Board, and Michael Topolski KC, who’s also a senior member of the board; both are former Old Bailey judges.

Thanking them for their report, the board’s chief executive Cecilia French said it had made great strides in becoming more transparent over the years but was keen to do more. “The transparency review highlights the key areas we should focus on to further progress our transparency agenda,” she added. “I am looking forward to implementing the recommendations in this review.”

For the latest episode of my podcast A Lawyer Talks, I asked Rook about the review’s findings. As a general rule, he explained, parole hearings would remain private. But he hoped the board would find new ways of helping the public to understand its work.

Rook referred to the judiciary’s transparency and open justice board whose chair, Mr Justice Nicklin, gave a lecture in Oxford last night that I plan to cover shortly.

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It would be “constitutionally improper” for ministers to comply with treaty obligations if that would mean ignoring laws made by parliament, the shadow attorney general said yesterday. Lord Wolfson of Tredegar KC (pictured) was responding to allegations by Lord Hermer KC, the government’s senior law officer, that the Conservative front-bencher had adopted a “pick-and-mix approach, in which states can sometimes justifiably refuse to comply with their international legal obligations when they judge it not to be in their national interests to do so”.

In an interview for my podcast A Lawyer Talks, Wolfson said that ministers would always seek to comply with international law if they were able to do so. But, he continued:

a minister has to abide by an act of parliament and it would be constitutionally improper, I would suggest, for the minister to say, “I’m going to ignore what an act of parliament says in order to comply with a treaty obligation”.

In truth, he claimed, the Labour government was itself taking a pick-and-mix approach to international law. “We do — under this government and under previous governments — legislate, for example, contrary to double-taxation treaties,” Wolfson said. “We do put in place tariffs which are contrary to the WTO [World Trade Organisation].”

Wolfson has known Hermer for 30 years and they have a great deal in common — apart from their politics. The shadow attorney general’s declared aim is always to “play the ball and not the man”. Listen to A Lawyer Talks and hear whether he succeeded — particularly when I asked Wolfson about Hermer’s references to Carl Schmitt.

Here’s a short glossary for non-specialists:

a fortiori all the more so
purdah period between election announcement and formation of new government
spad minister’s special adviser
sui generis unique
“thick” or “thin” rule of law concept

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Lawyers for the families of 29 military and civilian intelligence specialists who were killed when an RAF Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre in 1994 have said they will “consider all legal options” to find out how their relatives died. They have launched a campaign seeking answers and accountability.

Around the time of the 30th anniversary of the disaster last June, the families discovered that Ministry of Defence records had unexpectedly been sealed for a further 70 years. They are calling for a judge-led public inquiry to assess the available evidence. Their solicitor Mark Stephens CBE, from the law firm Howard Kennedy, argued that there could no longer be any operational need for secrecy.

The military helicopter was carrying passengers from Northern Ireland to a conference in Scotland. One of those on board was Lt Col John Tobias MBE, 41, an army intelligence officer.

His son Andy was eight at the time. Andy Tobias (pictured) told me this week why he thought the prime minister’s commitment to a duty of candour for public bodies meant the families should finally discover whether their loved ones had boarded an aircraft that others knew was not fit to fly.

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Millions of consumers will each be able to claim compensation of between £45 and £70 after the Competition Appeal Tribunal gave its approval yesterday to the settlement of long-running litigation against Mastercard.

The credit card company agreed to pay £200 million in settlement of a class action originally valued at £14 billion, thought to be the largest claim ever litigated in the courts of England and Wales.

Compensation will be available to as many as 44 million adult consumers who bought goods in UK shops that accepted Mastercard between 1992 and 2008. Crucially, it is not confined to people who used Mastercard or any other credit card for their purchases. A claim form will be published online in the coming weeks.

The class of claimants was represented throughout by Walter Merricks CBE (pictured yesterday at his lawyers’ office in London). He told me yesterday why the claim had been brought and why he had settled for less than 1.4% of its original value.

He also told me about his fears and feelings on being sued by his own litigation funders, Innsworth Capital, who opposed the settlement. In an unprecedented move, Mastercard offered to pay Merricks up to £10 million to defend him against the threat of being bankrupted by Innsworth.

The litigation funder will be repaid the £45.5 million it has invested in Merrick’s legal fees plus an additional 50%.

Its managing director Ian Garrard said it would receive a return of less than 15% of what it described as the £150 million surplus, despite taking all the risk.

“We do not think it is a reasonable division of the proceeds, or one that will do anything to encourage investors to fund other opt-out collective actions,” he said. “We are therefore considering all of our options, including asking the courts to look again at this matter.”

A spokesperson for Innsworth added: “Innsworth has at all times acted in accordance with its rights and obligations under the litigation funding agreement. There are no findings regarding Innsworth’s conduct in the judgment.”

Some idea of the complexity of the case can be seen from the tribunal’s reference to the claimant’s “Re-Re-Re-Re-Re-Amended Reply” and his “Re-Re-Amended Claim Form”.

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Offenders serving between one and four years who have been released from prison on licence and then recalled for breaching their licence conditions will generally be freed after a further 28 days, the justice secretary announced yesterday. At present, release is a matter for the Parole Board.

It’s the latest attempt by Shabana Mahmood to keep prisoner numbers within the maximum that the prisons can hold and is expected to reduce the prison population by about 1,400. The number of recalled prisoners rose from 6,000 in 2018 to 13,600 this year. In 1993 it was no more than 100.

Mahmood said the impact of sentencing reforms to be recommended shortly by the former justice secretary David Gauke would not be felt before next spring. Her junior minister Sarah Sackman told me on Tuesday that the criminal court reforms proposed by the former judge Sir Brian Leveson might also take a year to implement.

In an interview for my podcast A Lawyer Talks, the courts minister spoke frankly about the government’s planned legislation and its options for reform. They include reclassifying offences as summary only — so defendants charged with some types of theft could no longer insist on jury trial — and allowing more serious cases to be tried by a judge and two magistrates or even by a judge sitting alone.

But will Sackman persuade the public that jury trial needs to be curtailed when some imagine that it was guaranteed by Magna Carta? Listen to the interview and you be the judge.

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“The independent judiciary — the cornerstone of the rule of law — is an integral part of what the UK has to offer to the world,” the lady chief justice of England and Wales said last night.

Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill was addressing a court-full of senior judges and international visitors about the judiciary’s new five-year strategy for international engagement.

“The pre-eminent reputation of the UK in international diplomacy is of course well-known,” she continued.

“Perhaps less well-known is the extensive work of the judiciary of England and Wales to support these efforts through judicial diplomacy. Members of the judiciary have for many years been leading participants in international judicial organisations and the providers of training, mentoring, support and guidance to judges in many jurisdictions across the world.”

Last year, on a budget of £169,000, the judiciary had:

engaged with 52 countries and a dozen international associations,
welcomed more than 100 judges based in countries from Albania to Ukraine,
delivered, through the Judicial College, over 400 hours of training, both online and overseas, on topics such as case management,

vulnerable witnesses, judgment-writing and judicial ethics; and

launched online peer-to-peer mentoring scheme for overseas judges to connect with judges in the UK.

Judges also ensured that the UK was a centre of excellence for international commerce and finance. The law of England and Wales, Carr said, was the law of choice for international trade. As a result, the legal services sector made an enormous contribution to the UK economy, with revenues for legal services of about £37 billion in 2023 and rising.

The lady chief justice continued:

The judiciary provides critical underpinning for this productivity. It provides the quality of judgments which underpin the world-leading reputation of English law, particularly commercial law.

It provides the flexibility and efficiency of procedure that make the Business and Property Courts the gold standard worldwide — and in troubled times gold standards are ever more important. It provides the predictability of outcomes that are the essential tools of the trade for our law firms, barristers, arbitrators and mediators…

The independence of the judiciary of England and Wales provides a cornerstone guarantee to international investors that the rules upon which they assess risk and make their investment decisions will be honoured.

Carr thanked Lord Justice Dingemans, who served until recently as the lead judge for international relations. He spoke about the work done by UK judges with experience of war crimes trials to train Ukrainian judges who might have to try Russian soldiers. The training has taken place. in Poland for safety reasons.

Dingemans also spoke about training judges in Albania, a country where judicial corruption was endemic until a decade ago.

The lady chief justice then introduced Lord Justice Snowden (pictured) as the new lead international relations judge. Although serving judges rarely give media interviews these days, Snowden agreed to take part in my podcast A Lawyer Talks. I asked him about the judiciary’s international engagement strategy, summarised in a paper published today.

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Jonathan Fisher KC is to conduct an independent review of fraud offences, the Home Office confirmed this week. A leading specialist in financial and corporate crime at Red Lion Chambers, Fisher was originally commissioned by the Conservative government in October 2023 to conduct a two-stage review of disclosure — the issue at the heart of the Post Office Horizon scandal — and fraud. Fisher’s report on disclosure was published last month and part 2 of the review was launched by the Home Office on Tuesday.

It’s the first independent review of fraud law to be launched in more than 40 years. Since Lord Roskill’s report was published in 1986, online fraudsters have learnt how to target anyone with a computer or smartphone. What can be done about this threat to us all?

I met Fisher yesterday to discuss the new fraud inquiry as well as his disclosure report. You can hear our conversation in the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks.

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“These tweets would not have been pleasant for any judge to read,” the barristers’ disciplinary tribunal said in a ruling published last week. “The remarks may even be thought to be hurtful. But they are not gravely damaging to the judiciary and in our judgment it is not arguable that they are. We take the view that the judiciary of England and Wales is far more robust than that.”

With those words, a three-person panel dismissed all five charges of professional misconduct brought by the Bar Standards Board against Dr Charlotte Proudman (pictured arriving for the hearing last December).

Each charge related to a chain of 14 tweets that Proudman published on 6 April 2022, in which the barrister had commented on a judgment delivered by the former High Court judge Sir Jonathan Cohen in a financial remedies case where she had been junior counsel.

“The question we have to deal with,” said the tribunal in its ruling, “is whether it is arguable that what was tweeted by Dr Proudman went beyond the bounds of permissible conduct from a professional person in her position. We have been greatly assisted in assessing this by the case of Morice v France.”

The tribunal continued:

These tweets are almost all statements of opinion, save where we have already mentioned an issue of fact that was incorrectly put forward by Dr Proudman; and all of them are concerning a matter of public interest. Are they unfounded and gravely damaging to the judiciary?

Our answer is no. They were robustly expressed opinions on an important matter of public interest. They were moreover opinions which a rational and conscientious lawyer was entitled to express without losing the protection that Morice illustrates is provided by article 10 [of the human rights convention].

We do not condone them; that is not our function. Our function is to determine whether it has been established by the Bar Standards Board to the civil standard that Dr Proudman has lost her article 10 protection because what she tweeted was so factually unfounded and so gravely damaging to the judiciary as to amount to professional misconduct.

We do not consider that it came close to that.

For the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks, I asked Proudman how she felt about her regulator spending tens of thousands of pounds of the profession’s money on bringing charges against her that the tribunal threw out without even calling on her to respond.

We recorded the interview a few days before the ruling was published but, as you’ll hear, Proudman didn’t hold back. She also spoke frankly about being sexually assaulted by male barristers.

And we discussed the media storm that led the Daily Mail to accuse her nearly 10 years ago of being a “feminazi”. I asked her if — with the benefit of hindsight — it had been a good idea to go public about unwanted attention she had received from a more senior member of the bar.

Proudman also reflects on these incidents in her new book He Said, She Said, which will be published on 1 May. Subtitled Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court, it offers revealing insights into some of the women she has represented and reveals how her own family background has helped her to understand the vulnerabilities of clients and their children.

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Solicitors who are approached by wealthy new clients should take greater care to ensure they are not facilitating kleptocracy, state capture or grand corruption, a new report recommends. Lawyers — particularly commercial firms in the City of London — are told it’s not good enough merely to comply with anti-money laundering rules; the real test should be whether their actions would be acceptable to the wider public.

The report was written by a taskforce on business ethics and the legal profession set up by the the Institute of Business Ethics, a charity that’s been working since 1986 to help organisations act with honesty and integrity. It was chaired by Guy Beringer KC (hon), former senior partner of Allen & Overy (pictured). On the latest edition of A Lawyer Talks, he tells me how solicitors can maintain and enhance the reputation of the profession as a whole by following the report’s recommendations on transparency, accessibility and accountability.

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Despite reports that the government is seeking to rush legislation through parliament, a revised sentencing guideline on the imposition of community and custodial sentences will take effect in England and Wales tomorrow.

As I reported last week, the Sentencing Council has rejected a request from the justice secretary to remove from the guideline of a list of 10 groups for which pre-sentence reports would “normally be necessary”. But political correspondents were briefed yesterday that the wording to which ministers object will be disapplied by primary legislation — a step that would be entirely unprecedented.

(Update 1800: the government now expects the Sentencing Council to back down and suspend the guideline.)

What difference will the legislation make?

It’s not clear how quickly the government could get its proposed legislation through the House of Lords. (Update 1700: government sources now accept that this could not be before 22 April, when the Lords return from their Easter recess). But amending the guideline would be largely symbolic because legislation could not prevent magistrates or judges requesting pre-sentence reports for defendants in the 10 “cohorts” identified by the Sentencing Council. Equally, a sentencer may decide not to request a pre-sentence report for any offender while the full guideline remains in force if the court thinks it already has enough information about the offender and the offence.

Ministers clearly see this as a trial of strength with the judges who, by law, make up the majority of the Sentencing Council. At a superficial level it is a battle that the government will win, since the judges can be relied on to respect the sovereignty of parliament.

But at a deeper level it is a fight that will worsen relations between the executive and the judiciary. It will further damage the standing of the lord chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, among the senior judges who decided at an emergency meeting of the Sentencing Council last Tuesday evening to reject the last-minute amendments she had requested.

Separately, she will have to explain why her department signed off a probation court services policy framework in January that has been picked up by the Telegraph this morning. It includes the following passage:

Mahmood is reported by the Guardian to be looking at a more radical plan to give ministers the power to veto or amend guidelines from the Sentencing Council before they come into force. I shall have more to say about the far-reaching constitutional implications of the government’s decisions in my column for the Law Society Gazette this Friday.

What difference will the guideline make?

Sir William Davis, the appeal judge who chairs the Sentencing Council, explained to me earlier this month that the new guideline is no more than a revision of an existing guideline which has been in force since 2017.

Why, then, did it have to be changed? Is there much in it that’s new? And was it really an attempt to reduce the prison population, which rose to 87,684 last week? Those are among the questions I put to Davis, a senior appeal judge, in an interview for my podcast A Lawyer Talks.

We recorded the interview on 5 March, unaware that, as we were speaking, the shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick was politicising the issue by claiming in parliament the guideline would make a custodial sentence less likely for those “from an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community”. That is “not what the guideline does”, Davis explained last Friday — and not for the first time.

Although Davis and I discussed the new guideline’s emphasis on pre-sentence reports in general terms, neither of us mentioned the 10 broad groups for which the council said they were normally necessary. But I did ask Davis how the courts should treat defendants such as Mike Amesbury, who was still an MP at the time despite having received a 10-week prison sentence. It’s worth noting that Amesbury received an immediate custodial sentence from the deputy chief magistrate Tan Ikram CBE, even though the court had received a pre-sentence report on him. Three days later, the Crown Court suspended his sentence and imposed community punishments.

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The UK Supreme Court will spend most of this week hearing a rare criminal appeal by two former traders who worked in the financial markets. Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo both served substantial prison sentences for conspiracy to defraud after they were convicted, in separate trials, of rigging interest rates.

Their cases were referred to the Court of Appeal in 2023 by the Criminal Cases Review Commission after a leading court in the United States decided that similar behaviour would not have been illegal in the US.

Although the Court of Appeal dismissed their appeals a year ago, it later agreed to certify that the cases raised points of law of general public importance.

That gave the Supreme Court the option of hearing a further appeal, which it later agreed to do. The three-day hearing opens tomorrow and will be live-streamed.

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Professor Richard Susskind CBE KC (hon), a prolific legal author, used to joke about writing the same book every couple of years. But How to Think About AI: a Guide for the Perplexed — his 12th book, published tomorrow — is rather different.

Inexpensive, modestly priced and attractively produced in hardback by Oxford University Press, it’s aimed at the general reader who wants to know whether to be alarmed or enthused by the inexorable growth of artificial intelligence.

The subject is one that Susskind has been thinking about since 1981 and he answers the inevitable question in an epigram:

None of this book was written by AI (for better or worse).

But for how much longer? How soon will AI be able to write a book in the style of Richard Susskind? And will it be any good?

Those are among the issues addressed in How to Think About AI — and in unscripted remarks he made at its London launch last week. Susskind kindly allowed me to record the entire speech (see photograph above by Michael Cross) and I’m publishing a substantial extract from it as the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. It’s fascinating and chilling in equal measure.

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Lawyers are sometimes failing to meet the ethical standards expected of them, according to the Legal Services Board.

The oversight body that regulates the legal regulators in England and Wales is launching a consultation today on upholding professional ethical duties. This sets out five “outcomes” that regulators would have to implement so that legal professionals would provide a better service to their clients and the wider public.

Why does the Legal Services Board think that yet more regulation is needed? What does it think that bodies such as the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority and the Bar Standards Board will make of its proposals? And what will this mean for legal professionals who must already pay for two levels of regulation?

These are among the questions I put to Richard Orpin (pictured above), director of regulation and policy at the Legal Service Board, in the latest edition of A Lawyer Talks.

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The body that advises the government on law reform in England and Wales is suggesting a new test for referring suspected miscarriages of justice to the Court of Appeal.

At present, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) cannot send a case to the appeal court unless it considers that there is a “real possibility” that the conviction will be quashed. In the absence of exceptional circumstances, there must be also be a new argument or fresh evidence.

In a 700-page consultation paper on criminal appeals, the Law Commission suggests that the CCRC should refer a case to the Court of Appeal if the review body thinks the conviction might be unsafe. Safety is the test currently used by the Court of Appeal itself.

In addition to the consultation paper and the press notice, the Law Commission has published a comprehensive summary of fewer than 40 pages. There is also an easy-read version.

The charity Appeal, which represented Andrew Malkinson in his successful attempt to have his wrongful conviction for rape quashed after he had spent more than 17 years in prison, said:

We welcome the Law Commission's provisional adoption of several reform proposals Appeal has called for, including changes which if implemented will boost the effectiveness and accountability of the CCRC, make it easier for wrongful conviction survivors to get the compensation and support they need and help ensure that vital evidence on cases is not prematurely destroyed.

However, we know from our work on behalf of Andrew Malkinson and many others that our country's failing appeals system needs a complete overhaul.

The government should implement the compensation test change recommended by the Law Commission right away as too many innocent people have been denied the means to rebuild their lives.

For this week’s episode of A Lawyer Talks, I’ve been discussing the commission’s provisional proposals with Professor Penney Lewis, the law commissioner responsible for criminal law. My weekly podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

The director general of MI5 told the independent commissioner who oversees his work that the security service had given false evidence in court shortly before the security service told the courts themselves.

As investigatory powers commissioner, Sir Brian Leveson oversees the use of covert powers by more than 600 public authorities, including the UK’s intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies, police, local councils and prisons.

Last Wednesday, a High Court judge varied an injunction in a case involving a BBC investigation into an MI5 agent who is alleged to have terrorised his partner. Mr Justice Chamberlain said that MI5 evidence “was not just misleading, it was false. Whether or not it was deliberately false is the subject of an investigation.” That investigation was announced on the same day by the home secretary.

Leveson had agreed to talk to me a day later about how he and his team of retired judges decide whether to approve warrants signed by senior ministers and others that allow agencies including MI5 to interfere with the privacy of intelligence targets.

If the security service could lie to a court — as the BBC had alleged MI5 had done — then how could he be sure its officers were not lying to him?

“That’s a good question,” Leveson replied. The former senior appeal judge continued:

First of all, I have a very good relationship with the heads of each of the intelligence community and particularly in relation to MI5, who were concerned in this particular issue, with Sir Ken McCallum.

The relationship is based upon a comment that I made very early on and repeat all the time, which is: if you have a problem tell me about it. I will report on it, as appropriate, in the annual report but I will help you solve it. If you don’t tell me about it and I find out, then I am going to take a much more aggressive role in relation to its resolution.

I can’t obviously go into detail about this particular case. All I can say is that Sir Ken came himself to tell me what he was about to tell the court as soon as — he made it clear — he found out what the position was.

So how can I demonstrate they’re telling me the truth? Only by going in to check, which I can do. And if an error is reported, then I can send inspectors in to investigate that error.

And if that error has caused significant harm to an individual and it’s consistent with national security, I can tell the individual in rather opaque terms that they are entitled to apply to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal who have the power to award compensation in appropriate cases.

In a rare interview about his work, Leveson said the delay in getting his annual reports published was is one of his perennial problems. It was “not entirely fair” to say the government was stalling. But, in what appeared to be a sign of his frustration with the lengthy process of checking his reports for inadvertent security breaches, he disclosed the number of applications for warrants that he and his colleagues had rejected in 2023 and 2024 and explained what the figures told us about the effectiveness of the “double-lock” provisions. And we discussed some of his operational work.

Leveson also gave me a brief update on the report he is preparing for the justice secretary on reforming the criminal justice system of England and Wales. He is working in parallel with David Gauke, who calls for a reset of sentencing in a report published today. Legislation on both sets of recommendations is expected in the summer.

Although my weekly podcasts are normally reserved for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes, I have agreed with the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office that there will be no paywall on this interview. You can listen to it in full by clicking the ► symbol above.

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Does it matter who our judges are? Yes, says an academic lawyer who has just published the fruits of his empirical research.

Different judges exercise their power in different ways, according to a new book by Dr Lewis Graham, fellow in law at Christ’s College Cambridge. Some judges are more comfortable with pushing boundaries whilst others are more restrained. Some grant the state a lot of leeway whilst others apply heavy scrutiny, he writes in his book Judicial Individuality on the UK Supreme Court.

Some are, as Lord Denning suggested, bold spirits — whilst others are timorous souls.

Graham (pictured) discussed these issues with me yesterday for the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks. My weekly podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

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A judge who agreed that the schoolgirl Sara Sharif could live with her father and stepmother was “deeply upset” when they murdered her, I was told last week.

Sir Rupert Jackson, a retired appeal judge who has known Alison Raeside for many years, said she was “as upset about this as everyone else and all your listeners”.

In an interview for my podcast A Lawyer Talks, the former lord justice of appeal (pictured above) said that a consent order Judge Raeside had made in 2019 could not be criticised. But she was “fearful” of the likely publicity after an anonymity order was lifted by the Court of Appeal last Friday. Raeside had twice been the victim of serious stalking and harassment.

Jackson thought the Court of Appeal had been right to allow reporters to name Raeside — as well as Peter Nathan and Sally Williams, retired circuit judges who had earlier, limited involvement in the Sharif case. But the former appeal judge said it would have been helpful if his successors had acknowledged that Mr Justice Williams — the judge who banned publication of the names in December — was drawing attention to real risks facing members of the judiciary.

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Eyebrows were raised just before Christmas when a serving judge was apparently nominated as a new political peer. But although the Downing Street statement was not entirely clear, Her Honour Judge Levitt KC had very properly resigned from the judiciary just a few hours before the announcement of her appointment as a legislator. This week, Alison Levitt will be introduced into the House of Lords as Baroness Levitt KC.

Levitt, 61, was called to the bar in 1988 and took silk 20 years later. She then joined the Crown Prosecution Service as principal legal advisor to the director of public prosecutions, one Keir Starmer. In 2014, Levitt became a partner at the law firm Mishcon de Reya, working there until she returned to the bar in 2018. She served as a circuit judge from 2021 to 2024 and has now rejoined her old chambers, though she won’t be appearing in court as an advocate.

In her first interview as a Labour politician, Levitt told me about the challenges facing the circuit bench and what she hopes to achieve in her latest incarnation. New to the role she may be, but — as you’ll hear — she gave as good as she got.

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Court challenges to major building projects will be limited under plans announced by the prime minister yesterday. In a press release, Downing Street said:

Data shows that over half – 58% – of all decisions on major infrastructure were taken to court, getting in the way of the government’s central mission to grow the economy, and put more money in hardworking people’s pockets.

The government today confirms this will be overhauled, with just one attempt at legal challenge for cynical cases lodged purely to cause delay rather than three.

What effect will this have on the process of judicial review? Would we be losing an important check on the powers of government? Should judges in the High Court block appeals if the law is changed?

These are among the questions addressed by two guests on the latest edition of my podcast, A Lawyer Talks. Nigel Pleming KC and Stephanie David are among the editors of a new book called The Law of Net Zero and Nature Positive, to be launched at 39 Essex Chambers on 18 February. The book — believed to be the first of its kind anywhere in the world — is available from the publishers, London Publishing Partnership, at a remarkably modest price for a legal textbook of some 1,200 pages.

It covers cases that were decided as recently as two months ago. When I dropped in to see the two co-editors yesterday, we discussed the most recent developments in environmental law, including the groundbreaking KlimaSeniorinnenruling from the European Court of Human Rights that I reported here last April.

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As I reported in some detail yesterday afternoon, the chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission has decided to leave her job after an independent panel concluded by a majority that she should no longer head the body that reviews suspected miscarriages of justice. Successive justice secretaries had lost confidence in Helen Pitcher because of her handling of the Andrew Malkinson case.

Pitcher made some pretty punchy comments in the resignation letter I published yesterday. And the panel that advised the King to sack her didn’t mince its words either. In this exclusive interview for A Lawyer Talks, Pitcher reveals why she stayed, why she went and why she is resisting calls to step down from her role at the Judicial Appointments Commission.

My regular podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

A proposed new duty requiring barristers to advance and promote equality, diversity and inclusion would be “unlawful and misguided”, the incoming chair of the Bar Council said last night.

Barbara Mills KC, who took over this month as leader of the 18,000 barristers in England and Wales, said she was concerned that the bar’s regulator was seeking to use the barristers’ code of conduct “as the vehicle to attempt to change our culture”.

Last September, the Bar Standards Board launched a consultation on replacing a core duty in its handbook that requires barristers not to “discriminate unlawfully against any person” with a pro-active duty to “act in a way that advances equality, diversity and inclusion”.

Barristers’ leaders were concerned that the proposals would hinder progress towards a more diverse profession, “given what we believe to be ambiguity and potential ineffectiveness of the regulations as proposed”.

Mills said:

The consultation has generated more heat than light and is a great reminder of the care we must take that any attempt to improve equality, diversity and inclusion does not create unhelpful division.

The road to hell, it is often said, is paved with good intentions.

In her first interview as incoming chair of the barristers’ representative body, Mills told me last month she had been encouraged by remarks made to me in September by Mark Neale, director-general of the Bar Standards Board. “It’s a very genuine consultation,” he assured me in response to criticism I had published. “We absolutely want to hear what the profession and individual barristers have to say.”

You can hear my interview with Mills by clicking on the ► symbol at the top of this page. There is no paywall this week and the podcast can also be heard on the Counsel magazine website and other platforms. I have written it up for publication in Counsel and you can now read it online. And the full text of Mills’s inaugural address is published here.

Mills said last night she was keen to work with the regulator and “to open meaningful dialogue”. She also encouraged individual barristers to come and talk to her if they disagreed with her position on equality, diversity and inclusion.

Unlawful

Although Mills was concerned that the framing of the proposed new duty to deliver a more diverse profession was unlawful and misguided, she said nothing more about the laws it might breach.

However, the Free Speech Union — which describes itself as a non-partisan, mass membership public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of its members and campaigns for free speech more widely — has commissioned legal advice on the issues Mills raised.

In a 23-page opinion dated 29 November 2024 which the Free Speech Union have kindly allowed me to publish, Jason Coppel KC and Tom Cross say that adopting the proposed core duty and the proposed equality rules to meet stated equality outcomes would be unlawful and therefore liable to be quashed on a claim for judicial review.

That, they add, would be because:

the rules would be directly discriminatory against at least some barristers;
alternatively, they would constitute indirect discrimination against some barristers;
they would be incompatible with barristers’ rights under articles 9 and 10 of the human rights convention and thus breach section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998; and
they may require barristers to commit unlawful discrimination in offering pupillages or tenancies, contrary to the Equality Act 2010.

Violence against women and girls

As the first family practitioner to chair the Bar Council since 1988, Mills said that another of her priorities was to raise the profile of the family bar and help the government in its mission to halve violence against women and girls.

This could be prevented in some cases through early intervention. It also required a clear definition — “one that encompasses all forms of violence and harmful practices specifically aimed at women and girls”.

The family courts were ideally placed to tackle this work but they needed effective and sustained investment.

“At the very least,” she said, “every complainant and every alleged perpetrator should have access to legal advice and representation in the family court.”

Wellbeing and harassment

Wellbeing was another priority, she said:

Whilst much is said about wellbeing now, the emphasis remains centred around crisis management.

What I would like to see in the profession is wellbeing losing its stigma as a sign of weakness and elevated to the same non-negotiable level as having an accountant or having insurance.

Baroness Harman KC, a former deputy leader of the Labour Party, had been commissioned by Mills’s predecessor Sam Townend KC to conduct an independent review of bullying and harassment at the bar. That followed a Bar Council report which found that 44% of respondents had experienced or witnessed bullying, harassment or discrimination in the previous two years — an increase on previous survey results.

“The review provides an important opportunity to reset our culture and improve the working lives of all in our profession and I intend to give it the priority it deserves,” Mills said last night.

“I am committed to working with Baroness Harman and providing her with the support she needs to finalise her review. I look forward to working with her and the profession to consider the findings and her recommendations for action.”

Equality and diversity

With Kirsty Brimelow KC as vice-chair and Lucinda Orr as treasurer, Mills said it was the first time in the Bar Council’s 131-year history that all three of its office holders were women.

Mills is also the first person of colour to lead the bar. Calling on others to join her in representing their profession, she recalled an expression she had learned while growing up in Ghana: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

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Ariel, the magician’s “trusty spirit”, speaks with Prospero in The Tempest about magic bringing about a “sea change”, a transformative power creating something “rich and strange”.

As befits a lawyer who read English at Oxford, Jonathan Kewley drew on Shakespeare to describe artificial intelligence in a lecture earlier this month. The solicitor, who was awarded the title of partner of the year at the British Legal Awards last month, is co-head of the Clifford Chance tech group, a cross-disciplinary team of more than 600 lawyers advising on tech risk and opportunity.

“When I use AI in my daily life,” said Kewley, “its power and potential often leaves me in a state of shock and awe. Be in no doubt: we are currently witnessing something quite extraordinary. We’ve evolved through the Stone Age, the Iron Age. We now find ourselves in the Intelligence Age.”

But Kewley had a warning for us all. “This modern magic can turn dark,” he said:

At the end of The Tempest, Prospero relinquishes his magic and releases his spirit assistant Ariel. “I’ll break my staff,” he says. “I’ll drown my book.” But we cannot walk away from AI now.

Let’s not sleep-walk into this. Let’s shape the future of AI by putting humans at the centre. Wake up, embrace the opportunity with our eyes wide open. The real magic rests in getting the balance right.

Kewley had been invited to speak at the Central Criminal Court by Alderman Gregory Jones, the first practising KC to serve as one of the City of London’s two sheriffs. His lecture and the discussion that followed were part of the City and Legal programme of events chosen to promote the Old Bailey as an international forum for exploring the rule of law and the interaction between the law and business.

I must declare an interest: Jones has invited me to speak at the court in February about freedom of speech and transparency. Other discussions in the new year will cover crypto-assets, smarter financial regulation, infrastructure and climate change.

As Kewley said, AI can also be dangerous — just as the first motor cars were created without safety in mind. It is leading to errors in hiring and firing staff in the workplace. It could cause a flash crash in the financial markets. It can even lead to deaths. But, as a solicitor, Kewley deeply believed in the power of law to keep this magic in check.

That’s what we discussed in a fascinating episode of A Lawyer Talks. My regular podcast is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can hear a short taster by clicking the ► symbol above.

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How can we reduce trial delays of two or even three years in the Crown Court?

Yesterday, I reported a suggestion from the director of public prosecutions Stephen Parkinson that was promptly skewered in the comments section by Ian Kelcey and Tom Crowther.

Parkinson had also suggested that we might explore some ideas that had recently been backed by Alex Chalk KC, the former Conservative justice secretary. These would involve limiting the right to jury trial — a radical move, but one that might find favour with no less a figure than the lady chief justice of England and Wales, Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill.

We know from the National Audit Office report yesterday that the Conservative government’s prison building programme will not produce the prison places that are said to be needed. One solution offered by the Ministry of Justice is a sentencing review that’s intended to ensure prisons do not run out of space again. But that review has a fundamental flaw, as Chalk told me when I went to see him at the chambers from which he now practises.

You can hear my interview with the former justice secretary — and a brief comment from Parkinson — in the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks.

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A bill that would make it illegal to create or solicit sexually explicit or intimate images without the consent of the people in them will be considered by the House of Lords next week.

The bill would cover deepfake content, where photos or video are digitally manipulated to make a person appear to be in an intimate situation.

Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge, who was the youngest member of the House of Lords when she was nominated in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list in July last year, has sponsored the Non-Consensual Sexually Explicit Images and Videos (Offences) Bill as a private member’s bill. Its second reading debate is scheduled for 13 December.

Owen explained the purpose of her bill in a note to House of Lords library:

The problem of sexually explicit deepfakes is one that is inherently sexist and rapidly proliferating. They have been described as the new frontier of violence against women. The content is created using generative AI and can be made in a matter of seconds with easily downloadable nudification apps or online platforms. Whilst it is illegal to non-consensually share sexually explicit deepfakes online, it is still not illegal to create them in the first place.

The bill was prepared with the help of Clare McGlynn KC (hon), a solicitor and professor of law at Durham University (pictured in the graphic above) who specialises in the legal regulation of sexual violence, pornography and online abuse.

For the latest episode in my podcast A Lawyer Talks, McGlynn spoke to me about Owen’s bill and the chances that it might attract government support.

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We are used to the idea of the criminal law penalising us when we do bad things. But there’s an increasing tendency for the state to punish large organisations for doing nothing at all.

The latest example of this is the new offence of failure to prevent fraud, which takes effect next autumn. Statutory guidance was issued by the government earlier this month. But it was not as helpful as businesses might have hoped.

For the latest episode of my podcast A Lawyer Talks, I have been discussing the legislation — and the guidance — with Nick Vamos, head of business crime at the long-established criminal defence solicitors Peters & Peters.

A former head of special crime and head of extradition at the Crown Prosecution Service, Vamos represented Boris Johnson when the former prime minister was accused of misleading parliament over “Partygate” and represented the Post Office in the appeals it faced by former postmasters who were convicted on flawed evidence.

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The death of George Carman QC at the age of 71 meant — as I told readers of the Daily Telegraph at the beginning of 2001 — that the age of the great advocate was at an end:

Until now. The 25 pages Carman managed to complete before his death form the starting point of a new book called Get Carman, which records his casework during the 1980s and 1990s. All the big names of the period are there: Jeremy Thorpe, Geoffrey Prime, Ken Dodd, Sonia Sutcliffe, Elton John, Gillian Taylforth, Jonathan Aitken, Neil Hamilton and Mohamed Al Fayed.

The book is written by Karen Phillipps, a fellow barrister who was Carman’s confidante and companion after his three marriages ended in divorce.

For the latest episode of my podcast A Lawyer Talks, Phillipps told me about the man she knew and the cases he won. She also answered the question I asked in 2001.

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What retired senior judges choose to say about major issues of the day is of real interest and importance — particularly when they are discussing legal issues — a former head of civil justice said last night.

Lord Dyson, who retired as master of the rolls in 2016 and then rejoined the chambers he used to head as a barrister, was delivering a lecture at Gray’s Inn called “Judicial after-life: should it be subject to any limits?”

His starting point was an open letter published in April and signed by Lady Hale, former president of the Supreme Court, as well as 600 other former judges and lawyers. The letter asserted that the International Court of Justice had “concluded that there was a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza”.

As Dyson kindly mentioned in his lecture, I then pointed out that this was not what the court had said. It was the Palestinians’ rights that were found to be plausible, not the risk they might face.

This prompted Dyson to sign a counter-letter correcting the error, something he told me he had never done before.

A final attempt to put right widespread misreporting of the court’s ruling was made some weeks later by the judge who had delivered it. “The court decided that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide,” Joan Donoghue told the BBC. “It didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”

Meanwhile, Dyson had been struck by a paragraph in the Guardian’s report of the letter Hale had signed:

The letter’s significance lies not just in the number of signatories but the fact that it has been signed by senior retired judges, who normally shy away from commenting publicly on issues that are politically sensitive.

That was the catalyst for his Birkenhead lecture at Gray’s Inn, he said in an interview this week.

I asked Dyson whether it was appropriate for retired judges to give legal advice. If so, should they be regulated in the same way as lawyers?

We discussed whether Lord Neuberger, Hale’s predecessor as president of the Supreme Court, should have advised the Post Office on the civil claims against it — and whether its counsel, Lord Grabiner KC, had been right to hint at Neuberger’s involvement when addressing a court.

Arguing that Mr Justice Fraser should withdraw from the case, Grabiner had told the judge:

I am not the only judicial figure or barrister that has looked at this with a view to reaching that conclusion. It has also been looked at by another very senior person before the decision was taken to make this application.

I also pressed Dyson on whether he thought Neuberger and Lord Hoffmann should continue to sit in the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal.

You can hear our conversation in the latest edition of A Lawyer Talks. My podcast is reserved for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes but, as an experiment, I am offering this brief taster to all readers:

It’s an amusing example of how intimidating it may be for judges to find someone who has served at a higher level in the judiciary appearing before them in court.

Spare a thought for Robert Jenrick. A few hours after being appointed shadow justice secretary — with Kieran Mullan alongside him as the shadow justice minister — Jenrick was bounced back onto his bench by the formidable Alex Davies-Jones. His questions may read well in Hansard but the two minutes of video that I have posted above show how badly the defeated leadership candidate misjudged the position he now finds himself in.

Davies-Jones, MP for Pontypridd since 2019, may be no more than a junior minister at the Ministry of Justice but she dominated her department’s Commons questions yesterday, showing full mastery of the justice brief.

Her secretary of state didn’t get a look-in for half an hour — literally so, as this image shows:

While Davies-Jones was at the despatch box, just about all that could be seen of Shabana Mahmood was a sliver of light-blue fabric behind the junior minister’s right elbow.

Separation of powers

Many of MPs who asked questions yesterday were new to their jobs. But inexperience is no excuse for a failure to understand the proper limits of parliament. Here are a couple of examples:

Peter Bedford (Conservative): A lady from Northampton was recently given a 31-month sentence for a tweet, whereas an individual who incited physical violence on the streets of Birmingham as part of a pro-Palestinian protest received a far lesser sentence. Does the secretary of state agree that such inconsistencies create the perception, at least, that we have a two-tier justice system?

Shabana Mahmood: It is incumbent on members to ensure that such a perception does not take hold and not to inappropriately compare sentences handed out in different types of cases. As the hon gentleman well knows and every member of this house should know, sentences in individual cases are a matter for the independent judges who hear those cases; the trials unfold in front of them…

Robert Jenrick (shadow justice secretary): While of course respecting the judicial process and not commenting on the individual facts of the case, can the secretary of state explain the reported two-week delay between the Crown Prosecution Service making a charging decision with respect to the alleged Southport attacker and it being announced to the general public?

Shabana Mahmood: As the right hon member is now the shadow lord chancellor, may I remind him that we do not comment on cases that are sub judice? That includes commentary that everyone is aware relates to cases currently going through our legal processes. What I will say is that those are independent decisions for the Crown Prosecution Service, which ultimately decides what charges to bring. In live police investigations into complex cases, it is appropriate that those investigations, the charging decisions and, ultimately, the cases are done by the independent parts of the process and that there is no interference from government.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, made it clear that ministers would indeed have to answer the concerns raised by Jenrick — but not until the case he was referring to had been concluded.

Single justice procedure

As usual, not much emerged from ministers’ answers. But there was an announcement about the much criticised single justice procedure, under which a lone magistrate processes a long list of undefended prosecutions with the assistance of a legal adviser. The list of defendants and the penalties they receive is available to reporters but the cases are not dealt with in open court.

“I have listened carefully to concerns raised about the single justice procedure,” said Heidi Alexander, the minister of state.

She continued:

As a first step, I have asked the Courts and Tribunals Service to redesign the single justice procedure and make it clearer. I will also call in single justice procedure prosecutors to discuss ways in which we can ensure that they consider the public interest in advance of making prosecutions…

I am clear that the single justice procedure is vital for the efficient running of the magistrates court. However, it must operate fairly and effectively. I will not tolerate poor practice and I will not hesitate to fundamentally reform the system if that is required.

Alexander’s announcement was welcomed by the chief executive of the Magistrates’ Association, Tom Franklin.

He said:

In March, we called for single justice procedure reform and published 12 recommendations to improve its operation, transparency and fairness. Our recommendations included making it a requirement that prosecutors see all pleas and mitigations from defendants before the cases are heard by the magistrate and improving communication, through a review of the paperwork sent to defendants, to make it simpler and easier to understand.

However, reform needs to go further. We are also urging the government to boost transparency by making provision for single justice procedure sittings to be observable by accredited journalists and by publishing more data on the single justice procedure — such as how many defendants plead guilty, how many make no pleas and how many ask to come to court — nationally and broken down by region.

Shadow cabinet

Who’s missing from this picture?

I can see no sign of Sir Jeremy Wright KC MP, shadow attorney general in Rishi Sunak’s caretaker opposition.

Who, then, will replace him? Will it be an MP to shadow the solicitor general Sarah Sackman KC MP in the Commons or a peer to question her boss Lord Hermer KC in the Lords? We should know soon.

Update 1640: the shadow attorney general will be Lord Wolfson of Tredegar KC, who resigned as a justice minister in Boris Johnson’s government over the “scale, context and nature” of breaches of the criminal law in Downing Street.

He will remain in practice at the bar.

Update 1800: Helen Grant MP, a solicitor and former justice minister, will be shadow solicitor general.

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Dawn Sturgess was fatally poisoned in 2018 after spraying herself with what she believed to be perfume. In fact, it was the military-grade nerve agent Novichok. It’s believed that the perfume bottle had been thrown away by Russian agents who had used it in an unsuccessful attempt to murder the former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia earlier in the year.

An unexpected death must be referred to the coroner and in circumstances such as this there would normally be an inquest. But Baroness Hallett, who had been appointed to conduct this inquest, advised the government to convert it into a public inquiry.

She told the home secretary in 2021:

A statutory inquiry would permit me to allow some evidence to be heard in closed session from which members of the public and core participants may be excluded. Although such a closed hearing would, in usual circumstances, be undesirable, the national security concerns in this case mean that the sensitive evidence is likely only be able to be examined and tested in a closed hearing, or not at all.

Lord Hughes of Ombersley, a former justice of the Supreme Court, was appointed to chair the Dawn Sturgess inquiry after Hallett was asked to conduct the public inquiry into Covid-19. Baroness May, who was prime minister at the time of the poisoning, told a BBC podcast last week she hoped Sturgess’s family would “take some comfort” from the proceedings.

When Hughes opens the inquiry into Sturgess’s death in Salisbury this morning, a great deal of information will remain secret on grounds of national security. But there’s one fact that I can disclose today. Witnesses and families will be helped by the Coroners’ Courts Support Service, an independent voluntary organisation that provides much-needed emotional support and practical assistance to bereaved families, witnesses and others attending inquests.

The support service was launched in 2003 and now has 375 fully-trained volunteers working in 44 of the 77 coronial areas in England and Wales. It has assisted at several recent public inquiries, including the current Thirlwall inquiry set up after the murders committed or attempted by Lucy Letby. At yet it is struggling the raise the funds it needs for its running costs.

For the latest episode of my podcast A Lawyer Talks, I went to see Roey Burden OBE, the founder and driving force behind the Coroners’ Courts Support Service. We discussed the challenges facing not just witnesses and bereaved families, who never imagined they would be called to attend an inquest, but also coroners, whose jurisdiction has been largely unreformed for 800 years.

To listen to this episode, click on the ► symbol above.

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Next week, Gregory Jones KC will take up residence at the most famous criminal court in the world. I don’t mean he’ll be the resident judge; Alderman Jones will actually be living over the cells at the Old Bailey — or, to be more precise, a few floors up. His fellow sheriff David Chalk will also move into a flat at the Central Criminal Court.

What do the sheriffs do? And why would they spend a year of their lives living at the Old Bailey? The first KC to be appointed sheriff in some 900 years has been telling me how his new responsibilities as the judges’ social secretary will help buttress the rule of law. You can hear what he has to say in the inaugural episode of my new podcast, A Lawyer Talks.

You’ll also hear from Fiona Adler, former sheriff and now honorary secondary of London. She takes us into Court 1, which we view from the judges’ bench. And she tells me just what was passed round the jury box in a soup bowl when Dr Crippen — notorious as the first criminal to be arrested with the help of wireless telegraphy — was tried here in 1910 for murdering his wife.

This image, taken from the dock where Crippen once sat, shows the jury seats to the left, the witness box (with curtain), the judges’ bench (with sword), and counsel’s benches below the public gallery.

On the left here is the backsheet of the prosecution brief endorsed by Travers Humphreys with the verdicts on Crippen and his lover Ethel Le Neve. On the right is a standard Home Office letter upholding the death sentence on Crippen.

This is a closer view of the judges’ bench, with the lord mayor’s seat in the centre.

And here is the ceremonial sword.

Finally, we visit the Great Hall with its mural of the great lawgiver.

You can listen to my interviews with the sheriff and the secondary by clicking on the ► symbol above. Alternatively, you can download the podcast to hear later by clicking the download symbol in the graphic. And you should also be able to find A Lawyer Talks on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and other podcast platforms.

This podcast is available to all. It was published on 16 September at 6am. I am celebrating the formal launch of A Lawyer Talks by releasing a new episode just an hour later, at 7am. To listen to my second podcast and all future episodes, you will need a paid subscription to A Lawyer Writes. Details are here. Once you subscribe, you will be notified by email of each new podcast and all of my written work. You will also be able to read subscriber-only content and add comments. And you will have full access to an archive of all my pieces published here since the summer of 2020. Subscribers to A Lawyer Writes can also listen on Spotify.
I plan to publish my third podcast in a day or so. After that, there will normally be no more than one podcast each week. During holiday periods, there may be none. There won’t be a fixed day of the week for podcasts: each episode will be uploaded when it is ready.

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The Ministry of Justice has been ordered to pay more than £900 in damages and costs to a motorist after his car was wrongly clamped by an enforcement agent who had been instructed to collect an unpaid fine.

Michael Burton, 59, who lives near Hull, had bought the car on hire-purchase — which meant it belonged to a finance company until all the payments had been made.

He says it was clamped by Craig Edward Allen, a self-employed agent acting for an enforcement company, even though Burton showed Allen a copy of his hire-purchase agreement.

In an attempt to avoid liability, the Ministry of Justice argued that it was not liable for the actions of the enforcement agent. That’s contrary to guidance published by the Ministry of Justice itself. When Burton’s barrister Daniel Kessler pointed this out in the Court of Appeal, the government’s lawyer argued that its own guidance was wrong and should not be relied on.

That argument was rejected by the Court of Appeal in a ruling last month. Burton was awarded £905 plus interest.

Last week, a call for evidence was issued by a working group on enforcement set up by the Civil Justice Council, which advises the Ministry of Justice and the judiciary on civil justice issues.

Not many people with outstanding debts can afford to take on the Ministry of Justice. Burton’s success in the courts has established a precedent that will support others in a similar position. I have been speaking to him and his solicitor Sarah Hougie for the my new podcast, A Lawyer Talks.

You can listen to it by clicking the ► symbol in the graphic at the top of this page (and then clicking ► again if you are reading this on email). It is also available on other podcast platforms.

The podcast is another on-air pilot, ahead of the series I plan to launch in September. It begins with a roundup of other stories in the news. Do let me know what you think of it by leaving a comment on the website.

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Harry Dunn’s parents are no longer seeking to appeal against a High Court ruling that the US intelligence analyst who caused the teenage motorcyclist’s death by careless driving nearly five years ago was entitled to diplomatic immunity, their lawyers have told me.

The finding that Anne Sacoolas enjoyed immunity from UK criminal jurisdiction at the time of Harry’s death was not reached “with any enthusiasm for the result”, Lord Justice Flaux and Mr Justice Saini had said in 2020. But that conclusion, they added, was “compelled by the operation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations”.

Until now, it was thought that Charlotte Church and Tim Dunn might still have been hoping to overturn that decision in the Court of Appeal. But lawyers from the newly merged global law firm A&O Shearman confirmed last week that the appeal “wasn’t pursued in the end because of the way that the criminal proceedings panned out”.

In addition, the law had been changed so that anyone in Sacoolas’s position would not have been entitled to immunity in future.

This month, a coroner found that the motorcyclist’s death was caused by a collision with a car driven by Sacoolas. She had emerged from RAF Croughton, a US communications centre in Northampton, and then driven instinctively on the wrong side of the road.

In response to the inquest verdict, the Foreign Office made a statement about road safety.

Andrew Denny, head of UK public law at A&O Shearman, and Frances Beddow, an associate at the firm’s London disputes team, were speaking for the first time about the thousands of hours of unpaid work done by lawyers and support staff at Allen & Overy, which merged with Shearman & Sterling last month. The two lawyers were able to speak to me because the inquest into Dunn’s death has now concluded.

You can listen to my interview with them by clicking on the ► symbol above. It’s the second “on-air pilot” for my new podcast, called A Lawyer Talks. The podcast will be launched in the autumn and in the meantime I am trying out various formats on an occasional basis. Comments are welcome.

The legal proceedings, with their unique complications, were particularly difficult to report over the years because none of the lawyers involved was willing to explain what was going on.

Even so, I secured the only interview on the case ever given by Sacoolas’s US lawyer. Amy Jeffress told me in 2021 that her client would never return to the United Kingdom. Although some of those working on the case believed otherwise, that proved to be true.

Some of the background was outlined by Mrs Justice Chema-Grubb in December 2022 when she gave Sacoolas a suspended sentence of eight months’ imprisonment.

Once a podcast episode appears on my Substack blog A Lawyer Writes, it is automatically distributed to other podcast platforms including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. My first podcast was published last Thursday and there is also an archive of other full-length audio recordings that I’ve made over the past four years. All podcasts can be downloaded for future listening. This episode, like the previous one released last Thursday, was produced by Neil Koenig.

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In her new book Rough Justice, the former Old Bailey judge Wendy Joseph KC explores areas where she believes the courts have fallen short over the years — including rape, domestic violence and child cruelty.

She does this by taking the reader through four dramatic cases, viewed from her seat on the judge’s bench. Although the people she writes about are not real, everything they say and do is based on what she has heard and seen in the courtroom.

It’s a literary technique she used to great effect two years ago in her first book, Unlawful Killings. Her new book takes this further by placing fictional cases in a real historic background. Law students will benefit from the detailed notes she writes on the issues raised.

Rough Justice — to be published by Penguin Random House on 18 July — is “a compelling read”, according to the former Supreme Court president Lady Hale. The best-selling crime writer Peter James says it’s “a beautifully written, immensely engaging, powerful and disturbing insight into a judge’s work”. I’m sure it will attract a great deal of interest when it reaches the bookshops next month.

I met Wendy Joseph this week at Pewterers’ Hall in the City of London, where she is currently the livery company’s elected master. As well as discussing her new book, we listened to some recent exchanges from the Post Office inquiry and she offered some shrewd advice on advocacy skills. I also asked her about pewter.

You can hear my first podcast by clicking on the ► symbol above. Alternatively, you can download it to listen later by clicking the three dots in the graphic. And you should also be able to find A Lawyer Talks on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and other podcast platforms. There is also an archive of other audio recordings I’ve made over the past four years.

This podcast is what we call an on-air pilot — a test run to see what works and how we can improve it. There’ll be another one, in a slightly different format, next week.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll be launching a weekly series of podcasts in the autumn. Everyone on my email list — which is free to join — will be notified each time a new edition is available. You can also subscribe on whichever podcast platform you use.

Do let me know what you think of A Lawyer Talks by leaving a public comment in the box below.

This edition of A Lawyer Talks was produced by Neil Koenig. It also includes the voices of Jason Beer KC; Paula Vennells; Lord Grabiner KC; Sam Stein KC; Anthony de Garr Robinson KC; and Sir Wyn Williams. The Old Bailey archive mentioned by Wendy Joseph can be found here.

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The challenge for the courts is making the most of new technologies and practices without losing sight of what worked in the past, a justice of the UK Supreme Court said yesterday.

In a lecture called Breathing Life into the Law: Achieving Access to Justice in the Modern State, Lady Rose of Colmworth said the best way of achieving this was a blend of creativity and conservatism.

“Like Moses and Jethro,” she said, “we must innovate without impairing the quality of justice being dispensed.”

Rose was delivering the Lionel Cohen lecture, which has been given annually at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by a series of leading legal figures over the past 70 years. It was set up in honour of Lord Cohen of Walmer, the first Jewish law lord, who sat in the UK’s highest court from 1951 to 1960.

The lecture, sponsored by his family, is organised by the British Friends of the Hebrew University. It was well attended yesterday by members of the law faculty at the university’s Mount Scopus campus.

An edited text of Rose’s remarks will be published in due course. In the meantime, you can listen to the lecture as delivered by clicking the button above. You can also download the audio as a podcast.

Note to readers: this is not the podcast I announced after the BBC decided to stop broadcasting Law in Action on Radio 4. Plans for that project are well advanced and I hope to announce more details at the end of June. The podcast itself will be launched in the autumn.

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Any move towards withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) would risk damaging the UK’s trading position, a former president of the human rights court argued this week.

Robert Spano, now an international business lawyer, was speaking to me on Tuesday evening at a public event sponsored by the law firm Gibson Dunn, where he is a partner.

Hours later, the Telegraph reported a claim by the former defence secretary Ben Wallace that the ECHR had become a threat to national security. His argument seems unconvincing, I say at the start of my column for this week’s Law Society Gazette. But most of the piece is devoted to reporting and analysing Spano’s comments.

The event on Tuesday was entertainingly introduced by Lord Falconer of Thornton, the former Labour lord chancellor who is also a partner at Gibson Dunn. He asked the first question.

I sent a recording of the interview to my paying subscribers on Wednesday morning, together with a summary of Spano’s comments. The recording is now available to all as a podcast, which you can download from this page and listen to in the normal way.

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Lord Pannick KC is undoubtedly the UK’s leading lawyer in his chosen field, public law. Perhaps best known for winning the Brexit and prorogation challenges that Gina Miller brought against the government in the Supreme Court, he is currently defending the government’s Rwanda asylum policy in the Court of Appeal while representing Boris Johnson in the Commons privileges committee.

He and I discussed these cases and much more at a fundraising event last Thursday for Support Through Court, a charity that helps people who face court alone to represent themselves to the best of their abilities. The event was introduced by Lord Dyson, a former master of the rolls, who also spoke at the end.

I published a video recording of the discussion on Friday but I thought it would be useful to make the recording available as a podcast that readers could download and enjoy at their leisure. Click the ⏵ symbol to start.

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The justice secretary Brandon Lewis said this afternoon he would defend judicial independence “to the hilt”. But, discussing reform of human rights, he stressed that parliament was sovereign.

Lewis was speaking at at a meeting arranged by the think tank Policy Exchange at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham.

You can listen to the lord chancellor’s remarks by clicking the button at the top of this page. I have edited a couple of the questions from the floor. The meeting was chaired by Lord Godson in a marquee that was far from soundproof.

Transcript

Here is a transcript, slightly edited for clarity, of what the justice secretary said. If anything seems unclear, please check the audio.

It’s a great pleasure to be here with Policy Exchange. As Dean [Godson] rightly outlined, I’ve had the honour of talking to people in Policy Exchange events over the years and everything from local government through my time at the Home Office, and as chairman of the party actually and, obviously, in Northern Ireland. And now as lord chancellor, it’s good to have an opportunity to talk to you a bit about what we’re looking at, and what the plans are as we move forward.

And yes, we do still wear robes as lord chancellor, as I found out on Thursday. Having started off thinking that maybe things have moved on, I found out at my swearing-in that you still wear robes and my 19-year-old daughter will eventually forgive me for putting on a wig and a pair of tights on Thursday, and then putting it on Instagram — which I will be going back to do again tomorrow because we have the opening of the legal year. So I'll be heading back to London for that before coming back.

Because I actually do think one of the things that we will focus on — and I'll talk a bit more about this later in the conference week — we have in our country something to be very proud of which is a world-leading legal profession. Legal services in this country actually are fundamental to everything we do across a wide range of areas.

And I think sometimes what some of us may think are occasionally antiquated and a bit odd — these ceremonies and services that we do — actually are really quite important, I think not only to remind the rest of all but ourselves about the history of our law and how it has evolved, and how it continues to evolve to reflect what we need in society. And that will continue as we go forward.

And that’s where we are, I think, when we start to look at human rights reform. It was our 2019 manifesto that specifically laid out that we will update the Human Rights Act and administrative law to ensure that there is a proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government. We need to do that. And we need to be sure that we do that in a way that reflects our wish to reduce the ECHR’s influence in our system, whilst making sure we retain our other manifesto commitment that is hugely important, which is to remain a champion of collective security, the rule of law — which obviously I have a job to protect — as well as human rights, free trade, anti-corruption efforts, and a rules-based international system.

And we took more action on some of this just this week, particularly with regards to anti-corruption efforts with Putin’s regime and those who purport to support it.

There is a range of options for us as we go forward to explore in this area of human rights if we want to govern according to our manifesto pledge and remain absolutely true to what we promised to the people who voted for us in 2019. We do need to make sure that we are addressing, and dealing with, section 2 of the Human Rights Act — the obligation to take into account Strasbourg court jurisprudence — we need to give consideration to a tighter approach that limits creativity whilst encouraging our domestic courts to have the ability to diverge from Strasbourg case law more freely, that UK courts have primacy in and for UK law.

Now more widely, when we are interpreting human rights framework in the courts, we should always seek to prioritise protecting the public from convicted offenders during the term of their custodial sentence. That, to me — the protection of the public, and looking after victims — has to be key and at the heart of everything that we do in the MoJ.

But that also plays into a wider approach, and one that I intend to take as the justice secretary, which is focusing on, first and foremost, the safety and comfort of convicted offenders never ever being put over that of the safety of the public and of protecting victims.

Now, there are many changes to the human rights framework that will need to be considered both by government and wider parliament. And having been a government member of parliament during a period where the relationship between parliament and the courts has been strained from time to time, I know how important it is to make sure that if we want to take forward reform in this area, we get it right, so we deliver the outcome we actually want to achieve. It is important that we ensure that the courts recognise the supremacy in a democratic system of the decisions made by parliament.

That does not conflict with the principle of the independence the judiciary, which as lord chancellor I will defend to the absolute hilt. But we do need to be clear that parliament is sovereign. And if parliament has expressed a view through legislation, then the courts should always respect that view when implementing the law that has been passed. Now this is a complex area — to get that balance right — and it’s one that will require a lot of work in order to make sure that our proposals are [?] and it is a principle that we can all support.

The need to reduce the courts backlog is also something that has challenged a few justice secretaries before me as well. But due to the recent strike action, as well as coming out of the Covid pandemic, we’ve seen that backlog go back up and become more challenging. I want to make sure that, during my period of time as justice secretary, all possible avenues are being explored and considered, I want to be working with the judiciary — who are equally keen to see this backlog dealt with — to look at what more we can do to get that backlog back down, and ensure that we’re looking at every opportunity to do that.

I intend to put my department to work in exploring what can be done to also ensure that we curb the use of SLAPPs. These are strategic lawsuits against public participation. They are too often used by wealthy individuals to intimidate and silence the critics. And it’s not right that money can buy legal impunity in our system. We need to ensure that we have a system here, a system of human rights that doesn’t create or give cover for cancel culture. We need to do everything we can to protect freedom of speech, even when it can be really, really annoying.

We can’t allow people to claim their human rights are being infringed because they disagree with us. Democracy is about debate. Democracy happens because of debate. Debate means having that opportunity to say what you believe, to make a case for it to argue for it. We all have a duty to be aware that what we say matters. So be aware that when we speak, we are talking to people and that will have an impact. We need to be free to have that debate and that conversation.

We’re not talking about, in this context, protecting terrorists from inciting hatred —which must always be something we have the legal ability to deal with. But we do need to make sure that people in everyday life and in public life can have their debates freely, and have those debates openly and properly. And if that means occasionally the odd one of us as a politician gets a bit offended and needs to fight our own corner, that's what democracy is about. And that’s worth defending. As we look at the human rights and freedom to do that, as we move forward.

Questions

My name is Grace DaCosta. I'm from Quakers in Britain. And I was wondering what was happening with the Bill of Rights Bill, whether that will be brought back or whether there'll be other legislation to replace it.

We are looking at a range of things from what would have been in the Bill of Rights Bill, which we’re not bringing forward at the moment. What we are looking at is, what is the right piece of legislation to bring forward some of the measures that we wanted to deal with, for example, I’ve just been talking, at the end of my few words there, freedom of speech, strategic lawsuits against public participation, things like that, and how we do that. What’s the best, speediest way of dealing with that? I know a lot of people and we as a government are determined to make sure we are dealing with the issues that can help us deal with the issues around illegal immigration. I’m working closely with the Home Secretary to ensure that we can put together legislation that deals with that. So those key tenets we wanted to deal with we will deal with, but we’ll probably do it in different pieces of legislation.

Chris McCain from the Press Association. I just wanted to ask about — you mentioned the strike action. Obviously one of the major complaints in the Criminal Bar Association is about legal aid and money. In the context where we have a Treasury looking to cut funding, will you be pushing to protect and indeed increase funding for legal aid?

Obviously one of the one of the key — or probably the number one acute issues on my desk on coming into office has been dealing with the bar strike. They will be going to ballot next week. I am hopeful that they will look at the — I’m confident they will look at the proposals carefully. I’m hopeful that they will look at them positively and vote and that we will see an end to the strike. It’s a comprehensive package that deals with the issues that need to be dealt with.

So I’m hopeful we will deal with that which will help move things forward and actually puts the whole structure particularly for the junior bar in a very different place, in terms of covering off some of the issues and giving payment there for section 28, which I want to see more of, to deal with RASSO cases, rape and serious sexual assault cases, and also for paperwork and wasted work, which has been an issue I know, for the bar for a very long time.

Wider issues around legal aid: we’re not at the point of having the future legal aid budget looked at yet but at the moment, as I say, I’m very keen to ensure that we have a judiciary that is able to work — I want to make sure we’ve got a judiciary and a bar that's able to work in a good environment as well. One of the issues around dealing with a court backlog will also be making sure that all of our courts can function properly. And we are blessed in this country with great teams who work across those courts doing the best they can to keep them functioning, and I want to make sure they’ve got the support that they need.

I can just ask a question that’s just come in on WhatsApp from Rajiv Shah, formerly Number 10 constitution spad. So does the Lord Chancellor agree that it is important to ensure that our domestic courts cannot gold-plate the ECHR and go beyond Strasbourg?

Obviously I first of all, as the lord chancellor will reiterate I do believe absolutely in the independence of the judiciary. So I will respect and protect their independence. But one of the things I said in my opening remarks, is I want to make sure that our judiciary are clear of a couple of things. One is that parliament is sovereign and if parliament passes a law, our judiciary are delivering on that and respecting that, but also that in UK law, UK courts have primacy. And if there is a reflection from Strasbourg, it’s a matter for the UK courts how they’re interpret it.

What would you say to those who are concerned about implications these changes could have for our standing internationally and also in holding other countries accountable for human rights?

Internationally, I think we are in a very, very strong place; our legal system is respected around the world. We are number two after the US in the world, number one in Europe for legal services. I think as we move forward, there’s an opportunity for us to grow that sector. It’s something I’m very, very interested in, very keen to, to work on. I mentioned this in my speech at the swearing-in ceremony the other day, with crypto and blockchain and things like that: there’s there's big opportunities for us. That is fundamentally, you are right, built on our international reputation as a centre for law and the rule of law. But the rule of law is what recognises the sovereignty of parliament. So I think it is absolutely in line with our international standard. That parliaments supremacy is there. That is what our democracy is founded on. I think without that our democracy suffers.

Question about consolidation of legislation

What we’re doing is working through all of the issues that were being considered for the Bill of Rights, looking at how we, which of those we take forward, and in which way we take them forward through different pieces of legislation, whether it’s through Ministry of Justice legislation, or potentially through Home Office legislation, etc, over the next period, whether it’s this session or the next session.

It always sounds very simple to bring together lots of complicated legislation. I did try to look to do a similar thing and kind of did this with planning law, actually, while I was in what was then DCLG. It is never as simple as it sounds, because the way these things interact, and actually, when you've got limited parliamentary time, using parliamentary time to repeat legislation you’ve already got but to put it in a different format isn’t a good use of parliamentary time. So I have to say I’m not somebody is going to be proposing to the prime minister that while we’ve got legislation, and I’ve got legislation I want to look at, to do more to help victims and keep society safe, to bring out legislation that basically repeats legislation we’ve already got in a different format isn’t a good use of parliamentary time. But you never say never to look at how you can do things better and more efficiently in the future.

Benjamin Ward, I'm a secondary school teacher of Religious Studies. The Human Rights Act at the moment. I think article 2 of protocol 1 includes the right to education, but also the right for parents to have their religious and philosophical beliefs respected in the education of their children. I think there are some within the party who will perhaps have more intolerant voices about ensuring that religious studies in schools is objective and plural.

As I say I, I fundamentally believe in people’s right to offend me. And I appreciate, hopefully, with religious issues, that’s not generally how people take things forward but you know, I have a lot of sympathy with some of the debates. I remember seeing a piece a few years ago from Rowan Atkinson, actually — I thought was brilliantly written — around the right to be offended. You know, our society develops and evolves and grows, because we have these debates. And there are things we do today that are so different to what happened in the past, because either our tolerance has changed in that we're more tolerant of some things, we are less tolerant of others.

And that is evolution, that happens through debate. And if you restrict people’s ability to debate and you have a cancel culture, then things don't move on. And they become trapped in one person’s view of the world, which I think is very, very dangerous. So you know, there is always a, there’s a duty on all of us in public roles — and obviously teachers particularly have this responsibility with young people — to make sure that there’s balance and they’ve got an opportunity to understand what the options are. But that’s a duty we have as individuals or as professionals to deliver on our professional duty. I think it’s right that we keep the freedom of speech right there for people to be able to argue for what they believe in.

I was wondering if you’d be looking into the Communications Act, and specifically section 127, which is currently under a lot of controversy about the fact that it prohibits grossly controversial speech, and therefore means that there isn’t a legal right to offend.

In regards to freedom of speech, we have recently seen the Free Speech Union have their PayPal accounts removed. Do you think that you do for this for see the new legislation giving a positive right to companies to individuals to challenge that kind of thing in the future, rather than have to rely on contract law?

I’m aware that there is legislation which means that police can’t go on strike. Do you think that there’s a case for expanding that to the legal profession, on the argument of dangerous criminals not being prosecuted, and therefore, obviously, not immediately, but in an extreme situation, increasing the legislation or increasing the scope of it, so that barristers wouldn’t be allowed to strike as well under extreme circumstances?

I’m looking at a whole range of things around how we ensure we can do this and deliver this in a way that is, as I say, it’s for me, it's looking very, very carefully, what is the outcome we want to achieve and how do we best achieve that? That means being quite careful with what we do not getting too caught up in what sounds good on first appraisal, but actually working through very methodically, exactly what we want to achieve so you’ll have to bewas a little bit longer, but making sure we can give that space to people is very key, which plays very well into the point about the free speech union. And I thought it was very disappointing actually to see that kind of people having to work through in that contractual way using contract law.

There is a real issue sometimes when we see — and I know this from previous jobs when I was in the Home Office as well — the frustration around seeing certain things online that companies can be quite slow. They’re getting much better now, but they have been historically very, very slow at dealing with. And it’s hard to explain to somebody why something like the Free Speech union is being taken off PayPal when you see things that are encouraging suicide and terrorism on wide social media from big, multinational global companies. So I think we need to make sure that we're dealing with that as a priority rather than people’s access to freedom of speech.

In terms of your point about the prime minister, having been chairman of the Conservative Party, I know very well not to step on a chair of the Conservative Party’s toes, but I'm sure Jake won't mind me saying, the best thing we can do in the Conservative Party is make sure we stick with and back our leader. We've got to make sure that we are focused on that for delivering people that's and it's not an issue for parliament, actually, it's the way the party rules work.

And in terms of the strikes that I’ve always been personally, very much personally, I think, you know, with most of our emergency services do not and cannot strike. And I know from having gone through the Fire Brigades Union strike, some of our colleagues in the Armed Forces always found it slightly odd that they were having to come back from Afghanistan on leave and while they’re on leave cover for firefighters who are going on strike over their pension age and things like that. So there is a an issue there. But some parts of sectors can have some can’t.

I think the bar is quite different because what we some people don’t often realise is all the barristers actually self-employed. And even the Criminal Bar Association, which is often referred to as a union, isn’t a union in that strictest sense, because all of its members are self-employed. So we’ve been having discussions with the Criminal Bar Association, they will be putting this ballot to members next week. As I say, I hope they’ll vote positively but, it is true, we do need to ensure that we’re not going through this kind of thing every four years, and that we’ve got a structure that means it can continue to deliver for people in a way that ensures that victims can see their access to justice is not being slowed down by this kind of action.

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Baroness Hale spoke yesterday of her “huge admiration” for Israel, a country she has visited at least half a dozen times for judicial exchanges and academic seminars. Her unscripted remarks — which you can listen to by clicking the podcast symbol above — were made after the former president of the UK Supreme Court was made an honorary doctor of philosophy by Bar-Ilan University, near Tel Aviv, for her “outstanding efforts on behalf of women and minorities” and her “dedication to the protection of democracy and basic human rights”.

Because of Covid travel restrictions, Hale’s PhD (hon) was awarded to her at a small ceremony in a London garden. It was hosted by Romie Tager QC, on behalf of the university. Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, founding director of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at Bar-Ilan university law faculty, sent a message of support.

As well as paying tribute to what she described as the deep intellectual tradition of Israeli lawyers, Hale spoke of the three Abrahamic faiths:

Those three religions have more in common than they have separating them — although there are important things that separate them. But one are the things that they have in common is a problem with women.

In a recent conference organised by Halperin-Kaddari, Hale and other speakers looked for what she called “sensible, sensitive ways” of addressing that problem.

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BBC Radio Scotland ran an interview with me this morning (recorded on Friday) about threats to the rule of law.

Isobel Fraser asked about references to lefty lawyers by the prime minister and the home secretary. We also discussed the review of judicial review and the UK Internal Market Bill.

Joanna Cherry QC was kind enough to mention it on Twitter and I thought listeners outside Scotland might like to hear the interview, which I have very slightly edited.

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Stephanie Hayward, a barrister specialising in criminal law, interviewed me live yesterday for her Instagram channel @behindthegownbarristers. We spoke mainly about my new book, Enemies of the People?

You can watch the entire interview here but I thought it would be useful to post this (slightly edited) audio version so that you can also listen to it as a podcast.

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