Tag Archives: Solicitor general

How should the Lord Chancellor and law officers safeguard the rule of law within government?

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The government has now published its response to the Constitution Committee’s report on the role of the Lord Chancellor and government law officers, making clear it will take no action based on the committee’s recommendations. Will Knatchbull discusses the key findings of the report and argues that in some cases the committee has expressed clear policy preferences but then declined to recommend mechanisms to implement them.

The House of Lords Constitution Committee published its report on the role of the Lord Chancellor and the law officers (legal ministers as a collective) on 18 January. Since the changes made by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, further reforms have been considered in reports from the Lords Constitution Committee and the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, a government consultation and a white paper. Ultimately, very little reform or reversal has occurred since the 2005 Act, and the government’s response to the report (published on 17 March), made clear that it will not review the existing arrangements.

The overall message of this latest report makes three important and related points: the value of the rule of law, the centrality of the legal ministers in being seen to uphold it within government, and the required character of the legal ministers to be able to do so. It is well summarised in this paragraph:

The thread running through this report is that the rule of law is vitally important to the health of our democracy. Whatever formal reforms might be contemplated, appointing those with the correct character, authority, intellect and independence is the best way to ensure that the Lord Chancellor and the Law Officers are able to defend it. [emphasis added]

This is an important statement and one that cannot easily be disputed. This blogpost will briefly examine three elements of the report: the engagement with the international rule of law, the nature of the role of Lord Chancellor and possibilities for reform of the role of the law officers. I will suggest the report is a step in the right direction. However, it may be too trusting of the political system and the politicians operating in it to produce and appoint individuals of the correct experience and calibre that would enable them to be the fierce guardians of the rule of law that the report envisages.

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A case for publishing select committee legal advice

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g_appleby_headshot.jpg.pngIn May, we posted a blog entitled ‘The politics of publishing select committee advice’ in which the authors discussed the potential negative implications of making public the legal advice given to parliamentary committees. Here, Gabrielle Appleby argues that there are in fact benefits to publishing such advice, and that it could be advantageous to parliamentarians and the public if it was done as a matter of course. 

The work that has been done by Ben Yong, Greg Davies and Cristina Leston-Bandeira, (as explained in their recent post, ‘The politics of publishing select committee advice,’ and in more detail in their publication in the Law and Society Journal), with their focus on parliamentarians, clerks and parliamentary lawyers, is an important contribution to understanding under-studied constitutional actors. Their work provides more than doctrinal examination or theoretical musing on the work of these actors. It is informed by a rich empirical insight into the phenomenon of the release by parliamentary select committees of in-house legal advice that might have been provided to them to inform their deliberations, which they say is increasing in a concerning manner. 

I welcome their general conclusion, that there is a need for ‘written guidance in order to improve consistency’ around the publication of such advice. However, I write to proffer a version of that guidance that is not just more permissive of publication than that alluded to by the authors, but, indeed, actively encourages it.

How should parliamentary committees use legal advice?

As I have written with my colleague Anna Olijnyk, I support a framework in which  parliamentary deliberations are informed by legal advice (including the deliberation of parliamentary committees) and that advice should be released as a matter of course. 

To justify my position I must first explain my starting point. Like Yong, Davies and Leston-Bandeira, I hold concerns about the juridification of politics, and, more specifically, about the over-reliance on legal advice to inhibit the legitimate development of policies and laws. Responding to that concern in the context of constitutional limits (coming as we do in Australia from a tradition of a written constitution), Olijnyk and I have developed a normative framework for executive and legislative deliberation, which tries to balance the tug of the rule of law towards legally enforced rules and norms against the need for flexibility and innovation in political decision-making. We propose a framework in which the legal position must inform political decision-making, and in some cases will be determinative. But, in many cases of ambiguity and indeterminacy, it will inform without dictating the outcome. Continue reading →

Amendments are needed to strengthen the Withdrawal Bill’s provisions for scrutiny of Statutory Instruments

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5GMFtvPS_reasonably_smallToday saw the start of two days of report stage debate in the House of Commons on the content of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill. At committee stage, amendments were made that created a new sifting committee for statutory instruments related to Brexit. Joel Blackwell, of The Hansard Society, argues below that the current proposals are insufficient to guarantee proper scrutiny and makes several recommendations for changes that can be made before the bill passes to the House of Lords.

The EU (Withdrawal) Bill, which returned to the House of Commons for its report stage today, was successfully amended at committee stage in December 2017 to create a mechanism which will allow MPs, via a new European Statutory Instruments sifting committee, to consider statutory instruments (SIs) made under the Bill’s widest delegated powers and recommend an upgrade in the level of scrutiny of those about which they have most concern.

This new scrutiny mechanism, incorporated through a series of amendments tabled by Procedure Committee Chair Charles Walker, is intended to constrain the wide Henry VIII powers the government will use to make changes to retained EU law via SIs (under clauses 7, 8 and 9 of the Bill).

But if MPs are serious about scrutinising the changes arising from Brexit, these amendments, and the related proposals to amend Standing Orders will, as currently drafted, offer only limited help. If MPs are not happy with what the government wants to do, they will still be unable to exercise any real influence on the substance of a Brexit SI.

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