It is a profound privilege to address the Lady Chief Justice and
the Lord Chancellor and all the members of this
court.
It is also a personal pleasure for me to make submissions in this
courtroom when the risk of being asked tricky legal questions is
at least lower than normal.
Being in government is a privilege that carries the
responsibility of having to make hard choices but as we face the
challenging path ahead the rule of law will be the lodestar for
this government.
Governments should be judged by their deeds not by their rhetoric
but I hope the professions and the public can take some comfort
from the fact that, from the Prime Minister down, the new
government is comprised of individuals who have the rule of law
imprinted into their DNA, none more so than our new Lord
Chancellor.
For all the reasons set out by my lady and for many more, I can
tell the Court that we have a Lord Chancellor with the character,
authority, intellect and experience not just to protect the rule
of law but to begin to address the deep challenges facing our
justice system.
We also have a Solicitor General who brings precisely the right
mix of legal acumen, political nous and a dedication to public
service to help make law and politics work together.
We wish to work with all in our mission to protect and promote
the rule of law. Its principles are at the heart of the
organisations the Law Officer's superintend and we will work
collegiately with the Bar Council, Law Society and CILEX in what
I know is our shared endeavour to entrench the rule of law and
promote human rights.
We recognise the imperative of seeking to ensure a cross-party
consensus about our shared fundamental values and how we protect
them for future generations.
The values that we are seeking to protect are not the property of
any political party, they are not Labour values or Conservative
values they are British values, indeed in many respects universal
values.
The task has never been more urgent. In recent years,
events at home and abroad serve to remind us all that once you
start pulling on a single thread of the fabric of the rule of law
system, when democratic norms are whittled away through
attrition, the risk of systemic unravelling is great and the
concomitant task of retrenching standards we once took for
granted, very difficult indeed.
So My Lady the Law Officers will work together with the Lord
Chancellor on our mission to protect and promote the rule of
law. There is much to be done, too many tasks to describe
in my allotted time, but let me say this.
We will support the Lord Chancellor's mandate to protect the
independence of the judiciary, allied to this we will work with
her to promote better appreciation in Westminster and beyond of
our constitutional balance in which a respectful relationship
between parliament, the executive and the courts is understood to
be the bedrock of our framework of governance.
We will work closely with the Lord Chancellor to promote the rule
of law amongst the public, not least young people – seeking to
use it to rebuild trust in our political system by explaining how
it serves all of us and that no-one, least of all politicians,
are above it.
Just as we will promote the rule of law domestically, so we will
seek to promote international law and the rule of law in the
international legal order. We will support the Foreign Secretary
in all his efforts - cognisant of the importance of international
law and the rule of law for the prosperity and security of all
global citizens.
Looking inwards, we will seek to promote the highest standards in
how we legislate – seeking to increase accessibility and
certainty in how we make law, including not abusing the use of
secondary legislation
Finally, as Law Officers we will seek to provide the Government
that we serve with legal advice of the highest calibre and ensure
that law is at the heart of everything that it does.
Notwithstanding the Law Officer's commitment to the political
aims of the government our legal analysis will always be guided
by law not politics.
As I told a meeting with all of GLD staff last week – it is our
job to speak truth to power. Sometimes we will get it wrong
and in their judgments these Courts will explain why, and we will
seek to learn and do better.
That is how our system works, it is as said, a cardinal feature of
the modern democratic state and the cornerstone of the rule of
law.
