Clause 1 - Guarantee of continued judicial independence
Justice (Northern Ireland) Bill
11:30 am
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
I intervene just to persuade the Minister that his intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate, although interesting to hear, revealed a non-point. It is a non-point particularly when it comes from the mouth of a representative of a Government who intervened on the legal profession with the Access to Justice Act 1999, even though he was not a Minister at the time. As a former full-time lawyer, I am sure that he is concerned about the independence of the legal profession and that, like me, he will have been dismayed about the passage of that legislation. Although called the Access to Justice Act, it stripped away access and was more of a denial to justice Act, and I trust that when we get back into Government, we will do something about it. It was a wholesale intervention on the independence of the legal profession.
At first blush, my hon. Friend's amendment appears to be outside the terms of the long title of the Bill, which is:
''A Bill to make provision about the judiciary in Northern Ireland''.
To that extent, it seems that it would be ultra vires the Bill to make provisions about the legal profession, but my hon. Friend has in fact lighted upon an extremely important point. Like me, he knows that we cannot have an independent judiciary unless it can rely on an independent legal profession. The judiciary in the United Kingdom is exclusively taken from the legal profession, and one reason why our court system works in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales is because of the mutual understanding and bond of trust between those who act as advocates and those who sit in judgment. That trust is brought about by working together because judges, having been either solicitors or barristers themselves, know the people who appear before them. That is increasingly difficult in the large legal profession of England and Wales, but in Northern Ireland, as in Scotland, the legal profession is still relatively small and knows itself well. Any judge is likely to know or know of, with a good level of understanding, the character and merits of advocates appearing in front of him or her. The judge will rely on the good standing and independence of the advocate to assess whether the submissions and arguments he or she makes are honest and soundly based. The advocate may in due course become a judge. Those who appoint judges from the legal profession will know whether candidates are suited to become judges, by possessing not only the necessary intellectual capacity but also a character that allows them to perform the job with considerable independence.
I should declare an interest as the current Lord Chancellor kindly appointed me to the bench as a recorder in 2000. I am not making a party political point; I am making a point about the vital importance of maintaining not only an independent judiciary but also an independent legal profession on which the judiciary so much relies. I know from my own experience of sitting in the Crown courts just across from Parliament square in the Middlesex Guildhall that my job as a judge is made so much easier because I can trust that, by and large, the barristers and solicitor advocates who appear in front of me are straight, will not lie to the court and will not advance a dishonest submission based on made-up facts. They act in that way because it is their duty to do so, but also because it is inculcated into them from their student days and their pupillage—I have forgotten the modern term for doing articles. It is a sort of unspoken handing down of the culture from generation to generation that can be learnt only by experience, not by reading about it in books. If we do not understand the necessary relationship between the training of lawyers and the reliance that the judiciary places on them, we will make huge mistakes in the administration of justice, not only in Northern Ireland but in the rest of the United Kingdom.
I applaud the amendment. It is hugely important as a matter of fact and as a matter of symbolism. I do not see in it the pitfalls that the Minister implied in his intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate. The Law Society and the Bar Council of Northern Ireland can remain fiercely and proudly independent bodies that uphold the highest standards of the law and can continue to regulate themselves in matters of discipline. However, no profession is wholly independent of the law. Members of the legal profession in the United Kingdom are subject to the discipline of the criminal law. If they commit crimes outside or within their profession they will be prosecuted if the evidence exists to justify doing so. Equally, if a judge believes that an advocate appearing in front of him or her is committing a professional or a criminal offence, he or she will take steps to deal with that person, by reporting the matter to the leader of the Bar Council of Northern Ireland or to the president of the Law Society of Northern Ireland or, if necessary and the evidence warrants it, to the police or the relevant prosecuting authority.
There is no absolute independence in the sense implied by the Minister. No contradiction will affect the Bill by the addition of the words proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate. Rather there will be an underlining of the symbiotic relationship between the judiciary and the legal profession, which makes our courts cleaner and more widely respected. That is essential for a part of the United Kingdom that has seen huge difficulties between the two communities.
I speak with diffidence because I have not lived in Northern Ireland since the 1950s, though I have listened to people such as the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh and other Northern Ireland MPs—and visited the Province subsequently. Where it is difficult to maintain law and order generally, the independence of the legal profession and of the judiciary should go hand in hand and be afforded statutory recognition.
I urge the Minister to view the amendment kindly. If he is dissatisfied with the drafting, he will doubtless say so and draw on the expertise of his officials, who might be able to improve it. I am not convinced, however, that the amendment can be improved. It makes sense, and coincides with the realities and the proper needs and expectations of the ordinary men and women of Northern Ireland, who rely on an independent legal profession to protect their civil rights. It also protects the judiciary, as we saw in debating the earlier amendment. The judiciary comes from the legal profession and its fierce independence relies on the quality of the legal profession before it.
I have unnecessarily extended these simple points with an over-wordy intervention, but I hope that the Minister will find some merit in these remarks in support of my hon. Friend.