Clause 23
Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill
2:45 pm
Simon Hughes (Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs & Shadow Attorney General, Constitutional Affairs; North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
I might have missed one thing, and perhaps I should have asked a question about it when we discussed clause 2. I take the Minister’s point about the independence of the judiciary; I was probably misrepresenting where the accountability should be. Under the new system, will anyone in the hierarchy be senior to the senior president of tribunals? Is the senior president not in some way subject to the Lord Chief Justice as a more superior judge in England and Wales? If that is the case, the Minister is implicitly right that the Lord Chancellor should not, for the reasons she gave, be the person holding the clearance on the interpretation of the law for practice directions, and it should be the Lord Chief Justice. Perhaps she will elucidate the matter. I had assumed—I could be completely wrong—that if one looked at the judicial hierarchy after the implementation of the Bill, one would still see the Lord Chief Justice at the top and the president of the family division and other people with specific responsibilities, including the senior president of tribunals, under him. Perhaps she will tell me whether that is correct.