A Select Committee at work

 This morning the Joint Committee on the Constitutional Renewal Bill, of which both Lord Norton and I have been members, published its final report.  The benefit of Select Committee reports is that they are often agreed unanimously, across the parties (and, in the case of a joint committee, between the Houses).  No such unanimity this time round, I’m afraid.

As I alluded to in my earlier post, I have been working on the section of the report which refers to the Attorney General, and her role as both a member of the Government and an ostensibly independent legal adviser.  Of course, this has caused real controversy ever since the then Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, gave advice to Ministers on the legality of military action in Iraq.  It was later claimed that he altered his advice to suit the political case the Government was trying to make.  His protestations to the contrary were naturally made suspect by his membership of the Government whose decision it was to go to war in the first place.  Then, the Attorney agreed that the Serious Fraud Office should terminate a bribery investigation into BAE Systems’ weapons contracts with Saudi Arabia.  Tony Blair claimed that the decision was essential on grounds of ‘national security’, but the decision was for the Attorney General: what has he to do with national security?

Two Commons Select Committees recommended that we end these anomalies by splitting the legal and political roles of the Attorney General.  In general, people are suspicious of those who claim to wear two hats.  So it is with the Attorney.  She cannot at one and same time be a partisan member of the Government, and an independent adviser.  Indeed, she presently attends all Cabinet meetings so she is party to the internal dynamics within Government about this issue or that, and is therefore bound to be minded to support one political case over another. 

I worked with MPs and Peers from both the other major parties to reintroduce those recommendations into today’s report, since the Chairman’s draft was far too easy on the Government, endorsing what amounts to a continuation of the status quo.  In the end there we six of us – two Lib Dem Peers, three Conservative MPs and one Labour Peer to vote for our reform package, but 11 members of the committee (including loyal Labour MPs) voted to do nothing.

You can read the report (and our minority contribution, which is printed at the back) here.  Meanwhile, the Constitutional Renewal Bill is proving to be neither constitutional nor renewing.  It’s been variously dismissed as the Constitutional Retreat Bill, the Constitutional Ragbag Bill, and even the Committee’s extremely cautious majority report suggests that the Government should think of a more fitting name – though I doubt they will choose either of the suggestions above!