17th October 2021
Sunday again, and another Sunday press piece about how the new justice secretary and lord chancellor Dominic Raab will do something-or-other against the Human Rights Act.
Another Sunday, another Sunday Telegraph story demonstrating the fragile state of respect for the rule of law on the part of the UK Government. The Justice Secretary's apparent plans raise three key constitutional concerns. (1) pic.twitter.com/KmZTTmTwBM
— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) October 17, 2021
The criminal justice system in England and Wales is in crisis.
The ‘crisis’ word is not used easily: but we do have a serious situation the outcome of which is not certain.
Trials are now not taking place for years after the alleged offences; there are not enough courts or enough lawyers for hearings to take place; victims, witnesses and defendants (some of whom will, of course, be innocent) have the stress of delays and uncertainty as an everyday factor in their lives.
One would think sorting out this predicament would be the priority – perhaps the absolute priority – for the incoming justice secretary and lord chancellor.
On the face of it he is in the strong position.
He is deputy prime minister, and so he has a strong position in cabinet and is well-placed to take on the treasury for more funding.
He is a qualified lawyer with actual experience of practice, and so has the potential insight of knowing how law works in practice rather than just as a thing in the news.
He could – as this blog averred recently – become one of the great modern lord chancellors.
*
The ministry of justice is not a big department in Whitehall terms, and it is has little purchase on the parliamentary timetable.
A bill to ‘overhaul’ the Human Rights Act will be instead of ministry of justice legislation on more practical (and pressing) concerns.
Civil servants and ministers working on Human Rights Act ‘overhaul’ are necessarily doing that instead of something more useful.
Resources being used for Human Rights Act ‘overhaul’ are also necessarily diverted from something more useful.
And not since the days of Mackay, Irvine, Falconer and Clarke have we had a lord chancellor in such a strong political position within cabinet and with the prime minister.
Think of the good that this deputy prime minister could do for the justice system as a whole.
Think of it.
And now remember that this lord chancellor’s priority is contriving a fight with ‘Europe’ in respect of a symbolic assault on the Human Rights Act.
The sheer triviality of these relative priorities is enough to make sensible people weep.
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Resolving the crisis in the justice system should be his priority as Justice Secretary. But it will be difficult for him and expensive for the Treasury. So of course he’ll do the safe political thing, attack (sorry, overhaul) the HRA.
The position of Deputy PM is not one of power. It’s a non-job in political terms and a thankless one too. He’ll have to appear at the dispatch box when things are difficult for Johnson and he finds an excuse to have to be somewhere else. Raab’s strength in cabinet must be permanently weakened by his shocking holiday performance in Cyprus during the Afghanistan debacle. Even Johnson, with his low standards of behaviour, couldn’t let that stand.
‘The position of Deputy PM is not one of power. It’s a non-job in political terms and a thankless one too.’
I disagree – it depends on how Raab approaches the issue of cabinet committees, which the DPM would chair if the PM not also on same committee. Heseltine used his DPM status to good effect in the government machine.
Raab is no Heseltine. It all depends on what respect Raab commands in the Cabinet, and I would guess that isn’t much these days.
“He is deputy prime minister, and so he has a strong position in cabinet and is well-placed to take on the treasury for more funding.”
Sorry DAG, I’m afraid I agree with Kevin. I suspect Raab was dumped there and given a fancy title to keep him quiet. If he ever tried to do anything controversial, unlikely as that may seem, he’d be squashed in short order.
Very depressing
Isn’t the fact that he was expressly told that he was not running the country in the PM’s absence on another hard-earned holiday telling of what his real power is and what this title really means?
I’m not an Express reader, so I only include this source out of a habit of dealing with “MSM” sceptics. And for a bit of variety here ;-)
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1504195/Boris-Johnson-news-holiday-dominic-raab-downing-street-prime-minister-spain-Marbella
Here’s another for verification: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/dominic-raab-not-in-charge-of-country-boris-johnson-holidays_uk_61642801e4b06a986bd1e891
They should start calling him Dino. Deputy in name only.
“The position of Deputy PM is not one of power. It’s a non-job in political terms and a thankless one too.”
I find this a disturbing statement and one that shows how shoddy politics as a way of thinking (sic) can be contagious even among the, alas, ever thinning alert citizens – and, regrettably, this tragedy is not limited to the UK!
Mr Raab turning his attention to the obscure overhaul of the HRA rather than to a clear reform of the criminal and civil justice system is a manifest evidence of the difference between a Statesman and a second-grade politician.
I think that, politically, the ‘overhaul’ of the HRA is not obscure.
It *is* practically obscure in day-to-day life for the vast majority of the populace and its interactions with the justice system (beyond the not-trite fact that these rights pertain to all).
But (with apologies).
For a large part of our media (and hence our political life), it is an egregious source of grift for leftist lawyers bent on helping criminals and illegal immigrants (their view, not mine) – which I write with deep regret and without offering any defence or justification for such beliefs.
And so it is the “play for today”.
Is Raab really in such a strong position?
He has the advantage that Johnson probably couldn’t care less about human rights and doesn’t do detail, so Raab could get something through without being challenged.
But he must believe that he is doing the right thing. Like Johnson he couldn’t care less about human rights despite once being a human rights lawyer. That is what is so depressing.
I am sorry to say the whole justice system is ‘in the dock’ whether it be on the criminal, civil or administrative side. Ombudsman reform put on the agenda five years ago and now kicked into the long grass by the current government. Delays in progressing investigations, if a complainant is lucky enough to get one. Minutes of the PHSO Board make for interesting reading. Any complaint falling within Tier 1 or 2 of PHSO ‘scale of injustice’ is unlikely to be investigated. The level of oversight of these various strands of administrative justice is laughable. For example, how can an Ombudsman decide a level of injustice without first conducting an investigation to see if there was injustice in the first place?
If Mr. Rabb is serious about an ‘overhaul’, he should at least instigate wide ranging enquiries into each strand of the justice system. Politicians, on too many occasions, come up with what they think is a solution when it is clear they do not understand the problem
A hesitant comment from a non-lawyer. It may be that Raab has been told that extra money is not going to be available and that he should use the HRA nonsense as a distraction.
At the risk of being thought irksome, I will risk asserting that those other than lawyers often feel that judges and advocates could make a significant contribution to reducing delays in the system if trials focussed on strictly essential matters and were thereby shorter. For example, the Secret Barrister spends much time being critical of everyone except his own profession.
I have had a look at Raab’s Wikipedia entry and I think that you give too much value to the experience of 2 post-grad training years in commercial practice and a handful of years in the Foreign Office. Winning a prize in International Law is clearly praiseworthy, but his transition to politics seems to have been pretty smooth and politics seems to rule over law in his case. Now of course, this is me reading Wikipedia, not a detailed biography, but whereas your priority is clearly law, then politics, it is clear that his priority is politics, then law.
I am not sure anyone would characterise me as a “sensible person” but I weep. I weep for England and am daily ashamed by my Government’s actions. I want to escape back to a European country where there is an implicit and explicit support for Human Rights which Patel and Raaaaaaab are hell bent on undermining if not destroying. There was a movie about SA called “cry the beloved country”: how so much more appropriate is that cry now for my Midlands country of “blue remembered hills”.
The arrest and imprisonment on remand by one for Raaaaab or Patel’s family or friends might concentrate their minds on the more pressing issues…. But no doubt they would be released on a technicality and FOI requests as to why would not be “in the public interest” or some other excuse. As my daughter observed today, laws based on fines are legislated by and for rich people to punish the poor.
“The sheer triviality of these relative priorities is enough to make sensible people weep.”
I cannot think of a single public policy announcement from this govt. to which this brilliant quote wouldn’t apply. The PM and his entire cabinet are the embodiment of triviality.
I salute DAG, Professor Elliott, Joshua Rozenberg et al for continuing to produce mature responses to infantile politics. I can no longer have these arguments with readers of the Borisgraph (family members included, alas); it’s like looking for rationality from anti-vaxxers who don’t believe that there’s a relationship between their stance and catching Covid.
If I was on trial I would be very concerned if the trial was streamlined because the court was under pressure to cut the waiting list. Imagine if doctors took shortcuts in diagnosis to reduce hospital waiting times.
Raab keeps banging on about “judicial legislation”. By which he appears to mean judges reaching judgments that he and other government ministers do not approve of.
So now he appears to want powers for ministers to “correct” judges, both domestic and overseas. I can’t see the ECHR being particularly impressed at being “corrected” by UK legislation, but on the domestic front it might save time if Raab simply dictated the “correct” result in advance for the judges to parrot – if any were still willing to serve under his legal regime.
I did wonder if Raab spent too much time doing on karate at Oxford, or took too many bow to the head, because he seems to have a serious deficit in understanding of what the rule of law entails, and indeed how the common law works.
Given he was awarded a first, I have to assume he knows exactly what he is doing, and that is even more worrying.
Perhaps we were always at risk of sliding into a nasty form of populist authoritarianism, but – even if this is just more media-political hot air – it seems closer than ever with every passing day.
Raab’s focus on the overhaul of the Human Rights Act is just another diversion from the real issues of what’s going on – the court backlogs, chronic underfunding of criminal justice system. It’s designed to appeal to sections of the public who have swallowed the anti-european narrative, the one where the UK should be left alone to govern itself. I do weep for the future.
“He is a qualified lawyer with actual experience of practice, and so has the potential insight of knowing how law works in practice rather than just as a thing in the news.”
‘Potential’ is doing a lot of work here!
He trained at Linklaters where he had seats in Brussels and was briefly seconded to Liberty*. Apparently he worked on project finance, international litigation and competition law**. It’s not known whether he was offered a job on completing his contract.
It is known that City firm project finance and international litigation seats are unlikely to teach anyone much about how the law works in practice, but rather a lot about how the office photocopier and coffee machine work. Source – personal experience.
He then left to work as a lawyer in the FCO where he spent 6 years. He says he advised on “UK investor protection, maritime issues, counterterrorism, Britain’s overseas territories and even the international law of outer space”. Make of that what you will.
Tl:dr: I am not confident in Raab’s legal expertise or professional insight. I am neither suggesting that this is DAG’s view, nor am I suggesting that it is not his view.
*https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/raab-has-the-brains-for-brexit-deal-but-has-he-got-the-charm-nwf78cnnj
**https://www.politics.co.uk/reference/dominic-raab/ & many other sites, and here are some amusing asides: https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/06/tory-leadership-debate-legal-twitterati-slams-ex-magic-circle-lawyer-dominic-raab/
Some words are chosen because they are capable of a lot of work…
“You’re alive, [Dom]. That means you have infinite potential.”
(with apologies to Neil Gaiman)