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PM statement on reshuffle
Prime Minister Tony Blair has made a statement on some of the constitutional issues that flowed from the reshuffle, in particular the changes to the Judiciary.
Watch the Prime Minister deliver his statement:
Mr Blair said:
“The reforms I have outlined today are essential acts of constitutional modernisation. They follow on from the success of devolution to Scotland and Wales, the Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information, and the removal of 90 per cent of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords.
“All these reforms are now seen as welcome and permanent changes to our system of government. I am confident that the changes I have set out today will in time be regarded in the same light. I do not believe any party in this House will reverse any of these changes and I commend them to the House.”
[Check against delivery]
Mr Speaker, on Thursday we announced changes to the office of Lord Chancellor, and changes in respect of the posts of Secretary of State for Scotland and Wales.
At present, judges are effectively selected by the Lord Chancellor. It is increasingly anomalous for a Minister, and an unelected one at that, to choose judges in this way. Following the Human Rights Act such a system is particularly outdated.
The selection of judges should be by a transparent process, independently conducted. We propose to establish an independent judicial appointments commission to recommend candidates for appointment as judges on an open basis, something long advocated by many inside and outside the legal profession. There is already such an independent commission in place for selecting judges in Scotland and one forms part of the agreed settlement in Northern Ireland.
The Lord Chancellor will also cease to sit as a judge, and the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords will become a fully independent Supreme Court.
As we said on Thursday all these proposals will be subject to extensive consultation processes, with consultation papers issued prior to the summer recess. Both require legislation to pass through both Houses, so there will be ample time to debate them.
There is one further change. Again, virtually uniquely of any major democracy the Speaker of the Upper Chamber is a member of the Cabinet appointed by the Prime Minister. We are inviting the House of Lords to choose its own Speaker by a process that the House itself should determine. This will enable the Speakership to be independent of the Executive, as is the Speaker in the House of Commons.
It will have a further consequence. At present, the Lord Chancellor spends many hours in every working week fulfilling his official and ceremonial duties as Speaker. But following changes introduced in the 1972 Courts Act he is also the head of an extremely important department of Government. He is in charge of our courts system, criminal and civil. He manages a large part of the tribunal system including asylum and immigration appeals. He is in charge of a Legal Aid budget of £1.9 billion.
There are major changes we need to see in our courts. The judiciary have made heroic efforts to run the courts more effectively in recent years. The former Lord Chancellor also made important and lasting improvements to each part of the system. But the continuing task of reform is immense. Thousands of trials each year collapse because defendants or witnesses do not appear, and far too much police time is wasted waiting in court for cases that cannot be heard. We still do not have a proper information technology system that links courts, prisons, Crown Prosecution Service and the police. We need hugely improved coordination between all parts of the system. There are real problems with the way victims and witnesses are treated, still in too many parts of the country put in the same waiting areas as the accused.
The Department is a major public service department with nearly twelve thousand civil servants. Yet because of his duties in the House of Lords, the Lord Chancellor did not until last Friday even have his private office and Permanent Secretary in the Department but rather in the Palace of Westminster.
For all these reasons it is surely better that the Minister responsible for this department concentrates on running the department rather than on being Speaker of the House of Lords, sitting as a judge and selecting the judges. The size of his task will expand with the creation of a unified courts administration and a unified tribunal service. He will continue to ensure the independence of the judiciary and will also work to ensure that the court system provides an increasingly efficient service to the public.
As for the posts of Secretary of State for Scotland and Wales, following devolution, there is no longer a requirement for there to be Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales who hold only that office but their roles can be combined with other posts. The civil servants in the Scotland Office and the Wales Office will be part of the Department for Constitutional Affairs, so as to ensure they do not move should the Cabinet Members change. The new Department has responsibility for the devolution settlement and the new Secretary of State like the Lord Chancellor before him will remain chairing the main Cabinet Constitutional Reform Committee.
Oral and written questions will continue as now to be answered by the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales.
The reforms I have outlined today are essential acts of constitutional modernisation. They follow on from the success of devolution to Scotland and Wales, the Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information, and the removal of 90 per cent of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords. All these reforms are now seen as welcome and permanent changes to our system of government. I am confident that the changes I have set out today will in time be regarded in the same light. I do not believe any party in this House will reverse any of these changes and I commend them to the House.
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