An encounter with 'the attorney general

The times, they are a-changing! For outside the Westminster bubble, that rarefied atmosphere seems to get a bit thicker, as we lawyers grapple with the legal problems of the day under a reforming agenda from the Tory government. 

We often have to face some of the dafter decisions our elected leaders make – and we do moan. Though these decisons only make about 0.01 per cent of the overall work of the politician, there are many of them. So, it was a delight to chat to Bob Neill MP, chairman of the Justice Committee (JC), last year and then, this month, to Jeremy Wright QC MP about this new reforming zeal that is sweeping the legal Whitehall air. 

Critical committee

Neill has described his role and that of the JC as ‘constructively critical’, with the aim of ‘bringing to account and scrutinising the Ministry of Justice and the government’s law officers’. ?And they did so with one sensible, constructive result: pressure to scrap the criminal courts charge. A precedent, if needed, for why the public need parliamentarians to examine decision making. ?The ‘inquiry’ and ‘petition’ roles of the JC certainly give citizens some measure of the accountability for actions that take place.

I met the attorney general, Wright, last week in his office. ?His post emerged around 1243, when a professional lawyer was hired to represent the monarch’s interests in court. It then became a political – and demanding – role; Patrick Hastings wrote: ’to be a law officer is to be in hell’. 

Advocate’s gloss

‘Far from it’, says current incumbent Wright, the Member of Parliament for Kenilworth and Southam, when we discuss ?what he does and his plans ?after his steep learning curve. ?He clearly relishes the role and ?its heavy workload with that advocate’s gloss we would expect.

Wright has been in post for around 18 months with his deputy, Robert Buckland QC MP, the solicitor general. Both are young (Wright is one of the youngest attorneys since the 1600s), from the provincial Bar, and began practice in the criminal courts on circuit. 

It is law officer work that is fascinating for any barrister. ?The attorney general is officially the leader of the Bar of England and Wales and presides over its annual meeting. When work permits, both they and the solicitor general attend Bar Council meetings and events, such as the Bar Conference. ?Both officers review all the unduly lenient sentence cases, some 400 a year, a ‘relatively steady number’, where about 80 per cent of sentences are changed. A recent proposed reform from the attorney general is beginning, ?as a pilot, for a broader cadre of counsel to pursue cases of undue sentence leniency, rather than just leaving proceedings in the hands of treasury counsel. 

I suggested that this might ?be a taste of things to come, leading to a ‘closer working relationship’ with the advocate general for Scotland, Lord Keen of Elie QC. 

Another area is where the attorney general ‘straddles’ departments, offering legal advice to ministerial colleagues based on their requests to him – advice that is – ‘given in a way which is comprehensive and more likely to be accepted’ coming from his department. The days where individual departments now speak to each other has arrived, certainly as far as legal advice is concerned, after years of little liaison.

On hard cases, Wright’s view is that where there are difficulties he ‘will never compromise on the integrity of the advice given’, which illustrates very much what he sees as the independence ?of his role within government: ?‘It is the need to know, and not what you want to hear.’ Much ?the same, then, as the approach taken by a practising barrister, only your client is the government. The attorney general does not attend court ?as much as some of his predecessors did, although the solicitor general does appear regularly.  

Reforming wind

So, what of today’s advocacy standards? The law officer team, for that is what they are, are very much a modern product of the development of a high-quality Bar for England and Wales. Both officers have regular talks with the judiciary and the profession ‘to stand up for the interests of the client’, retaining the ‘cab rank’ principle, something Wright says ‘we must be proud of at all times, especially with the young Bar going through tough times ?as we maintain the highest standards of advocacy’. Lawyers should be in no doubt that there is a reforming wind blowing through our corridors at the moment for this parliament – and it is picking up its pace.

Phillip Taylor MBE is a barrister practising from Richmond Green Chambers