The first question Chris Grayling had to field before the House of Lords’ formidable Constitution Committee yesterday looked like an easy toss: would he prefer to be addressed secretary of state or lord chancellor?

Grayling said he was relaxed on the issue.

In the friendliest possible manner, the committee’s chair, Lady Jay, indicated that she was not. So far as the constitution committee was concerned, Grayling is lord chancellor. The reminder was appropriate because potential conflicts between Grayling’s two jobs figured throughout the session.

First up was Lord Pannick, with a series of forensic questions about the lord chancellor’s duty to uphold the rule of law – in this instance as set by the European Court of Human Rights on prisoner voting. Grayling said he could not pre-empt his statement to the House but that he sees ‘a clear distinction between my responsibilities as lord chancellor to uphold the rule of law and my ability as a politician to change the law’.

And, he maintained, there was ‘a clear legal precedent’ for parliamentary sovereignty to supercede European court rulings. Lord Goldsmith, a former attorney general, said he was ‘a bit taken aback’ by that assertion. What message would it send to the rest of Europe?

‘It’s not a question of message it’s a question of law. The legal position is that parliament has the right to exercise sovereignty,’ the lord chancellor said, referring several times to a 1999 judgment by Lord Hoffmann.

‘I don’t agree that is the legal position,’ Goldsmith retorted – but the committee agreed to let the matter rest.

We turned to the matter of judges’ pensions, a matter on which Lord Macdonald of River Glaven had to declare a small interest. Grayling’s line was exempting the judges from the national belt-tightening would be unfair – on the judges. ‘To make judges stand out exceptions… would make them the target of public hostility,’ he said.

It would be similarly unfair to burden the lord chief justice and his successors with a statutory duty to create a more diverse judiciary. Progress in that direction, said Lord Powell of Bayswater, is going at the ‘pace of a pregnant snail’.

While Grayling twice suggested that some ‘rocket boosters’ would be a good idea, ‘I think we have too much law in this country and my instinct is not to legislate unless you have to.’ Rather than fixed percentages, he would be happy with ‘continuous… year-on-year improvement’.

Finally, Lady Wheatcroft, who as a former journalist knows a bit about the subject, asked what could be done to cut the quantity of alcohol consumed by Old Bailey judges over lunch.

Grayling confessed that ‘from personal experience, I know if I have a drink at lunchtime I fall asleep. If I were a judge I would think very carefully about drinking at lunchtimes’. However, he added ‘I might struggle to impose that kind of culture change on the judges’.

And, by the way, how is the new lord chancellor getting on with judges? ‘So far, so good,’ Grayling said. We shall see if the secretary of state for justice is equally upbeat next time round.

Michael Cross is Gazette news editor

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