At present the only senior job in government that is more of a ‘hospital pass’ than lord chancellor is health secretary – pun intended. The optics of suing nurses whom we all recently praised with percussive pots and pans are about as bad as optics get.
Alex Chalk KC, who has succeeded Dominic Raab as lord chancellor and justice secretary, will be acutely aware of this. Lawyer representatives have issued boilerplate pleas for the new incumbent to restore the justice system to full vigour, alluding variously to a wasteland of crumbling courts, daunting backlogs and advice deserts.
Chalk is a former vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on legal aid and former legal aid minister. So he has more promising antecedents than Raab (hardly a stretch, admittedly). But the extent to which he will be able to ‘get to grips’ (Law Society) with a ‘hefty in-tray’ (Bar Council) will be limited.
As an election looms, Chalk is extremely unlikely to have the clout in cabinet to secure the ‘sustainable long-term funding and investment’ (Bar Council again) that is so desperately needed. We know there are few votes in Justice – a ministry which, remember, was hit by another real-terms spending cut in the last budget.
Yet Chalk is far from powerless. The seven-week tenure of Brandon Lewis, for example, was notable for his swift resolution of the bar strikes. True, the sums involved were not huge but the change in mood music was palpable during that brief interregnum. Raab had failed to engage and sulkily disowned the deal when he returned to Petty France (while reluctantly declining to unpick it).
So what else can lawyers realistically hope for? Here’s one suggestion among many, which comes without a price tag. Chalk could broker an end to the poisonous scapegoating, by some of his own colleagues, of ‘activist’ lawyers who are doing their jobs in accordance with the law of the land. Or at least condemn it.
‘Honoured to return to @MoJGovUK: a hugely important brief that upholds the values of our great country – the rule of law, justice for victims and the right to a fair trial,’ he has tweeted.
So far, so promising. But truly – after 11 lord chancellors in 11 years, has the bar ever been set so low?
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