So farewell, then, Brandon Lewis CBE. We hardly knew you. The MP for Great Yarmouth can take consolation in the fact that his seven-week stint as lord chancellor will be remembered at the Inns. Taking over from the unlamented Dominic Raab, who refused even to meet the criminal bar, Lewis swiftly settled a strike that was threatening to (further?) paralyse the justice system. As, indeed, I predicted he would in this column. The job would have been a ‘hospital pass’ otherwise.
Lewis’s name is also carved in stone at London’s new ‘justice quarter’ on Fleet Street, upon which construction began this month. He at least made his mark.
That’s about all, though – which bodes ill for solicitors and those who represent them. Lewis was due to meet the Law Society on the day of his defenestration. Item one on the agenda would doubtless have been criminal legal aid. Barristers got their 15% but solicitors are still being told they will have to make do with 9%.
The nuclear option – Chancery Lane advising solicitors not to do criminal defence work because it is unviable– looms like a distant mushroom cloud. Not least because Lewis’s successor at Petty France is one, er, Dominic Raab.
The portents are not good. Last time round Raab claimed it was unlawful for the government to fund legal aid as urged by its own report. When that argument fell down, he claimed it was technologically impracticable. ‘Raab’s intransigence was born out of spite,’ alleges Secret Barrister, who is never knowingly undersold but might just be right on this one. Conciliation and consensus-building are not two of Raab’s more obvious qualities.
A quick trawl of other lawyers opining on Twitter confirms that expectations are not high for the second coming. ‘Just when we thought the rule of law and human rights were safe, Braverman is back at the Home Office and Raab is back at MoJ,’ was the gloomy verdict of David Greene, former president of the Law Society.
Ah, yes. Human rights. Liz Truss ostensibly buried Raab’s flagship policy by pulling plans to enact a new bill of rights, but the bill remains extant as forthcoming parliamentary business. Will it be reinstated, like its sponsor?
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