Voice of reason

Westminster has looked increasingly like the Wild West, with its democratic mechanisms sidestepped or ignored. That has increased the importance of parliament’s select committees and their remit of subjecting the government to proper scrutiny.

The committees’ influence has grown in recent years as they have acquired more powers, including the ability to call for debates and mandate responses to their reports from the government.

Chaired for almost a decade by Sir Bob Neill (main picture), former barrister and Conservative MP for Bromley and Chislehurst, the House of Commons justice committee’s influence has risen sharply. Some of its work is as well-known as that of the more high-profile public accounts or standards committees.

For many, the justice committee has been a vocal champion of the rule of law and has given a public platform to those working in the justice system, shining a light on often neglected areas.  

Since Neill took up the reins in 2015 the committee has produced 83 reports, looking at a wide range of topics. Its current workload includes matters as disparate as county courts, probate, the coroners’ system and the Crown Dependencies.

The current lord chancellor and secretary of state for justice, Alex Chalk KC, also a former barrister, was a member of the committee from June 2015 to January 2019. He suggests that its recommendations carry significant weight in government.

‘I know the crucial role it plays in advising and scrutinising the government on our work to protect the public, support victims and uphold the rule of law,’ Chalk tells the Gazette. ‘Make no mistake, those in government respect and appreciate the collective wisdom of committee members who hold us to account with such energy and expertise.’

Chalk makes particular mention of Neill, whom he describes as ‘the very embodiment of that approach’. Neill is ‘rightly held in the highest esteem by all of us who want to preserve the world-leading excellence of our justice system’.

It is, adds Chalk, the awareness of the committee’s ‘expertise and motivation’ that means the government ‘considers each of their recommendations very carefully and welcome the consistently valuable insights they offer’.

Sir Robert Buckland, another former justice committee member who went on to become lord chancellor, stresses the growing influence of committees in the wake of 2009 reforms which aimed to restore the Commons’ authority over its own affairs, by improving backbenchers’ ability to scrutinise legislation effectively. The reforms changed the way that members and chairs were appointed, recalling the sense of ‘legitimacy’ that being elected gave members.

Buckland says that the committee was ‘able to take a more considered view on some of the big justice issues of the day’ when he was a member. He recalls that ‘a negative report about an appointee or a senior inspectorate position by the committee led to a change of mind by the government’.

When he appeared before the committee himself as lord chancellor, Buckland says he ‘was always prepared to be on my mettle as I took the role of the committee on my accountability to parliament through it extremely seriously’.

Light in the dark

Among the legal profession, the committee’s work is particularly valued for shining a light on areas of policy that often do not attract the attention that lawyers argue they deserve.

Nick Emmerson, president of the Law Society, appeared before the committee for the first time this week, when he was quizzed for the committee’s inquiry into the regulation of the legal professions.

Emmerson pays tribute to Neill for steering the committee through ‘an incredibly turbulent political period’ and commends its ‘detailed, high-quality’ reports that ‘offer a roadmap to addressing the challenges that face our justice system’.

But he suggests that the committee’s most significant impact has been on the members it has shaped, who have gone on to prominent roles in cabinet and the shadow cabinet.

‘It has been an effective breeding ground for lord chancellors, justice ministers and law officers – providing them with a breadth of knowledge on the issues that solicitors face across the justice system, he says. Other committee alumnae include the current attorney general Victoria Prentis KC.

The committee’s strength, suggests Bar Council chair Nick Vineall KC, ‘lies in its members being both cross-party and bringing a great deal of expertise in legal and justice issues to the table’.

Its members have always been open to listening to the profession’s views and evidence even if the profession does not always prevail, says Vineall, who commended the committee for taking a ‘pragmatic view in the interests of access to justice’.

Vineall adds that the committee’s recommendation supporting the need for fair legal aid rates that are subject to regular review helped strengthen the case for the establishment of the Criminal Legal Aid Advisory Board, which the government set up this year. He also welcomes the committee’s willingness to look into ‘narrow issues that are of particular importance to the legal professions’, such as its current inquiry into regulation, to which he gave evidence last month.

‘Deprived of an independent courts inspectorate for over a decade, the justice committee has become the last independent safeguard to hold our publicly funded courts and wider criminal justice system to account,’ argues Tana Adkin KC, chair of the Criminal Bar Association.

Over the past 11 years, she notes, the Ministry of Justice has had 10 secretaries of state. Regarding a department that is ‘vital to the cohesion of society’, Adkin stresses that the justice committee ‘has played an essential role in our democracy with its constancy of informed leadership and respectful critique under Sir Bob Neill’.

More widely, Adkin says that one of the ‘tragic weaknesses’ in criminal justice has arisen from the ‘disjointed planning and underinvestment’ of successive governments.

This, she says, has resulted in the profession and public becoming more reliant on the recommendations of the committee to provide ‘joined-up thinking’ over potential improvements.

Adkin cites the committee’s detailed inquiry into the future of legal aid, which ran from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 to the spring of 2023. The inquiry provided ‘a benchmark from which all justice professionals can work to rebuild the criminal justice system’.

Fiona Rutherford, chief executive of the campaign group Justice says: ‘At a time when the rule of law is under serious attack, evidence-led bodies that speak across party lines – like the justice committee – are more important than ever.’

She points to the committee’s ‘incisive pre-legislative scrutiny’ of the Victims and Prisoners Bill and its report on remand prisoners as examples of important work that has helped to shed light on key areas of government policy.

Good influence

Andrea Coomber, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, adds that the committee ‘has established itself as the voice of reason and an effective champion of fairness and the rule of law in Westminster’.

Like others, Coomber credits the character and personality of the committee’s chair for much of its influence. ‘Bob Neill has been bullish in the face of inertia and intransigence from successive justice ministers, using the evidence put to the committee to amplify the experiences and voices of people at the sharp end of the justice system,’ she says.

There is no doubt, Coomber suggests, that the committee’s report on imprisonment for public protection sentences played a part in the changes announced last month to the controversial sentencing regime that left a legacy of indeterminate custodial sentences.

Coomber suggests that it was not until after the committee’s report last year, which concluded that the IPP regime was ‘irredeemably flawed’, that the issue had any ‘real engagement’ in the Commons. The committee called for a resentencing exercise for all IPP sentences and a time-limited expert committee, which should include a member of the judiciary, to advise on its practical implementation.

In November, the government announced that some prisoners serving IPP sentences will, for the first time, be given end dates.

While Neill himself welcomes the changes, he says that the government’s proposals do not go far enough. He tabled an amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill to implement the committee’s recommendations.

With the number of people in jail standing at a record high, prison policy has dominated the work of the Ministry of Justice in recent weeks. Three of the justice committee’s 12 ongoing inquiries relate to prisons. Last month it heard evidence from prison chiefs on future populations and estate capacity.

‘Government policy seems to be driving towards a predicted 20,000 increase in what’s already the highest-ever prison population, but its prison-building programme is not proceeding at the rate it was intended to,’ says Neill. He adds that the committee is keen to look for better ways of dealing with many offenders, especially those who commit low-level crimes.

The committee is shortly to publish a report on the prison workforce after it carried out a survey showing that 50% of prison officers do not feel safe at work and over 80% suffer poor morale.

A recently published report on the public’s understanding of sentencing, meanwhile, showed that most wrongly believe that it has become more lenient. Neill says this highlights how government does not always make policy from the best-informed evidence base.

To reduce demands on prisons, the government recently announced legislation to introduce a presumption against custodial sentences of less than 12 months. This was among the recommendations of a 2019 committee report.

‘You don’t always get an immediate response to recommendations’, says Neill, adding that the committee’s persistence over time ‘can change the debate and the mood music’ on issues.

Positive impacts

Neill maintains nevertheless that the impact of the committee’s work has been wide-ranging, particularly regarding Michael Gove’s scrapping of the infamous criminal courts charge in 2015 and reversing the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.

‘We had quite a bit of influence leading to the settlement of the criminal barristers’ strike,’ he adds, explaining that the committee gave the profession a platform to go public with its concerns.

Elsewhere, Neill is disappointed that the government did not accept its recommendation to create a national coroners’ system.

‘We made a firm recommendation that there’s too much inconsistency – you wouldn’t expect what’s essentially a judicial process to be run in such an ad hoc fashion,’ he says. The committee has not given up and is currently revisiting the subject.

Before taking the chair in 2015, Neill had been a member of the committee since 2006 when he first entered parliament, when Lord Beith, a Liberal Democrat MP at the time, was chair.

Neill, who beat former justice minister Jonathan Djanogly in the election for the chair, recalls: ‘Law and politics have been the two dominant themes of my adult life. I thought it was an important opportunity to try and return to my roots in the law, and also to try to improve some of the things in our justice system and to raise the profile of the committee and issues around justice.’

Neill admits to a frustration that justice still does not have the same profile as the health and care services, or education.

Insisting that ‘a properly functioning and therefore properly funded justice system’ is just as important, he recognises the reality that it is ‘not politically sexy’ nor a vote-winner.

Neill has not confirmed if he will stand again at the next general election. But, if he does and is re-elected, he says that parliamentary rules mean that he will no longer be able to chair the committee, after holding the position for nine years.

‘Standing orders limit the term of chairs to two full parliaments or 10 years,’ he explains. ‘It’s a shame, because it’s the best job I’ve done in politics. I’ve absolutely loved doing it.’

Catherine Baksi is a freelance journalist