Letters roundup: 15 September 2023

Racist views have no place in politics

I read the article ‘This time it’s personal’ (1 September) about the attack on Jacqueline McKenzie with interest. The difficulty is that politicians, including ministers and political parties in general, appear to feel they can say what they like with impunity.

How can it be a proper exercise of democratic power to launch a personal attack on an individual lawyer which is (a) substantially untrue and (b) is an attack on someone for doing their job? One might expect that a political party would have a view on immigration and immigration law and form their policies on that basis. It is perfectly proper for them to propose changes in the law or to argue that the existing asylum law is part of the problem. But it would appear that the policy here is ‘lets go after the lawyers’. Such a policy has consequences.

There are people in society who espouse racist beliefs. In the ordinary situation, the expression of those beliefs is kept firmly suppressed by the criminal law and the fact that the overwhelming majority of people shout such views down if they are expressed in public. But the origin of this story was a briefing given to journalists by Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ). If that were it, then it would have been bad enough, but it built on a series of comments made by politicians about immigration lawyers.

Politicians are legitimising the privately held views of those who hold racist views which in turn encourages them to express those views publicly. It seems to me that a racist is fully entitled to point to the expressed views of politicians and political parties and ask the question: ‘If they can say this publicly, then why can’t I?’ The point is almost unanswerable.

CCHQ must have known that in briefing the press in the manner they did they were setting Ms McKenzie and her team up for personal attack on social media.

But there is an even more sinister issue at play here. In all functioning democracies the legal professions and the judiciary are part of the checks and balances to ensure that government (in the widest meaning of the word) acts in the interests of the citizens and not just in the interests of the members of the political party that happens to be in power at the time.

One of the first actions of dictatorial governments is to act against the lawyers whose job it is to show up their illegal acts and to ensure that everyone gets with the programme. Although demonising lawyers seems now to be a legitimate activity, we have not yet (thank God!) reached the point that lawyers are being sent to prison for upholding the law, but it is only a matter of time before a solicitor is murdered just because he or she happens to work with immigrants and asylum seekers.

When that happens and the finger of responsibility is pointed at the politicians or their party, the (entirely) predictable reaction will be a flood of crocodile tears and a loud, if unconvincing, rejection of responsibility.

J. Howard Shelley

K.J. Conroy & Co, Birmingham

Clarity needed on wills for LGBTQ+ clients

Kirsty Limacher’s article (‘Key considerations for advising LGBTQ+ clients’, Gazette, 1 September) says that ‘consideration needs to be given to gifts that are gender-specific, for example, a gift to “my eldest son” where your client’s acquired gender means that they are no longer the eldest son, will not benefit them’.

Surely, there are few, if any, circumstances in which this can be right. Normally, a testator’s intention would be to designate a particular individual by a description that would be accurate at the date of the will. Thus, if the eldest son is alive and has not transitioned at that date, he will surely not be deprived of his gift if he transitions before the testator’s death. (If he has already transitioned at the date of the will, then the position might be different, but it is hard to imagine the will leaving the matter unclear in these circumstances.) If, at the date of the will, the son is unborn, the fact remains that he will be ‘the eldest son’ for a long period of years and, again, it is hard to believe that transitioning before the testator’s death will deprive him of the gift.

If Limacher is right, then any testator who refers to ‘my eldest son’ should be advised that a new will must be made if the son transitions and the testator wants him (now her) to keep the gift. I think the contrary is true:  that the testator must change the will if the transitioning son is not to keep the gift.

In practice, it would be unwise to assume that either of us is right without taking an opinion from an eminent counsel or two.

Richard Oerton

Bridgwater

Televised justice?

The statement that ‘judges have nothing to fear from letting the public see how public law works’ is wrong (‘Letting the public see how public law works’, Joshua Rozenberg, 4 August). It assumes that seeing how judges work can only improve public perception of the judiciary. But the other parts of our constitution prove that more coverage does not always equate with either more trust or support.

‘The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it’, wrote Walter Bagehot, and television has proven him right. Since cameras were permitted into parliament – 1985 in the House of Lords, 1989 in the House of Commons – public trust in British lawmakers has continued its steady decline, rather than rebounding off the extra coverage. According to the Office for National Statistics, only 35% of the public trusted parliament as of March 2022. As another 19th century personality quipped, ‘laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made’.

In contrast, the civil service, whose inner workings remain largely invisible to the public, is trusted by 55% of them. The Crown, the least transparent part of our constitution albeit for good reasons, enjoys the greatest support, being supported by 62% of the public.

Televised judicial review hearings will shift attention from the written judgment to the spectacle of the courtroom. Advocates will start speaking partly to the court and partly to the watching public. Opportunistic tabloids and demagogic politicians will seize upon anything that comes up in televised hearings to undermine judgments they do not like. Ultimately, this will undermine public trust in judges themselves. Case in point – Lady Hale’s spider brooch.

Samuel Pitchford

Solicitor, Brecon