When does the government expect to appoint a new victims’ commissioner, a role vacant since Vera Baird KC’s tenure came to an end last September? ‘By the end of the spring,’ lord chancellor Dominic Raab told peers on Wednesday. ‘In parliamentary speak, spring could probably be anything up to the middle of the year,’ Baroness Hamwee (Sally Rachel Hamwee) pointed out.

Vera Baird KC

The victims’ commissioner role has been vacant since Vera Baird KC’s tenure came to an end last September

Source: Alamy

Candidates have been shortlisted and interviews are ongoing, Raab replied. ‘It will be more meteorological than, if you like, political spring,’ he said, prompting laughter.

Ever in search of clarity, Obiter asked the Met Office what this means. It turns out that meteorological spring, which is based on temperature, invariably begins on 1 March and ends on 31 May – even if it is still tipping down out there.

Raab might have done better to refer to the astronomical spring, which is based on the earth’s orbit in relation to the sun. It varies slightly each year, this year running from 20 March to 21 June. That’s a long time, in politics.

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