Here is the original speech by Lord Phillips on the subject of judicial independence and the funding of the Supreme Court.
Here is the report by the BBC.
Please read both. I have. It seems to me that the essential message of the BBC article is that "The nasty Tory budget cuts are threatening the independence of the Supreme Court, which is naughty. That nice Labour man Lord Faulkner said right from the start how important it was to prevent this from ever happening".
The message of the original speech, however, seems to me to be that "Lord Faulkner was seriously challenged in Parliament over his previously inadequate safeguards for the independence of the Supreme Courts. In response, he promised to introduce a carefully designed system of funding that would have provided the necessary independence. However, the final Act of Parliament did not contain any such safeguards. The present need for cuts is highlighting this failure".
This is, of course, slightly different. Am I being paranoid here?
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
ReplyDeleteWho sits on the Judicial Appointment Board's selection panels and who marks the papers still remains opaque. Who selects the Law Lords? So Clarke could quite conceivably create a Frankenstein*.
Law Lords are bright enough to realise it is ill advised to bite the hand that feeds them** and to have a secure food source is a nice place to be. I like the clever way Clarke construed it to infer the Supreme Court may regard itself as superior and could be perceived as greedy.
We have this ECHR kerfuffle partly as a result of Lord Phillips criticising the ECHR, rather than the Executive, to demonstrate a role to the Supreme Court. The media picked up on it.
His Lordship really should be more careful about what he says. ;-)
*who, when he saw others doing something, wanted to do it himself.
**which is why the media do not get held to account.