I hope that you have had a stimulating and worthwhile time today.
I want to talk about three things this evening:
Firstly I want to address why we are reforming the constitutional and legal system in this country, principally focussing on:
the abolition of the role of Lord Chancellor; and
the creation of a new judicial appointments commission.
Secondly, could I set out some of my ideas for the liberalisation, and to some extent, reorganisation of the legal professions?
And thirdly could I engage with these changes as we open up different career paths to the judiciary?
Reforming Public Services
The programme of constitutional and legal reform this Government has carried out since 1997 is a large one. We've come a long way in that comparatively short time. But I do think we have some way to go yet.
My Department, the Department for Constitutional Affairs, has been created to help drive forward changes to make the legal system fit for people in this country today, just as we are doing in education, in health, in fact in all areas of public service.
I announced a couple of weeks ago some of my proposals for inclusion in a Constitutional Reform Bill. And yesterday I announced my plans for the Supreme Court.
As far as reforming Queen's Counsel is concerned. We have carefully considered all responses to the consultation document, and all other representations, and I hope I'll be in a position to make a statement very shortly, but sadly not today.
I am acutely aware of the concerns that have arisen from the way in which all the constitutional changes were announced, and the comparatively short time within which the changes are being made through the process of legislation. The announcement represented the expression of a political judgement that the time had come to make fundamental changes in the arrangements. These were not new ideas. The issues have been debated by the profession, in the media, amongst academics for some considerable time. I think the handling of the announcement could have been done in a way which was much more reassuring, I believe the essential political judgement was right and remains right.
That's not to say there isn't a lot to be proud of in our justice system:
the credibility of our legal professions for one;
the integrity and probity of our judiciary for another.
It is good. It works. It can work well. But just because it sometimes works well, doesn't mean that we shouldn't seek to improve it.
Reform of the Office of Lord Chancellor
And this point is crucial to the reform of the Lord Chancellor. If you were going to create the structures of Government today, you wouldn't start from where we are now. But if the arrangements, as some have argued, have worked well enough up until now, what is the justification for changing it?
Let me answer that point. The Lord Chancellor is crucially significant to the position of the judiciary in our constitutional arrangements, and also to the day to day conduct of the professional lives of the judiciary. But he is also now the ministerial head of a significant department of state responsible not just for the administration of the courts, not just the administration of legal aid, but also for politically sensitive issues such as human rights, freedom of information, methods of election, devolution, and constitutional affairs. To be both head of the Judges with responsibilities to the Judges, a Minister with responsibilities to the public, and a speaker of the House of Lords, means none of the roles can, under modern conditions, be performed adequately.
We now need to separate out the distinct roles of the Lord Chancellor and clarify the relationship between the independent judiciary, the executive, and the legislature. The world will, I think, understand that it is right, and our constitutional arrangements will become clear and explicable as a result, not just to the few engaged in making them work them but to the many who live under them. So it will be clear the Head of the Judiciary will be the Lord Chief Justice. So it will be clear that the Secretary of State with departmental responsibilities, will be in charge of those responsibilities. So it will be clear that Speaker of the House will be one person. Not one person doing all 3 jobs, with conflicting constituencies.
Reforming the way we appoint Judges
The current judicial appointment arrangements do not also reflect a true separation of powers. But they have nevertheless produced in recent decades a very high quality bench, in whom the public have confidence. So why do we need changes? Because we can do much better.
It seems extraordinary to me that it takes 80 years, from the entry of the first women, for one of them to reach the top of the profession. Lady Hale blazes a trail, and sets a very great precedent in my view. But 80 years is a long time for a trail to be blazed. We are doing ourselves a disservice if the profession, at all levels, does not benefit from the breadth of vision, experience, skills and ability that a truly diverse membership of the bench gives.
This doesn't mean positive discrimination. Merit must remain the fundamental basis of people going to the bench. Central to building a bench of quality. There is no change in that. What we must do is ensure that false barriers, barriers that prevent people with real talent from getting on, are removed.
The Judicial Appointments Commission will be asked to look wider than simply improving the application process itself. It will be specifically tasked with examining how to encourage applications from a more diverse range of qualified candidates. This process has begun to start under the system we have at present. But an Independent Commission will be able to progress things further.
It will become better able to meet the needs of those who come into contact with the legal system, and who rely on it for help.
Meeting the Needs of the Customer
It's those people who I want to concentrate on in the second part of my speech: the needs of those who use our services. Our customers.
It's clear to me that there are customers' needs which the system is not yet meeting. There are people who need advice, who need representation, who are not getting it.
The National Periodic Survey of Legal Needs produced by the Legal Services Research Centre for the first time gave us hard evidence of unmet need. A need for help and advice on welfare problems. On family problems. It shows us the need for help and advice on problems arising from deprivation: on housing, debt, benefits, employment, immigration, and community care. People facing social exclusion often have a number of inter-related problems which need expert independent advice. Early intervention to tackle such problems can really help.
There is unmet demand, too. Customer attitudes are changing. We should in the legal professions and do welcome that. Customers today demand more choice. Better prices. Higher quality. And that's quite right. We need to know in detail what people want from the legal system. What their unmet demands actually are.
Would multi-disciplinary practices work on the average High Street? Would it be possible for non-lawyers to own law firms? If, for example, we have some form of Tesco law, will we discover that more people have a personal injuries claim? We must think I believe imaginatively and creatively to understand what customers actually want from the legal professions.
And as we know more and are able to respond to these needs, we need to ensure that, in giving the customers what they want, we do it in a way which properly protects their interests.
And that requires a flexible, responsive and accountable regulatory regime. That's why I've asked David Clementi to undertake a root and branch examination of the system as a whole, to establish what works well and what needs to be changed. Shortly, in the next four or five weeks he will issue a major consultation document. I urge you to contribute to the review, because I believe that the consultation and what comes out of it will have long term affects on the profession and how it is regulated.
Becoming Judges
David's review will go some way towards understanding the different needs of our many customers. But there are also other ways. To meet the needs of a diverse customer base we will require a diverse profession, and that includes a diverse Judiciary. This is my third point this evening. Talent must be drawn from all quarters of our society. We must do all that we can to ensure that the legal profession is open to the most able people, irrespective of whether theirs has been a traditional career path or not.
So we need to look first of all critically at barriers to entry for barristers. It is in the interests of the Bar to match the diversity of their customers with the diversity of their lawyers, so it is surely also in the interests of the profession to bring this about.
Cost is a problem. I want to see a much more competitive, much more responsive profession which is good for consumers.
In America, for example, corporate clients are rightly insistent that the law firms they use are as diverse as their own customers. This will happen more and more in this country too and the best, and ultimately the most successful, in the profession will be those who rise most readily to the challenge. Legal services can, by embracing and increasing diversity, better represent the interests of the public.
We have made a start. The CPS runs the Law Scholarship Programme. Last week I welcomed the first national nominees at Dover House.
The scheme is just one of a number of ways that the Government is working to expand opportunities in the legal professions. I hope some of those on these schemes will go on to become judges.
I hope some of you will. We don't want you to stop at being lawyers. Your skills, your perspective is vital to ensuring that we reach our aims.
I urge you to make use of the opportunities that become available to you. We have relaxed the rules to allow Crown Prosecution Service, Serious Fraud Office and lawyers working in other government departments to apply for various judicial appointments.
We are currently working on taking forward the 'combination route'. And this month we are re-launching the judicial work-shadowing scheme.
These initiatives are beginning to make the highest ranks of the legal profession more accessible. More open. More in tune with today's society. There are no excuses why the top echelons in any career should not be truly accessible to all those with the skills and ability to reach them. And until they are, services that customers' rightly expect will not be available.
We have much more to do to achieve this. We have a challenging agenda in the changes we are making both constitutionally and in the law. But it is a vital agenda. I hope you will continue to work with us to ensure that changes to our legal professionals truly reflect the diverse needs of people in this country.