Queen's Counsel (Hansard, 12 December 2002)

§ The Lord Chancellor (Lord Irvine of Lairg)
Yes, my Lords.

§ Lord Goodhart
My Lords, given that the office of Queen's Counsel involves no public duties, is there any 378 justification whatever for a government Minister and a government department being involved in the appointment process at all? If appointments to the rank of Queen's Counsel are to continue—and that, in itself, is highly questionable—should not the appointment be made by the senior judiciary and the profession?

§ The Lord Chancellor
My Lords, the Lord Chancellor is the head of the judiciary, and the judiciary, along with many others, is consulted on the appointment of Queen's Counsel. So the Lord Chancellor is at the end of a line of process that includes independent civil servants, the judiciary, the legal profession, and now lay assessors. Every stage in the process is open to the closest scrutiny by the Judicial Appointments Commission. It is the duty of the Lord Chancellor to ensure that applicants are treated impartially and on their individual merits without reference to connections, allegiances, or contacts that are irrelevant to the award of Silk.
I repeat to your Lordships, as I have previously, that I have not excluded the possibility of an appointments commission to take over some part of these processes. But there are powerful arguments why a quango would not command greater public confidence than the existing system. Moreover, if the function were to be handed over to the profession, I very much doubt whether that would command public confidence or whether, on the contrary, it would be thought that the profession was feathering its own nest by the creation of an excessive number of Queen's Counsel.

§ Lord Campbell of Alloway
My Lords—

Lord Renton
My Lords—

§ Lord Clinton-Davis
My Lords—

§ Lord Williams of Mostyn
My Lords, could we hear from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell?

§ Lord Campbell of Alloway
My Lords, it was a very modest contribution from a practising member of the Bar of some years. Would the noble and learned Lord accept that his assessment of this situation is certainly wholly acceptable to me?

§ The Lord Chancellor
My Lords, I could have no better ally.

§ Lord Graham of Edmonton
My Lords, is there any truth in the oft-repeated allegation that the selection system is based on secret negotiations?

§ The Lord Chancellor
My Lords, I think that the phrase is "secret soundings". The allegation that judicial and QC appointments rest on secret soundings is false, but it is constantly repeated, presumably because of an unshakeable affection for the expression regardless of its inaccuracy. The names of all consultees are known; there is no secret about them. What individual consultees say about individual applicants is kept confidential. 379 However, that is a common feature of practically all appointments systems; otherwise assessments would not be full and frank.

§ Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords—

Lord Renton
My Lords—

§ Lord Ackner
My Lords

§ Lord Williams of Mostyn
My Lords, it must be the turn of the Cross Benches, I think.

§ Lord Ackner
My Lords, does my noble and learned friend recognise that there is a strange conflict in this area? On the one hand, as I understand it, public funds are to be used rarely in employing QCs. On the other hand, as I understand it, the fee that an applicant must pay to apply to become a QC is going to be at least doubled this year.

§ The Lord Chancellor
My Lords, the state, as any other purchaser of legal services, is entitled to be sparing in the hiring of the services of Queen's Counsel—who represent at any one time only about 10 per cent of the Bar. On the other hand, I see no objection whatever to applicants for the rank of Queen's Counsel paying a fee that represents overall full costs recovery for the highly expensive scheme administered. This year, for example, in the current Silk round, we have consulted nearly 500 automatic consultees and nearly 1,500 nominated consultees, making approximately 2,000 in total. It is a massive exercise. There are no quotas, but recent experience shows that anything from about 70 to slightly more than 100 may succeed when 400 to 500 apply, and all deserve to have the merit of their applications scrupulously assessed. The Government took the view that a fee of £720 was fair since it represented, as I just said, overall full costs recovery.

§ Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor consider it more appropriate for the ultimate decision to be made by a very powerful Cabinet Minister, nominally the head of the judiciary, rather than by the Lord Chief Justice, who does not exercise any political power and could not then even be thought of as having any appearance of political patronage?

§ The Lord Chancellor
My Lords, I do not think hat that question goes any further than the supplementary question which I answered from the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart.