Time to split the Law Officers' roles

Last night the attorney general has obtained an injunction against the BBC to stop it broadcasting an item about the cash-for-honours investigation.

Even though I am inclined to believe his explanation that he was acting at the request of the police, and that he has done nothing wrong on this occasion, I cannot be the only person who is deeply uncomfortable with a judicial process which works in this way.

Essentially the attorney general, a minister appointed by Tony Blair, went to court to get an injuction to prevent the BBC reporting details of the police investigation into whether money changed hands in exchange for honours, which if true would reflect extremely badly on - Tony Blair.

I don't believe that any reasonalbe person can argue that there is neither a conflict of interest nor the appearance of a conflict of interest strong enough to bring the system into disrepute.

This country's top legal positions and the government's law officers have traditionally had multiple roles. The former position of Lord Chancellor, combined being a cabinet minister who was part of a political administration running the Executive arm of Britain's government, chaired a chamber of the Legislative arm (as chair of the House of Lords) and was head of the judiciary. I don't agree with the cack-handed way Blair and Falconer tried to scrap this centuries-old position and replace it with plans apparently drawn up on the back of an envelope, but they were not the first people to identify a problem.

Similarly the Attorney General, and Solicitor General have to combine being ministers in a party political government, to be the lawyers acting for that government, and yet sometimes also to act as referees on difficult points of law.

At most periods of recent history there has been some form of convention that these officers do not act as party politicans when certain types of issue come up. The trouble is that Tony Blair's government has trampled in the dust so many other conventions of this sort that the remaining ones do not carry the necessary credibility.

We need another look at the functioning of the law officers, to ensure that when an impartial referee is required in cases where the government itself is an interested party, that there is someone who will command universal confidence and who can take this role.

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