Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest Memorial Lecture. By Michael Howard, MP. July 6, 2006

Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest Memorial Lecture. By Michael Howard, MP
http://web.archive.org/web/20070505062753/http://www.michaelhowardmp.com/speeches/lampeter060706.htm
July 6, 2006


It is a great privilege to have been invited to give this lecture.

Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest – or John Willie as I recall him being almost universally referred to – was one of the giants of the law when I studied it at Cambridge and during the years when I was making my way as a Junior Member of the Bar.

Superficially we had quite a few things in common. We were, of course, both Welsh. We were both members of the Inner Temple. We had both been Presidents of the Cambridge Union. And we both, and this may be particularly encouraging to some, took second-class degrees in law.

But there, I fear, the similarities come to an end. I could not hope, even to begin to match the distinction of John Willie’s attainments at the Bar, on the Bench and as one of our great appeal judges. Nor, let’s be frank about this, could I aspire to his hallmarks of gentleness, patience and universal popularity.

He was a legend in the land. And not just, of course, for what he achieved in his legal career. At the outbreak of war in 1914, at the age of 17 he joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, saw service in France, reached the rank of Captain and was awarded the Military Cross. And it is said that, after being appointed a Law Lord in 1960 he walked down Whitehall to the House of Lords every day, lifting his hat as he passed the cenotaph.

Sadly I never had the honour of appearing before him. But I did meet him. When I was an undergraduate at Cambridge he came to see us to encourage us to go to the Bar.

I cannot pretend that this was a decisive influence on my own career because I had already made up my mind that that was what I wanted to do. So none of the blame for my subsequent career can be laid at John Willie’s door.

The Dictionary of National Biography, in describing his judicial characteristics, says that he was 'vigilant in protecting the freedom of the individual when threatened by the executive' and adds that 'he exhibited judicial valour consistently and in full measure.'

These statements are justified. But they must be interpreted in the spirit and context of their time. Thirty years ago judges were also conscious of the constraints which were imposed on their role.

Since then, that role has been greatly expanded, first as a consequence of the enlargement of judicial review, more recently as a result of the Human Rights Act. It is to that trend, its implications and its consequences that I intend to devote the rest of my remarks this evening.

Over thirty years ago, on a visit to Philadelphia, I fell into conversation with a woman who had recently been given a parking ticket. She had been incensed, so incensed that she decided to go to Court to challenge it.

When she appeared in Court she was rather surprised when the magistrate called all the defendants who were due to appear that day to the bar of the Court. He told them his name and asked them to remember it. Then he said, “All cases dismissed.”

The astonishment of my acquaintance at this development was tempered somewhat when she discovered that a few days later the regular election of magistrates in the city was due to take place. The magistrate before whom she had appeared, albeit rather briefly, was re-elected with the biggest majority in the history of the Philadelphia magistracy.

When I was told that story I reacted, I am sorry to say, with a rather superior disdain. “What can you expect” I asked, “if you elect magistrates and judges? We in Britain would never contemplate any such step.”

Thirty years on I am much less sure. The truth is that during that time the power of judges in this country was increased, is increasing and will increase further, if nothing is done to change things.

For the most part this increase in power has been at the expense of elected Governments and elected Parliaments. Our judges, of course, are unelected. They are unaccountable. They cannot be dismissed, save in the most extreme circumstances, and in practice never are.

Moreover they are appointed without regard to their political background and views are without any public scrutiny, parliamentary or otherwise. I believe that this has, in the past, been one of the great strengths of our judiciary. But as they move, increasingly, to the centre of the political stage how long can this state of affairs continue?

It would be wrong to suggest that this shift in power is entirely new or that it is entirely due to the coming into force of the Human Rights Act.

The Courts have traditionally had the power to curb the illegal, arbitrary or irrational exercise of power by the Executive. But, traditionally this power was exercised with restraint.

The Courts would be careful not to quash decisions because they disagreed on the merits with the decisions under challenge.

There is common consent that during the last 50 years this restraint has been eroded. As the previous Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine put it, in his 1995 Address to the Administrative Law Bar Association:
“The range of circumstances in which decisions may be struck down has been extended beyond recognition.”

That address was essentially a plea for judicial restraint. Indeed in it the future Lord Chancellor referred to what he described as the “constitutional imperative of judicial self-restraint.”

He gave three reasons for it. First he referred to the constitutional imperative – the fact that Parliament gives powers to various authorities, including Ministers, for good reasons and in reliance on the level of knowledge and experience which such authorities possess. Secondly, he referred to the lack of judicial expertise which, he said, made the Courts ill-equipped to take decisions in place of the designated authority. Thirdly, and most pertinently, he referred to what he called the democratic imperative – the fact that elected public authorities derive their authority in part from their electoral mandate.

It is worth quoting his words in full: “The electoral system,” he said, “also operates as an important safeguard against the unreasonable exercise of public powers, since elected authorities have to submit themselves, and their decision-making records, to the verdict of the electorate at regular intervals.”

With respect to Lord Irvine, I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Remarkably enough he even prayed in aid, as one of his arguments against judicial intervention, the fact that it would strengthen objections to the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into our law – the very Human Rights Act which he did so much to introduce.

Rightly describing it as a step which would hugely enhance the role and significance of the judiciary in our society he said this:- “The traditional objection to incorporation has been that it would confer on unelected judges powers which naturally belong to Parliament. That objection, entertained by many across the political spectrum, can only be strengthened by fears of judicial supremacism.”

Lord Irvine was right. My essential objection to the Human Rights Act is that it does involve a very significant shift in power from elected representatives of the people to unelected judges. Members of Parliament, and Ministers are, except for Ministers in the House of Lords like the Lord Chancellor, answerable to their electorates. As I know only too well they can be summarily dismissed by the electorate. They are directly accountable. Judges, as I have already pointed out, are unelected, unaccountable and cannot be dismissed.

The reason why this difficulty arisesin such acute form as a result of the Human Rights Act is because so many of the decisions which our judges now have to make under it are, essentially, political in nature.

Just this week, Charles Clarke, the former Home Secretary, complained that, and I quote:- “One of the consequences of the Human Rights Act is that our most senior judiciary are taking decisions of deep concern to the security of our society without any responsibility for that security.”

What on earth did he expect?

Of course that is one of the consequences of the Human Rights Act. It is an inevitable consequence. It is what the Human Rights Act obliges the senior judiciary to do. It is not the fault of the judges if they perform, as conscientiously as they can, duties which the Government has placed on them.

And it is not as though the Government were not warned.

To select a quote almost at random Appeal Court Judge Sir Henry Brooke predicted that judges would be drawn into making “much more obviously political decisions.” He pointed out that under the Act “for the first time judges would have to decide whether government interference with a human right was 'necessary in a democratic society.’ – and that, of course, is clearly a political value judgement.

How does this arise? In a nutshell the Act requires our courts to apply the European Convention on Human Rights in every decision they make. The rights which the Convention seeks to protect are framed in very wide terms. The Convention was drawn up in the aftermath of the Second World War. Its authors saw it as a safeguard against any revival of Nazism or any other form of totalitarian tyranny. I suspect that many of them would turn in their graves if they were able to see the kind of cases which are being brought in reliance on it today.

None of these rights can be exercised in isolation. Any decision to uphold one right may well infringe someone else’s right. Or it may conflict with the rights of the community at large.

The example that has most recently hit the headlines well illustrates the difficulties that arise.

As David Cameron pointed out in his recent speech on this subject life in the globalised twenty first century world presents two great challenges to governments. The first is to protect our security. The second is protecting our liberty.

We would, I suspect, all agree with his view that 'it is vital that free societies do all they can to maintain people’s human rights and civil liberties, not least because a free society is, in the long term, one of the best protections against terrorism and crime.”

As he said, “The fundamental challenge is to strike the right balance between security and liberty.”

The fundamental question is who is ultimately responsible for striking that balance: elected members of Parliament or unelected judges?

In the cases on terrorism, Parliament twice, after much anxious consideration by both Houses, reached its view. It was not always a view with which I agreed. But it was the view of Parliament.

Yet twice the Judges have held that Parliament got the balance wrong. They thought the balance should be struck differently.

And in doing so they were not deliberately seeking to challenge the supremacy of Parliament. They were simply doing what Parliament has asked them to do.

There are countless other examples. In his recent speech on the subject David Cameron discussed the way in which the Human Rights Act has made the fight against crime harder.

He cited the example of the Assets Recovery Agency, which was set up to seize the assets of major criminals.

The agency has been forced to spend millions of pounds fighting legal challenges brought by criminals under the Human Rights Act.

This has had bogged down cases for years, and the backlog in the courts has grown to 146 uncompleted claims.

The Director of the Agency has directly blamed the human rights “bandwagon” for thwarting its efforts.

He referred to the case of the convicted rapist, Anthony Rice, who was wrongly released on licence and then murdered Naomi Bryant.

The bridges Report set up to investigate the case makes clear that one of the factors that influenced the thinking of officials in dealing with Rice was a concern that he might sue them under the Human Rights Act.

As David Cameron acknowledged there were other elements in the case that had no connection to human rights.

And it is true that any legal challenge by Rice might well have failed.

But it remains the case that officials sought to protect themselves rather than risk defeat in the courts.

The Rice case illustrates a wider trend.

Even without actual litigation, some public bodies are now so frightened of being sued under the Human Rights Act that they try to protect themselves by making decisions that are often absurd and occasionally dangerous.

We saw this recently when the police tried to recapture foreign ex-prisoners who should have been deported and had instead gone on the run.

The obvious thing to do would have been to issue “Wanted” posters but police forces across the country refused to do so on the grounds that it would breach the HRA.

The Association of Chief Police officers says in its guidance to forces: “Article 8 of the Human Rights Act gives everyone the right to respect for their private and family life.....and publication of photographs could be a breach of that.”

According to ACPO, photographs should be released only in “exceptional circumstances”, where public safety needs to override the case for privacy.

These were criminals who had been convicted of very serious offences and who shouldn’t even have been in the UK.

Yet the Metropolitan Police said, “We will use all the tools in our tool box to try and find them without printing their identity – that’s the last recourse.”

Perhaps the most ludicrous recent example occurred a few weeks ago when a suspected car thief clambered onto the roof tops after a high speed chase and began pelting the police who had tried to follow him with roof tiles.

It ended with a siege that would waste the time of 50 police officers, close the street until 9.40pm and culminate in the spectacle of the suspect being handed a bucket of KFC chicken, a two litre bottle of Pepsi and a packet of cigarettes at tax payers expense – all apparently to preserve his “human rights.”

Of course there are examples of cases where the Act has led to results most of us would applaud. But we have to ask whether those results could not have been achieved by effective lobbying of our elected Parliament or a change of Government following an Election.

The Human Rights Act requires the Courts to interpret legislation so that it complies with the Convention if that is at all possible. If in the Court’s view any secondary legislation – passed after due consideration by both Houses of Parliament – is incompatible with the Convention that legislation can be struck down by the Court.

If any primary legislation is held to be incompatible there is a fast-track procedure which would enable the Government to short-circuit the normal processes of parliamentary scrutiny in order to amend or repeal any such legislation.

This surely a direct threat to the very democratic imperative on which the then Lord Chancellor waxed so eloquent 5 years ago.

One of the consequences of this is likely to be the increasing politicisation of judges.

How long, if the Act remains in force, will our present system of selection of judges survive? How long before the political backgrounds of candidates for judicial office become subject to Parliamentary scrutiny? How long before we see demands that these judges submit themselves for election?

The most common argument in favour of the Act is that it 'brings rights home.’ By that its supporters mean that since the Act could in any event be relied upon in an appeal from the English Courts to the European Court of Human Rights it is much better to allow English judges to apply it themselves. Indeed in presenting this argument the impression is sometimes given that the new jurisdiction of the English Courts will in some way replace the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. This is of course quite untrue. The right to appeal to the ECHR will remain.

I would concede that the previous situation was not ideal.

The ECHR does sometimes reach decisions which are very difficult to understand and sometimes cause considerable frustration.

But there is a remedy for this which the last Government was pursuing. The ECHR recognises the existence of what it calls a 'margin of appreciation.’ By that it means that will make some allowance, in applying the Convention, for the local circumstances and traditions of the country from which the appeal is brought. The last Government had embarked on a campaign to increase this margin of appreciation so that the Court would give greater leeway to countries to decide things for themselves.

Now the very future of the margin of appreciation is uncertain. Academic controversy rages on to whether our courts will apply it. And the ECHR is much less likely to apply it to decisions of our Courts than to decisions of administrative bodies.

It is in this context that David Cameron’s proposal for a British Bill of Rights should be considered.

As Mr Cameron expressly said the existence of a clear and codified British Bill of Rights will tend to lead the European Court of Human Rights to apply, and I would add to enhance, the “margin of appreciation.”

This seems to me to be the key to the continuing application and acceptance of the European Convention. It was intended to be a backstop to ensure that there was no repetition in Western European of Nazi atrocities and to minimise, as far as possible, the danger of future totalitarian outrages. It was not intended to strike down carefully considered judgements by democratically elected authorities of where the balance should be struck between legitimate but competing interests.

The route to this more limited role for the Convention and the Court which adjudicates on it lies through an enhanced margin of appreciation. A British Bill of Rights may well help us to reach this very desirable destination.

It is of course true, as Mr Cameron himself acknowledged, that the drafting of such a Bill would represent a formidable challenge. But this is true of all charters of this kind. If it helps us to achieve a workable solution to our relationship with the European Convention the effort will be well worth while.

And if it also enables us to scrap the discredited Human Rights Act it would be doubly welcome.

As the distinguished Scottish judge, Lord McCluskey predicted, the Act has become:- “A field day for crackpots, a pain in the neck for judges and a goldmine for lawyers.”

It is an experiment that has failed. It should go.