UK: Disenchantment with Mackay
01 March 1994
Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay has come under attack for what some see as the attempted destruction of the legal system by attacks on its independence at all levels as well as attacks on the funding of legal aid. In the House of Lords, Mackay agreed to reconsider the proposal, embodied in the Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill, that justices would be supervised by government- appointed executives. Lord Chief Justice Peter Taylor was at the centre of trenchant criticisms of the plan because of the conflict of interest between administrative and legal goals which it posed for chief clerks, and its potential for undermining judicial independence. He described the proposal as "dangerous nonsense".
At the same time, Lord Mackay was being criticised by Lord Woolf and by Law Society President Rodger Pannone of destroying the "once-proud legal aid service". Pannone said that access to justice was now available only to the very rich and the very poor, while Lord Woolf, the law lord who produced the Woolf report on the prison, service described as "deplorable" the inability of large numbers of people to protect their rights through the court. It left people vulnerable to exploitation, he said.
Mackay has also been accused of direct interference with a senior judge. According to the Observer, Mr Justice Wood, who was President of the Employment Appeals Tribunal, was pressured by Mackay to change his view that appellants were entitled to have a hearing to ask for leave to appeal against decisions of the Industrial Tribunal. Mackay's view was that hearings were an unnecessary luxury and applications could be decided on paper. When Wood failed to fall in with Mackay's view of the correct procedure, he was served with an ultimatum telling him to "consider his position". Wood resigned shortly afterwards.
Mackay has never been popular among barristers and judges, largely because he disturbed vested interests by radical proposals to remove barristers' monopolies in court. But now, all sides of the legal profession seem united against him. Law Lord Ackner summarised the universal concerns that: "the Treasury is becoming predominant in the administration of justice".
Independent 23, 25.2.94; 1.3.94; Observer 6.3.94.