Category Archives: uk legal system

The purpose of the creation of the ‘Supreme Court’ was to entrench Blairism into the Constitution

So now we have had the decision of the “Supreme Court” on Boris Johnson’s proroguing of Parliament.  In which, on very thin grounds, the Supreme Court has dismissed one of the key provisions in our Constitution.  
This is Article 9 in the Bill of Rights which says as follows (the significant bits of which I have underlined):-
“Bill of Rights1688 CHAPTER 2 1 William and Mary Session 2:-
“…..That the Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parlyament….”
To understand why the “Supreme Court” has ruled in this way it is necessary to consider its purpose. 
The purpose behind the creation of both the Judicial Appointments Commission & Supreme Court was to entrench Blairism into the UK’s Constitution.
The members of the Supreme Court are of course also appointed by the Judicial Appointments Commission which was specifically and openly set up by Tony Blair and his friend Lord Irvine, his Lord Chancellor, to, as Lord Irvine, put it to “ensure that nobody with Reactionary Views can be appointed or promoted” as a Judge. 
In order to achieve this, the Judicial Appointments Commission has made it clear that, in order to get appointed or promoted as a Judge, you must “demonstrate a life time’s commitment to Equality and Diversity”.  This of course means that every appointment is likely to be of a Left-wing, Multiculturalist, Internationalist, Europhile.
It was as part of this drive that the now Lord Justice Hickinbottom when he was the “Judicial Lead for Diversity” gleefully told the solicitors Law Society Gazette that he suggested “Creating a judicial career fast-track (to) help improve diversity on the bench”
Ever since 2004 the Judicial Appointments Commission has continued to appoint and to promote wherever possible only those who are multi-culturalist activists.
The effect of this can easily be seen if you look at the backgrounds of the eleven Supreme Court “Justices”, as reported in The Slog, as follows:-
“Lady Brenda Hale (Chair) is a lifetime academic and former Law Professor who went straight into being a Judge with no history in commercial law at all. She is a feminist, a great believer in diversity, and a lifelong liberal. I would be amazed if she voted any other way than Remain.
Lord Robert Reed (Deputy) is a Scot who also sits on the EU’s European Court of Human Rights. He was an expert advisor to the EU/Council of Europe Joint Initiative with Turkey. No prizes for guessing where Rabbie’s sympathies lie.
Lord Brian Kerr is the former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, and the first Catholic ever appointed to that post. In 2014, he had this to say in a lengthy interview:
“The Law has changed enormously since the enactment of the Human Rights Act. The central point about the Act is that it has given judges free access to the rich vein of jurisprudence that is provided by the Strasbourg Court…..we now have the ability to draw on jurisprudence from all over the Council of Europe on matters that critically affect the balance of power between the citizen and the state and I think that that can only be a good thing.”
Draw your own conclusions.
Lord Nicholas Wilson is left of centre and on the record as saying, ““In pursuit of its economic policy, the UK government has recently felt the need to dismantle much of our welfare state, namely social security and the National Health Service.” He is a passionate supporter of the ECHR in Strasbourg. The activist site Divorce & the City is currently preparing to impeach Lord Wilson for alleged corruption and ‘pro State’ bias. He is, reputedly, not a fan of Boris Johnson or Brexit.
Lord Robert Carnwath is an unknown quantity who appears never to have expressed an opinion about anything, except he sits on the advisory council of the English School in Poland.
Lord Patrick Hodge is another Scot. He was a civil servant in the 1970s, and then Counsel to the Department of Energy from 1989 to 1991, and to the Inland Revenue from 1991 to 1996. Ergo, chummy with the unelected State, 99.99% of whom are anti-Brexit. I’d imagine he’s also a wow at parties.
Lady Jill Black is unique in the Supreme Court in not having been to Oxbridge. You can see from this just how inclusive the Court is, and thus totally in touch with the average person.
Lord David Lloyd-Jones is another scholar who wound up a judge. He was a Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge from 1975 to 1991. From 1999 to 2005, he was a visiting professor at City University, London, and was then put onto The Bench. He has always specialised in international  and EU law. Only two months ago, in a Supreme Court hearing involving Kuoni Travel, Lloyd-Jones ruled that EU Law had primacy in the case. He gave the judgement in Welsh, which was a first. Highly unlikely to have voted to leave a Union in whose law he specialises, one could reasonably argue.
Lady Mary Arden became a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2011, and sits as a judge of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg blah blah yawn etc. In 2015 she published a book about the impact of the EU and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on the domestic law of the UK. In his preface to the book, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales noted:
Not a Leaver then, we suspect. This is all getting terribly predictable, isn’t it?
Lord David Kitchin coxed the team that won the 1975 Boat Race for Cambridge. More pertinently, he has for many years been a strong advocate of more harmonisation of the Law between EU jurisdictions. In May this year, he gave an interview offering the following opinion in relation to patent law, in which he is a specialist:
“The situation is improving and that is because there is now much more discussion and communication between judges in different countries. Judges now meet regularly to discuss these and other difficult issues. We consider each other’s judgments; all of us attach importance to the decisions of the Technical Boards of Appeal and the Enlarged Boards of Appeal at the European Patent Convention….there might not be jurisdiction to make references to the EU Court of Justice in these cases, or any cases after Brexit.”
And so this would be a bad thing, wouldn’t i? Get real: Lord Kitchin is a Good European who lectures about legal alignment in the EU.
Lord Philip Sales really is a case of leaving the best until last. Sales has had something of a meteoric rise: he is the youngest of the Supreme Court judges, and was a practising barrister at 11 King’s Bench Walk – according to The Guardian ‘a network of old boys and cronies’ that enabled him to be appointed First Counsel at the Treasury…a department of State with a long and grubby history of undying support for the EU. The recommendation that he be appointed came from Lord Irvine and Tony Blair’s old chambers.
Philip Sales is New Labour through and through. In 2016, he was a member of the Court of Appeal which ruled that 130,000 Labour members who joined the party after 12 January 2016 would not be able to vote in the leadership contest. This overruled the previous High Court decision to allow the 130,000 disenfranchised Labour Party members to vote in the 2016 Labour Party leadership election. In short, it was a bid by the Blairites to keep Corbyn out.
Finally, he was one of the three judges forming the High Court in proceedings concerning the use of the royal prerogative for the issue of notification in accordance with Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. His role in this judgment meant that he appeared in an infamous front-cover of the Daily Mail  – Enemies of the People – as a solid-gold Remainer.”
(The original of this useful article can be found here >>> https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2019/09/25/exclusive-why-this-supreme-court-was-never-going-to-find-bojos-proroguation-legal/ )
It is also being said that many of the 11 “Justices” are in receipt of salaries from the EU.  If true then this is a very serious scandal!
I have noticed that Jacob Rees-Mogg and other Conservatives are grumbling about the decision of the Supreme Court, but they have only their own Party to blame! 
It’s no use Conservative MPs now complaining about the same europhile multiculturalists whom their Party had appointed to the Supreme Court making Europhile Multiculturalist decisions.
The Conservatives have had nearly 10 years in power to change the Judicial Appointments system but they have chosen not to do so!

Our “Defend Brexit” case is mentioned in key Commons Debate

Our “Defend Brexit” case is mentioned in key Commons Debate
On Wednesday the former Conservative Leader, Iain Duncan Smith, mentioned our case during the key debate on whether the Commons was going to be able to vote to deny a ‘No Deal’ Brexit.
You can see the context of the debate and his mention of the case on this link>>> https://youtu.be/DMZaDK2d4xk(10 min either side is left in for context
The point at which he references us is at 11:47 in this video and at 15:06:12 in the original https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/a91e27e8-e525-4703-aaeb-036189f4caed )
If you watch Speaker Bercow’s reactions and expressions and listen carefully to his reply you may feel, as I do, that he is trying to be evasive and deceptive.  My guess is that while he had been advised that the Bill required “Queen’s Consent” he had then decided to ignore that advice because it would mean that the Government could refuse to give that “Consent” and the Bill which he supported would then fail. 
As Bercow is a prime example, of a MP who is trying to use every trick in the book to pervent Brexit, that would come as no surprise!
The question for Speaker Bercow was quite simple and ‘binary’.  Either the Royal Prerogative was affected by the Bill (in which case “Queen’s Consent” was required) or Royal Prerogative wasn’t affected (in which case no “Queen’s Consent” was required)!
Speaker Bercow ruled that there was no effect on the Royal Prerogative which means that he ruled that no extensions to the Article 50 Notice have not been agreed under the Royal Prerogative.  We of course argued this point in our “Defend Brexit” case but Lord Justice Hickinbottom ruled both that the Royal Prerogative did apply and also was used and so he claimed that our case (and the ruling of Speaker Bercow!) was “Totally Without Merit”!
Mr Justice Spencer on the other hand claimed that our case was “Totally Without Merit” because the extension was not under the Royal Prerogative but instead was under the Statutory Instrument (passed under the EU Withdrawal Act 2018) which changed the “Exit Day” from 29thMarch! 
So here we have it! EITHER Lord Justice Hickinbottom is right and the extensions were made under Royal Prerogative and so Speaker Bercow’s ruling is “Totally Without Merit”; OR Mr Justice Spencer is right and the Brexit date was changed by statutory instrument and the Royal Prerogative has been excluded; OR we are right and the Royal Prerogative has been excluded and there was no Act of Parliament empowering an extension and so we automatically left on the 29th March!
In a Learned Article on the LSE website Robert Craig (who is a part-time lecturer in Public Law at LSE and is currently pursuing a PhD at Bristol University considering the role of the Royal Prerogative in the modern UK constitution) argues as follows:-
“… the reason why Queen’s Consent was not needed for EUNoWA (EU Notification of Withdrawal Act 2017) was arguably because the Supreme Court ruling meant that prerogative could not logically be affected by conferring a power to notify under Article 50. It is by no means clear that triggering the process and extending the process are legally equivalent just because they are encompassed in the same Treaty Article. They are not even in the same subsection. Notification was done under Article 50(2). Extensions are done under Article 50(3).

Indeed this exact, and crucial, distinction has very recently been explicitly confirmed by Lord Justice Hickinbottom in rejecting the English Democrats’ judicial review application on 19 August 2019. It must be noted that permission appeal decisions do not have the same status as formal Court of Appeal judgments, but it is the most recent and best evidence we have of the what the law is. Hickinbottom LJ drew a sharp legal distinction between the Miller case situation of triggering the Article 50 process and the quite different legal scenario of extending the Article 50 process.

In short, international agreements (including agreements as to extensions of time under article 50(3) are matters for the Government in the exercise of prerogative powers and although such powers can be displaced by Parliament this case is distinguishable from [Miller] because Parliament, in its various interventions into the withdrawal process or otherwise, has not arguably displaced those prerogative powers in respect of an extension of time under article 50(3). Indeed, Parliament has consistently made clear in the 2017 [EUNoWA] and 2018 Acts [European Union Withdrawal Act 2018], and especially clearly in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2019, that timing of withdrawal (including agreeing extensions to the withdrawal date under article 50) was and is a matter for the Government.

Hickinbottom LJ must be right. This decision can only be seen as highly persuasive that the legal basis for the power to extend the Article 50 process is a matter of prerogative power.

Incidentally, this judgment is also relevant to one possible reading of the Speaker’s ruling. EUNoWA conferred the power on the Government to notify the EU of the intention of the UK to leave the EU. It said nothing about extensions.

1. Power to notify withdrawal from the EU

The Prime Minister may notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU. 2.

On one reading of the Speaker’s ruling, it might be thought that EUNoWA was being interpreted as conferring a general statutory power on the government to notify and the power to extend. Even taken in isolation, this would be a startling reading of EUNoWA because the wording of EUNoWA says nothing about extensions – it only mentions notification. However startling that may be as one possible reading, as a matter of law the proposition that EUNoWA confers the power to extend is now untenable after the decision of Hickinbottom LJ.”
(The original and full article can be found here>>>

Proponents of the new Bill to stop No Deal face a significant dilemma over Queen’s Consent

blogs.lse.ac.uk/Brexit/2019/09/02/proponents-of-the-new-bill-to-stop-no-deal-face-a-significant-dilemma-over-queens-consent/)
In any case I respectfully suggest to both Judges that Speaker Bercow’s ruling is either “Totally Without Merit” or that they were both totally wrong to make such a ruling in our case as it clearly had considerable merit!

TAKING ACTION AGAINST FACEBOOK

 

TAKING ACTION AGAINST FACEBOOK

 
Following up on my previous Blog article about taking on Facebook, I am trailblazing taking on Facebook.  As far as the Data Protection line of attack this is where I have got to so far:-
 
Letter sent to Facebook Ireland Limited on the 29th July:-
 

Dear Sir
 
Re:  GDPR request for information
 
I, Robin Tilbrook, make the following request:
 
Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679.[ Data Protection Act 2018 (UK)] please supply copies of all correspondence, emails, letters, instant messenger, text, Whatsapp, data, informal notes, transcripts of off the record conversations, meeting minutes, internet articles that were read, and other records relating to:-
 
1.      The blocking of my profile (https://www.facebook.com/robin.tilbrook). No proper explanation has been given to me as to why that happened or any right of appeal. 
 
In the circumstances I formally ask, pursuant to the General Data Protection Regulation, for you to provide me with full disclosure of all information/data which you might rely upon to justify your Company’s behaviour in disabling my profile. 
 
The history of this case is as follows:-
 
Some time on Thursday, 16th May 2019 Facebook “Disabled” my “Personal Profile”.
 
The first I knew about this was when I tried to sign on to check if I had had any messages. I was then told that the account had been “Disabled”. 
 
Here is exactly what the text said:-
 
“Your account has been disabled
For more information, or if you think your account was disabled by mistake visit the Help Centre”
 
For more information about our policies please review the Facebook Community Standards.  If you think your account was disabled by mistake please contact us.”
 
 
I of course thought that that must be wrong and therefore went to their next page which said:-
 
“Why was my account disabled?
 
Your account has been disabled for violating Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.
 
Our Policies
 
One of Facebook’s main priorities is the comfort and safety of our members.  The following are not allowed on Facebook:
 
·       Support for a violent and/or criminal organization or group
·       Credible threats to harm others or the promotion of self-destructive behaviour
·       Targeting other individuals on the site
·       Hate speech or singling people out based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or disease
·       Graphic content including sadistic displays of violence against people or animals and depictions of sexual assault
·       Selling recreational or pharmaceutical drugs
 
Learn More
 
After looking carefully at that page I was able to see that there was some element of an appeal process, so I clicked onto the link they provided and got a page which only told me to send them a PDF of my passport or other ID.
 
So all I was able to do in response to my Profile being “Disabled” was to send them an image of my passport to confirm my identity!
 
On Friday I received a response saying that the ID Team couldn’t help with any appeal!
 
Which is absolutely hopeless.
 
At that point I thought Facebook’s procedures for appeals were completely inadequate and didn’t even remotely approach the basic “Rules of Natural Justice”.  I therefore sent off an email to every Facebook email address that I had got. 
 
Here is my email to them:-
 
“Dear Sir
 
I have tried to log in to my above profile and your system asked me to submit an ID check.  There is no proper detail of any reason why this happened nor a clear appeal process just some generic items which can’t be relevant to me.
 
I am currently a candidate standing in an election here in England and I have already done your double identity check for political figures and advertising so you should be aware.
 
Here in the UK it is a crime under the Representation Of the People Acts for candidates to be slandered so I would politely ask you to sort this out and restore my profile or I shall get the police involved tomorrow.”
 
In reply I did get this answer:- 
 
“Hi Robin,
Thanks for your report.  We’ll review the information you provided and get back to you when we have an update on your report.
 
In the meantime, you can review our Community Standards to learn more bout what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook:
 
https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards?ref=cr
 
We appreciate your patience.
 
View updates from your Support Inbox:  https://fb.me/1FCup0kANUMY5ok
 
Thanks,
The Facebook Team
 
Since then I have not received any substantive response explaining either why they have done it or what they are going to do about it.
 
 
2.       Any discussions between staff and Employer regarding the above.
 
 
And I would like access to the following: –
 
a)    Any memoranda and notes taken (including handwritten notes) at any meetings where the above was discussed.
b)    E-mails, or any form of instant messaging or text message communications, between individuals at employer, including personal e-mails to the extent that they were used for work purposes regarding the above.
c)    Transcripts of Telephone conversations where the above was discussed.
 
In conducting a search, please ensure that search terms include for my full name, my initials, a short name or any name or variation that might be used by any of the above people to identify me.
 
If you do not disclose any of the documents mentioned above, I would be grateful if you could confirm that a search has been conducted and no results have been found. I may in due course, request sight of the search terms that were used and the results of the searches conducted.
 
It may be helpful for me to point out that there are time limits set for you response under the Data Protection Act 2018 (UK) and sanctions, including criminal sanctions, for non-compliance.
 
Yours faithfully
 
 
R C W Tilbrook
 
 
Facebook’s Reply of the 14thAugust:-
 
Dear Mr Tilbrook
 
Thank you for contacting Facebook.
 
In relation to the disablement of your account, our specialist team reviewed the disablement of your account and we can confirm that your account was correctly disabled for violations of our Terms of Service and Community Standards.  Our internal policies and protocols with respect to the application of our Terms and Community Standards are not your personal data and so these documents do not fall within the scope of Article 15 GDPR.
 
With respect to our decision to disable your account we reserve the right not to provide users with access to data relating to disablement and we are entitled to do so under the exemptions to article 15 GDPR.
 
To the extent information contained in internal documentation in respect of the violation of our policies and protocols comprises personal data about you, we are not able to provide this information to you as such provision could adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others, as set out in Article 15 (4) GDPR.  This would include the rights and freedoms of the members of our Community Operations team but more importantly, the rights and freedoms of users who have reported your behaviour.
 
Furthermore, providing specific information around what exactly triggers disablement may have the propensity to prejudice the effective application of our policies and protocols by potentially allowing individuals to understand how we determine breaches and therefore how to adjust their behaviour slightly so as to avoid their account being actioned.  As such, we will not comply with your request for this specific data.
 
We hope this is helpful information, but please do let us know if you have any further questions.
 
Facebook
 
 
I then responded on the 20th August as follows:-
 
 
 
Dear Sir
 
Thank you for your letter of the 14th August. 
 
Your answer is wholly unsatisfactory and amounts to a blatant breach not only of the GDPR but also of the basic “Rules of Natural Justice”.
 
I shall now seek your prosecution for criminal breaches of the GDPR.
 
Yours faithfully
 
 
R C W Tilbrook
 
 
I have also written to the Information Commissioner as follows on the 21st August:-
 
Dear Sir
 
Complaint against Facebook
 
I enclose a copy of my letter to Facebook dated the 29th July 2019 requesting information under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 [Data Protection Act 2018 (UK)].  I also enclose a copy of Facebook’s response dated the 14thAugust, together with my reply. 
 
In the circumstances I formally request that you accept this as a complaint against Facebook.  I should like to see them prosecuted if they fail to provide the requisite data.
 
Yours faithfully
 
 
R C W Tilbrook
 


LABOUR IN TURMOIL IN SCOTLAND – AGAIN!

LABOUR IN TURMOIL IN SCOTLAND AGAIN


Kezia Dugdale, the Labour Scottish Leader, has just resigned with immediate effect after only serving a two year period since 15th August 2015.

On the face of it as, under her leadership the Party has gone from one MP to seven, you would have thought she might have been considered a success and be wanting to stay on. But she has resigned with all sorts of rumours as to why she has done so now floating around.

I wonder if the answer might be quite simple?

Ms Dugdale has invested a lot of time and effort in trying to move Labour towards a “Federal” system, whereby the different nations of the United Kingdom would have separate powers defined as against the powers of the centre (i.e. more like the United States of America), than was the case before the devolution process started under Blair.

She seemed to be having some success in terms of the newspaper headlines with it being announced only last week that Labour was going to move to a Federal system. 

Here is a link to an article about this >>> Jeremy Corbyn puts federal government ‘on the table’ if Labour win power | The Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-labour-federal-government-kezia-dugdale-devolution-scotland-wales-northern-ireland-stv-a7913876.html

It then came out that the supposed “Federal System” was one in which England wasn’t going to get any representation, but instead the English “Regions” were going to get some sort of limited representation.

But what must have finished it off for her was Jeremy Corbyn’s remarkably stupid remark in answer to a question at a well-publicised Question and Answer session at the Edinburgh Festival in which he said:-

“We are thinking very hard about what forms devolution would take in the future. Devolution in Scotland has gone a long way.

“We are looking at the way we bring about genuine devolution and particularly economic devolution. Could you have a separate economic and legal system in different parts of the UK?

“I think that becomes difficult and very problematic. I want a Labour government that is going to legislate better working conditions for everybody across the UK.”

Here is a link to an article about this >>> Jeremy Corbyn mocked for saying ‘problematic’ for Scotland to have own legal system – even though it does already | PoliticsHo

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/home-affairs/justice-system/news/88503/jeremy-corbyn-mocked-saying-problematic-scotland-have

The fact that Mr Corbyn could say that about Scotland, which has always had a separate legal system not only shows that the man is profoundly ignorant of the basic constitutional structure of the United Kingdom, but also it gives an insight into his real views. What he said is just like a “spoonerism” where you mis-say a word which gives away your real views.

This comment is a political spoonerism where Jeremy Corby has given away the fact that he generally is not interested in any sort of a Federal system, since of course all Federal systems have to some extent different legal and economic arrangements in the different states!

If YOU had been working on trying to make Labour Federal and then your Leader had come up to Edinburgh and at a high profile event made such a stupid remark which gave away his true opposition to everything you had been working on, wouldn’t you resign too?

I wonder whether we will next hear that Kezie Dugdale has joined her new girlfriend the SNP Member of the Scottish Parliament, Jenny Gilrath in the Scottish National Party?

ENGLAND AND WALES: IS IT TIME TO SPLIT THE LEGAL SYSTEM?


ENGLAND AND WALES: IS IT TIME TO SPLIT THE LEGAL SYSTEM?

I recently wrote an article about the above for publication on the Institute for Welsh Affairs’ website “Click on Wales”. It was published slightly amended here >>> England and Wales: is it time to split the legal system? – Click on Wales

http://www.iwa.wales/click/2017/03/england-wales-time-split-legal-system/

Here is my full original article:-

ENGLAND AND WALES – TIME TO SPLIT THE LEGAL SYSTEM?

There are now beginning to be moves afoot to split the unitary “jurisdiction” of England and Wales into two separate national jurisdictions.

In many ways such a split is not as radical a move as it might seem, bearing in mind that there are already separate jurisdictions in Scotland; in Northern Ireland; in the Isle of Man and in the Channel Isles with different Judges, procedures and often different substantive legal rules. Separate jurisdictions do not necessarily cause much practical difficulty in dealing with either civil matters or criminal matters. What it does however mean is that there would be separate legal professions.

Furthermore, even outside the Commonwealth, jurisdictions like Southern Ireland have relatively similar rules.

The jurisdictions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and quite a few others of the old Empire/Commonwealth are similar to. There are also often less differences between their legal systems and the English/Welsh legal system than there is with the Roman Law based jurisdiction in Scotland.

It is more difficult to deal with continental European systems since they are not based on Common Law principles but rather on civil law codes deriving from Roman Law, with substantively different legal rules and often dramatically different legal procedures!

My interest in the splitting of the current unitary jurisdiction of “England and Wales” into two national ones was first raised by a discussion that I had some months ago with a senior Welsh Judge who said that he wants to see a split.

Then, just before Christmas, the Law Society Gazette had an article called in the printed version “A bridge too far” talking about splitting the jurisdictions. The on-line edition was called: English solicitors ‘could pay extra to practise in Wales’. (It can be found here >>> https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/law/english-solicitors-could-pay-extra-to-practise-in-wales/5059013.article)

Increasingly the Welsh Parliament/Senedd are legislating for Wales, in a way that is different than the legislation for England. There will therefore come a time very soon when it no longer makes sense to have a single jurisdiction.

Putting my hat on as Chairman of the English Democrats rather than as a solicitor I would also welcome separation of the jurisdictions as being an important step in the direction of Independence between our two Nations. In our modern world there is no reason why our two separate Nations should be constrained into the same grossly expensive and inefficient, grandiose and extravagant UK State!

If I were a Welsh solicitor or barrister I would be optimistic about the prospects of a successful separate Welsh Jurisdiction.

As long as the Welsh Government could be persuaded to reduce the currently absolutely ridiculous level of court fees, by which the British Government has been exploiting litigants in the “England and Wales” jurisdiction there would be real benefits.

The Welsh Government would then have the right to run its own Legal Aid scheme. This could be more like the successful Scottish one and less like the unfair disaster that the “British” Government has created.

It should also be pointed out that the Welsh Government ought to want to take-over the judicial appointments system, which in England and Wales is currently very politicised.

Judges here are currently appointed and promoted by the Judicial Appointments Commission. The JAC was set up by Lord Derry Irvine, when he was Tony Blair’s Lord Chancellor, which he publically boasted would prevent the appointment or promotion of “those with reactionary views”. This aim might appeal to you or repulse you depending on which side you stand on politically, but what cannot be denied is that this is an expressly political criterion for the appointment of Judges. It is wholly inappropriate to getting the best lawyers appointed as Judges. It is also contrary to providing the best service to those who use the court system!

Far from being a problem the separate jurisdictions could make the Welsh jurisdiction very attractive and might lead to many businesses having a Welsh-only legal jurisdiction clause in commercial contracts since there would be less expense and less delay and perhaps a better selection of sensible Welsh Judges.

Also from an economic point of view the current arrangements are clearly not working very well for Welsh lawyers as it appears that fees in Wales are dramatically lower than those in England.

A separate and overhauled and sensibly rationalised completely Welsh legal system could well be much more competitive with the English jurisdiction and provide a boost not only to Welsh lawyers but also to the Welsh economy.

As the Gazette article says:- “The buildings are all here (in Wales), the judges are all here. More is spent per head in England,’ said Hughes. ‘At the moment Wales is not gaining [in terms of] access to justice. SMEs in Wales are subsidising multi-million-pound litigation between oligarchs in London. That does nothing for the community in Wales – the fees are not coming back.’

A legally independent Wales would be able to do ‘imaginative’ things to enhance access, Hughes suggested, such as introduce a contingency legal aid fund. ‘Wales would not be a particularly small common law jurisdiction. If it were a US state, 20 [states] would be smaller,’ he added.

‘The problems of the Wales bill are largely to do with the mania for preserving a fused jurisdiction,’ said Hughes. ‘But the bill is a con. It is not a reserved powers model on any sensible understanding. There is a presumption against competence in private law.

’Since our pamphlet came out the Assembly has come out in support of a separate jurisdiction and the Welsh government is using the arguments we put forward – both economic and constitutional.’

As both an English Solicitor and also as the Chairman of the English Democrats, I welcome these moves. Also if any reader in Wales supports a separate Welsh legal system then I would urge them to write to their Assembly Members and MP to lobby them to support a separate legal system. Do not forget also to write in to Barrister David Hughes, of 30 Park Place Chambers in Cardiff, supporting him as well!