Contribution
My Lords, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, will forgive me for intervening. I certainly do not wish to prolong these proceedings, and I agree with a great deal of what he said about their irrelevance to the Bill, but I should say a word because, as it happens, I am a former holder of two of the offices referred to in these amendments—first as Lord President of the Court of Session, later as a Law Lord, and later still as a Justice of the Supreme Court—so I can say a little bit about what these amendments might mean for them and for the House.
As far as the Lord President is concerned, I think the noble Lords, Lord Wolfson and Lord Anderson, will be alarmed to know that I received a peerage not when I was appointed as Lord President but after I had been serving as Lord President for about five years. It came to me as an honour in the New Year Honours List, for which I was, of course, extremely grateful.
A few years later, I became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, but I was already a Peer, so I did not have to become another form of Law Lord—that is, a Law Lord Lord—as I was already a life Peer. I thought that would see me through until retirement, but in 2003, when I was travelling home to Edinburgh and was in the lounge at Heathrow Airport, I was greeted by an announcement on the television set that the body to which I belonged—the Law Lords—was being abolished and that a new Supreme Court was to be created. So it was that, when the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 was enacted, I became disqualified as a result of Section 137. I never came here during that time, except possibly once to sit on the steps of the Throne to see what was going on. It was only after I retired that I was able to come back here because the disqualification was lifted.
I do not remember there being an agreement, as it were, that at some stage the Justices of the Supreme Court would be granted peerages. Certainly in 2003, when the whole issue blew up, there was very strong resistance to the judges being in the Lords at any time, whether serving or retired. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, knows where the bodies are buried, not I, but there certainly was that resistance. I do not recall any undertaking and nor was it buried under the sofa, because it was quite a strong feeling at the time. There it is—that is what the position was at that time.
So far as the amendments are concerned, I will say a word about the Lord President. The Lord President’s place of work is as a judge in Edinburgh. I found it an extremely demanding and time-consuming job. I came here to take the oath after I received my peerage and I came later on, for one day, to make my maiden speech, but I cannot remember coming at any other stage as Lord President. My predecessor, Lord Emsley, was in much the same position. He received a peerage after he had been serving as Lord President but he very rarely, if ever, came to speak.
Those were pre-devolution days. Now, the situation has changed markedly. The system over which the Lord President presides is devolved, and much of the law that he and his colleagues in the court look at is devolved, so the occasions for the Lord President feeling justified in taking time to come to London to sit and speak in the House of Lords will be very few and far between. The same would be true, with respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, of the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. It is a different matter after retirement, of course, but as serving judges their place here would be difficult to justify.
So far as the Supreme Court is concerned, of course, its place of work is not here—it is just across Parliament Square—but I can say, having worked there for four years, that it seems a very long way from this House. In the summer months you have to fight your way through the crowds to get here from there, and, of course, there are all the problems of finding a place and finding an occasion to speak. One thing we have lost, inevitably, is the connection with the House, which I felt very strongly as a serving Law Lord: I used to come here, not to take part very much but to listen to debates and understand what was going on. That connection and the wish to participate has been lost.