WIREDGOV

Full text of the speech given by the Rt Hon Richard Hermer KC as he was sworn in as Attorney General at the Royal Courts of Justice (15 July 2024).

It is a profound privilege to address the Lady Chief Justice and the Lord Chancellor and all the members of this court.  

It is also a personal pleasure for me to make submissions in this courtroom when the risk of being asked tricky legal questions is at least lower than normal. 

Being in government is a privilege that carries the responsibility of having to make hard choices but as we face the challenging path ahead the rule of law will be the lodestar for this government.

Governments should be judged by their deeds not by their rhetoric but I hope the professions and the public can take some comfort from the fact that, from the Prime Minister down, the new government is comprised of individuals who have the rule of law imprinted into their DNA, none more so than our new Lord Chancellor. 

For all the reasons set out by my lady and for many more, I can tell the Court that we have a Lord Chancellor with the character, authority, intellect and experience not just to protect the rule of law but to begin to address the deep challenges facing our justice system. 

We also have a Solicitor General who brings precisely the right mix of legal acumen, political nous and a dedication to public service to help make law and politics work together.  

We wish to work with all in our mission to protect and promote the rule of law.  Its principles are at the heart of the organisations the Law Officer’s superintend and we will work collegiately with the Bar Council, Law Society and CILEX in what I know is our shared endeavour to entrench the rule of law and promote human rights.

We recognise the imperative of seeking to ensure a cross-party consensus about our shared fundamental values and how we protect them for future generations. 

The values that we are seeking to protect are not the property of any political party, they are not Labour values or Conservative values they are British values, indeed in many respects universal values. 

The task has never been more urgent.  In recent years, events at home and abroad serve to remind us all that once you start pulling on a single thread of the fabric of the rule of law system, when democratic norms are whittled away through attrition, the risk of systemic unravelling is great and the concomitant task of retrenching standards we once took for granted, very difficult indeed. 

So My Lady the Law Officers will work together with the Lord Chancellor on our mission to protect and promote the rule of law.  There is much to be done, too many tasks to describe in my allotted time, but let me say this.

We will support the Lord Chancellor’s mandate to protect the independence of the judiciary, allied to this we will work with her to promote better appreciation in Westminster and beyond of our constitutional balance in which a respectful relationship between parliament, the executive and the courts is understood to be the bedrock of our framework of governance.

We will work closely with the Lord Chancellor to promote the rule of law amongst the public, not least young people – seeking to use it to rebuild trust in our political system by explaining how it serves all of us and that no-one, least of all politicians, are above it. 

Just as we will promote the rule of law domestically, so we will seek to promote international law and the rule of law in the international legal order. We will support the Foreign Secretary in all his efforts - cognisant of the importance of international law and the rule of law for the prosperity and security of all global citizens.

Looking inwards, we will seek to promote the highest standards in how we legislate – seeking to increase accessibility and certainty in how we make law, including not abusing the use of secondary legislation

Finally, as Law Officers we will seek to provide the Government that we serve with legal advice of the highest calibre and ensure that law is at the heart of everything that it does. 

Notwithstanding the Law Officer’s commitment to the political aims of the government our legal analysis will always be guided by law not politics. 

As I told a meeting with all of GLD staff last week – it is our job to speak truth to power. Sometimes we will get it wrong and in their judgments these Courts will explain why, and we will seek to learn and do better. 

That is how our system works, it is as Lord Bingham said, a cardinal feature of the modern democratic state and the cornerstone of the rule of law.