Those unfamiliar with the British constitution sometimes marvel at the speed with which government and opposition switch sides after the governing party is defeated at a general election.
The business of government carries on almost as if nothing has changed. What’s striking about the King’s Speech delivered yesterday is that parts of the Conservatives’ unfinished legislative programme have simply been taken over by Labour.
One is the Holocaust Memorial Bill. I’m not sure whether ministers realise that the plan to build an ugly memorial in a much-loved park adjoining the Palace of Westminster was a highly political and deeply controversial decision dating from early days of David Cameron’s first government. But perhaps they do, given the defensiveness of this paragraph in the government’s background notes:
Victoria Tower Gardens will remain open to the public, with only a small area taken for the Holocaust memorial. The design is sensitive to the heritage and existing uses of Victoria Tower Gardens. The memorial and learning centre, much of which will be underground, will take up approximately 7.5 per cent of the park, while making enhancements to the remainder of the gardens that will help all visitors, including better pathways and improved access to existing memorials. The 1900 act only applies to Victoria Tower Gardens, no other park.
There are some proposals that the last government never quite got round to implementing and I’ll have more to say about these in my column for the Law Society Gazette tomorrow. And there are some clear policy reversals. Parts of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 will be repealed and the UK will withdraw from its migration and economic development partnership with Rwanda.
The most urgent reform to be introduced by the new Labour government involves reducing the prison population. That must have become even more urgent with the news that Dartmoor prison is being closed, temporarily, to protect inmates from high levels of radon gas.
It is well known that Alex Chalk, the former lord chancellor, tried to persuade Rishi Sunak to release prisoners early. The former prime minister was unwilling to do so because of opposition from the right of his party in parliament.
Chalk’s successor, Shabana Mahmood, was expected to lay a statutory instrument before parliament yesterday that would allow some prisoners to be released on licence after serving 40% of their sentences in custody. This had not been published at the time of writing.
Meanwhile, it seems that ministers and their advisers have not yet mastered the subtle distinction between the Labour government and the Labour party. Guidance says that “government communication should not be — or liable to be — misrepresented as being party political”.
So a former prime minister was fully entitled to object when the government’s notes on the Budget Responsibility Bill included this paragraph:
That and a separate reference to “the mistakes of [the] Liz Truss mini-budget” were removed during the day.
Similarly, Mahmood’s first speech as lord chancellor — delivered at Five Wells prison last Friday — had to be edited before it could be published on a government website. As Melanie Phillips (in whom I declare an interest) wrote in The Times on Tuesday, Mahmood
used melodramatic language to attack the previous government as a “gang” of “guilty men”, and to paint a lurid picture of the courts grinding to a halt, police unable to make arrests and “looters running amok, smashing in windows, robbing shops and setting neighbourhoods alight.
“Looters running amok” was fine. But the only “guilty men” in the version published by the Ministry of Justice a few hours later were prisoners.
Readers may have been mystified by an unusual heading on the government website:
The version of her speech circulated by her special advisers — who are allowed to be political — began:
I became Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice a week ago today.
In that week, it has become clear that the last government left this country on the brink of disaster.
Our prisons are on the point of collapse. There is no other way of putting it.
What is worse: the previous government knew this would happen.
The male prison estate is now running at over 99 percent capacity.
It has been at around that level for 18 months.
For that entire time, the last government courted catastrophe.
Only ever doing enough to delay disaster for another day or week.
Time and again, they ducked the difficult decisions that could have addressed this challenge.
Instead, they kept the public in the dark about the state they had left this country in.
They were too weak to heed the warning signs that were flashing.
They chose instead to put the country at risk.
We now know that the former lord chancellor tried to address this challenge.
He tried to warn the then prime minister.
But, instead of taking responsibility, Rishi Sunak called an election.
He tried to hoodwink the electorate.
And he was punished at the ballot box.
Rightly so.
Those responsible — Sunak and his gang in Number 10 — should go down in history as the guilty men.
The guilty men who put their political careers ahead of the safety and security of our country.
It was the most disgraceful dereliction of duty I have ever known.
The last government left us with a time-bomb, ticking away.
So let me explain what happens if that bomb goes off.
Let me explain what happens when prisons run out of space.
That sort of stuff is fine at a party conference, when civil servants never attend. But it’s inappropriate for a ministerial speech — not least one delivered on government property, such as a prison.
I am sure the lessons have been learned and we won’t see this sort of misstep happening again. But it’s just another example of the fact that the transition to a new government is not quite as smooth as we would all like to believe.
Update 19 July: A few hours after this piece had appeared, Mahmood told MPs that she had not used the phrase “guilty men” flippantly.
On the Lord Chancellor/ Justice Secretary’s robust words, come on, gentlemen: give her a chance! And why turn on HER so roundly when I can recall no such direct censure when Grayling, Raab, Truss and others so mistook their office in their actions, INactions and MISdeeds. There is certainly something in what in particular David Burrows says BUT Shabana Mahmood is now ACTING robustly in pursuit of her clear duty over tackling our prisons crisis, in a way- frankly- that I had been dismayed to find lacking on the part of a number of Labour Justice Secretaries or Shadow Justice Secretaries, come to that. With Mahmood’s -as I believe - meritorious appointment, more power to her elbow and more dovetailing attacks of sanity in that area, please- the sooner the better. And let us NOT forget that - again I say it- stain on our criminal justice system, IPP sentences. Legal Aid, certainly: for forty seven years I fought for adequate remuneration, what is more struggling on and JUST keep a legal aid practice on the road. I continue to regard the plans for that Holocaust memorial as seriously misguided, as do many, but let us see.
David, I thoroughly agree. Mackay with whom I spent an evening privately was the last true LC. The new LC’s language was astonishing.