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And universal disappointment at the China spy case collapse

The senior family judge of England and Wales is to retire next April. Sir Andrew McFarlane, 71, president of the High Court family division since 2018, told the Commons justice committee yesterday that he had given six months’ notice of his intention to stand down. His time in office had been a period of “enormous change”, he added.

Asked by MPs about the well-regarded but underfunded problem-solving court known as FDAC — which stands for family drug and alcohol court — McFarlane almost threw more than two decades of judicial caution to the winds. Click the ► symbol to watch:

When a committee member asked McFarlane what was being done to find a successor, he said that would be a matter for the Judicial Appointments Commission.

Within the legal profession, though, the favourite to succeed him is Lord Justice Cobb, 63.

Update 1600: a transcript of the session has now been published.

China spy case latest

The attorney general Lord Hermer KC is to give oral evidence this morning to the committee of MPs and peers investigating the collapse of secrets charges last month against Chris Berry, a teacher, and Chris Cash, a former parliamentary researcher.

Parliament’s joint committee on the national security strategy published transcripts yesterday of the evidence it took on Monday from the director of prosecutions Stephen Parkinson and the government’s deputy national security adviser for intelligence, defence and security, Matthew Collins.

What emerges from the transcripts is prosecutors painting themselves into a corner from which their key witness could not help them escape. Having taken a legal decision that Lord Carlile of Berriew CBE KC told the committee was “inexplicable”, Parkinson and his counsel discovered too late that Collins was an obedient government servant and, as such, no more than his master’s voice.

Readers will remember that, as the security minister Dan Jarvis told MPs on 15 September, the government was “extremely disappointed” that the case had collapsed. But the decision had been one for the Crown Prosecution Service.

As head of the CPS, Parkinson told MPs and peers on Monday that he too was “disappointed” that the case could not proceed to trial. But, he implied, it wasn’t his fault: the deputy national security adviser was unable to provide the evidence needed.

Matthew Collins, giving evidence on Monday

And how did Collins feel about the case collapsing? In a word, “disappointed”. In effect, it wasn’t his fault either.

No prizes for guessing how Hermer will answer the same question this morning.

Update 6 November: after an unexplained delay, the committee has now published a transcript of Hermer’s evidence. Asked whether he was disappointed, the attorney general replied “Yes, absolutely — of course.”