Filling in the gaps
Most legal vacancies now announced
Andy Slaughter MP, currently chair of the Commons justice committee, has been appointed solicitor general. He will deputise for the attorney general Ellie Reeves KC MP and is expected to deal with unduly lenient sentences.
Slaughter was called to the bar in 1993 and has been an MP since 2005. He held shadow ministerial posts while Labour was in opposition.
Catherine McKinnell MP has been made a minister of state in the Ministry of Justice. A former practising solicitor, she was first elected to parliament in 2010 and was minister for school standards at the Department for Education from July 2024 to September 2025.
Sarah Sackman KC MP keeps her job as a minister of state in the Ministry of Justice.
Baroness Smith of Cluny KC remains advocate general for Scotland, a law officer of the UK government.
Lord Timpson OBE has left the government — although at time of writing he is still listed as prisons minister at the Ministry of Justice.
Comment
Sackman provides a measure of continuity at the Ministry of Justice. Even if the jury reforms in the Courts and Tribunals Bill are dropped, she will be able to see the lees controversial parts of the bill through the Commons. But the ministerial line-up at the Ministry of Justice is not yet complete.
Sorry- finger slipped of practitioners being required to act as surrogate pen pushers for the MOJ over legal aid processing. I know that in my many years of practice tottering to my feet to deliver found me already half weary. But then I expect that will be outside his new remit. All the same, let us hope that he and other appointees will be able to empathise with those at the coal face rather than listen overmuch to officials- however well meaning and diligent- who work on and reinforce each other in their untested assumptions of the work patterns and commitment of those actually striving to do the job.
Sarah Sackman KC-I fear- has over interpreter provision and woeful non delivery by the outsourced companies shown herself to be gullible and over ready to accept the self serving reports of those same profit driven entities who are allowed to mark their own homework since the MOJ keeps no meaningful statistics. Sorry: rant over- but it is my earnest and -yes- informed view, as per wife Dr Yvonne’s academic and interpreter training background and vast tracts of time spent on seeking skilled, professional interpreters with that -I repeat- profession having statutory recognition.
These appointments overall seem- gasp!- downright sensible. Andy Slaughter has shown every sign of understanding practitioners’ concerns over the nuts and bolts of suchlike as the stultifying burden of acting as surrogate