Just for show?
What sort of lord chancellor will Alex Norris be?
The lord chancellor’s swearing-in ceremony “is effectively just for show”, Ministry of Justice officials are said to have told The Times. Although the ceremony has been scheduled for 1 October, the paper reported that Alex Norris “had in fact been officially sworn in before the Privy Council on 21 July”.
I’m not so sure.
As Alexander Horne points out in his well-informed legal musings on Substack, Norris had not previously served in the cabinet and was appointed to the Privy Council on his first day as secretary of state for justice. He must therefore have taken the elaborate Privy Council oath.
At a meeting held by the King, we are told he was also “sworn Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and one of His Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State (Justice)”. Other ministers were also sworn in.
There was a further announcement:
Did Norris swear the oath that the lord chancellor alone is required to take under the Constitutional Reform Act? Or did he merely take same oath or affirmation as every other new minister that day?
The latter seems more likely to me, for two reasons. First, the lord chancellor’s statutory oath does not mention the additional post of justice secretary, which Norris also holds. So he would have needed to take two separate oaths on 21 July — the statutory oath and the ministerial oath — but the Privy Council announcement says he took only one.
Secondly, Dominic Raab had to take the lord chancellor’s oath on his second appointment to the post in 2022. He did so before the senior judiciary of England of Wales on 2 November that year. As this picture shows, the oath was administered by Antonia Romeo, who was then Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. I discussed at the time why nobody was robed.
If Raab needed to be sworn in as a minister then its seems safe to assume that this happened shortly after his reappointment on 25 October. But if he had also taken the lord chancellor’s statutory oath on that occasion then it’s hard to see why he needed to do so again at a private ceremony a week later.
If that’s right and nothing has changed over the past four years, then the oath Norris will take on 1 October is not just for show: it is a statutory requirement. We can now see that the courtroom ceremony may be optional — but it demonstrates to the lord chancellor and the wider public that this is a post unlike any other in cabinet. It’s also a great show.
All this is by way of introduction to my column for today’s Law Society Gazette. It looks at the decision to defer Norris’s formal swearing-in for two months and what it may tell us about his working relationship with the lady chief justice. To read it, click here and then click anywhere on the left-hand page.
Quite clearly the oath needs to be taken. The Premissory Oaths Act 1868 was amended by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 to put a specific oath in for the Lord Chancellor. The 1868 Act says that if the oath is not administered, then they must vacate their office. What is more worrying is the statement that the oath is just for show. That seems to indicate that nobody is taking the oath seriously, which, given the Lord Chancellor is supposed to uphold the rule of law (although so is the rest of the government), suggests they don't want to take that particularly seriously.
I previously decried the use of non-legally qualified politicians as the Lord Chancellor. And to show that I'm not party political, I can quite happily criticise here too. The Lord Chancellor should have a legal background. I don't happen to think that it needs to be a practising background, and it could be an academic (and no, I really do not want the job!), but they should have knowledge of the law so that they can understand the duties and obligations of their office. They are not just a cabinet minister. Statements such as, "this is just for show" demonstrate why this is important and why this appointment was wrong. Even if they are going to change the jury proposals, it also suggests that the Burnham government does not understand the legal system, and perhaps worryingly, the need to protect the rule of law. I wonder whether, as in previous administrations, we will now see the AG or SG being the one who comes out and comments if judicial independence is under attack. While any defence is welcome, it does not excuse the fact that the Lord Chancellor should be the one who leads any fight.
Does Norris have legal qualifications? When his appointment was announced by the new PM he was of if I recall correctly, described as a union organiser or similar?