Labour lawyers

I don’t believe Shabana Mahmood has given many interviews since she became lord chancellor and justice secretary on 5 July. The attorney general Lord Hermer KC and the solicitor general Sarah Sackman KC MP have been a little more forthcoming but neither is a familiar public figure.

So it was worth a trip to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool to hear the government’s three principal legal figures share a platform with Richard Atkinson, vice-president of the Law Society, and Sam Townend KC, chair of the bar. They were introduced by Catherine Atkinson MP, chair of the Society of Labour Lawyers.

This podcast includes edited extracts from their comments, beginning with responses to questions from the floor. There were, as might have been expected, more questions from the lawyers than answers from the justice secretary. But while the two law officers avoided getting too closely involved in party politics, both had some pretty robust things to say about the policies that are most important to them.

Hermer, in particular, said that lawyers, including those in government, need to explain and popularise human rights and the rule of law. “I think we need to be militant about our belief in the rule of law and human rights,” he added. “We should be shouting it from the rooftops.”