Jonathan Jones
@SirJJKC
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Senior Consultant, Linklaters. Visiting Prof, Durham Law School. Senior Fellow, Institute for Government. Lay Canon, Ely Cathedral. Mainly law. And cocktails
London, England
Joined September 2017
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Confirming I am standing down as Treasury Solicitor and Permanent Secretary of the Government Legal Department. I have had a wonderful career spanning 30+ years and more than 7 in this post. Thank you to my brilliant dedicated colleagues.
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Suggested new ministerial code:
1. Obey the law
2. Don’t lie about it
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Just remembered I once worked with a government minister who claimed for the cost of a poppy
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Why is “lawyer” now an insult? Even Prime Ministers need lawyers. Some more than others.
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Parliament had a system for regulating the conduct of its members. The procedure ran its course. It found an MP guilty of serious misconduct. His party voted to overturn the finding & change the rules. This is not a functioning system of regulation or justice.
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I feel I should offer a fulsome apology on behalf of all those who have not been at their desks, but instead have been downstreaming films or having fun on tennis pitches
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Now I read a barrister says Keir Starmer is “undermining the presumption of innocence” (ie presumably *his own innocence*) by … *protesting his innocence*, but exercising his own choice to resign if the police find otherwise. I give up. I’m going to listen to some Bach.
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“I will wait until the outcome of the inquiry into my own conduct before I decide whether I’ve done anything wrong”
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Whatever else you make of Sir William Cash’s intervention in the debate earlier, he’s wrong to say a fixed penalty notice is a “civil penalty fine”. Breach of the covid regulations is a criminal offence, not a civil wrong. An FPN is a way of disposing of a criminal case.
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I have learned a “scruple” is an old unit of weight = 20 grains. Now, bringing back scruples is a thought.
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It’s remarkable that these civil servants are so resourceful & on top of things that they are capable of thwarting and outwitting Ministers, while *at the same time* being absent and work-shy
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Can anyone tell me, honestly, whether adding (or not) a bay leaf to any recipe makes the slightest difference to the taste? Are we all the victims of a massive scam by bay leaf manufacturers?
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But … almost no civil servants have fixed desks … so he won’t know who he was “visiting”, where they were, or who they are if he “sees them in the office”. The Minister for Government Efficiency
Jacob Rees-Mogg is leaving this note for civil servants who aren’t at their desks…
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This “I’m not aware of any evidence …” is pants. If someone says something happened, that’s evidence. It may or not be true, but it’s evidence.
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The government seems to have a thing about lawyers - lefty ones who challenge the government, over-cautious ones who work for it. I don’t think it’s very healthy. It’s part of an overall aversion to challenge, scrutiny or disagreement
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Apparently the
@Telegraph
has an article describing me as a “baby-faced former barrister”. A “friend” has commented “harsh on babies I would say”. (And why “former”?)
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Did he really say that? How ridiculous. Lady Hale retired at the mandatory retirement age after an outstandingly distinguished career. Is what sense was she “seen off”? And how could any responsible PM take pride in “seeing off” such an eminent & respected judge?
In the PM's opening of the Vote of No Confidence in the Government he said "We saw off Brenda Hale".
You what? What is he on about?
This is embarrassing.
He's debating as if he in the Oxford Union, not in the House of Commons.
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These attacks on “activist lawyers” are crass as well as damaging. If the government loses a case (following any appeal etc where relevant) it’s because it got the decision wrong. How can that be the “fault” of the lawyers bringing the case?
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A summary
- Government makes almost all gatherings criminal
- PM tells parliament all rules were obeyed in No 10 and he wasn’t aware of any parties
- Report finds there were multiple parties
- PM was at some of them
- PM is questioned by police about possible offences
Not normal
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I’m particularly puzzled by the people who’ve *cancelled* pre-existing donations to
@RNLI
. Did they assume (& hope) that there were some categories of people that RNLI would ignore & let drown? And now they’re disappointed to discover that no, they save those people too?
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“Arachnophobia is a serious problem, whether it’s people fearing spiders, or spiders fearing people.”
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Once again, I think we are allowed to care about more than one thing at the same time - like Ukraine, and whether Ministers broke the law
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The Home Office’s request for the Braverman video to be removed doesn’t seem to have worked
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If we’re going down this route - I don’t have a car, or children, so can I please be excused from paying for roads, schools and stuff
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It bears repeating that responsibility for the Brexit deal rests with the government that negotiated it, signed it and recommended it to Parliament and the country as a great outcome. /1
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For the sake of putting (at most) a few hundred people on a plane to a place recently found to be unsafe by our highest court [not a foreign court]:
- she wants the UK to breach every relevant international treaty on torture, mis-treatment, detention or fair process /1
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That’s quite a startling statement from the Lord Chancellor
Raab, "The police don't normally look back and investigate things that have taken place a year ago"
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Wouldn’t it be great to have politicians who:
- understand the treaties they sign up to
- are honest about their consequences
- don’t blame other people for those consequences
- don’t expect other people to clear up the resulting mess?
May keep tweeting this.
Question today
@HouseofCommons
regarding the NI Protocol - which is simply not working - asking what will the UK Govt do in the short term to rectify/intervene, to address the issues with the protocol as many traders encounter problems shipping goods across the Irish Sea...
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The UK has lots of treaties with other states, including all those nice trade deals. What would the government, including the Attorney Gen, think if one of those states said:
- “We’ve changed our mind about that recent deal. You forced us into it. We demand you agree changes” /1
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“Miss Marple and the Missing Exchange”. In which an elderly spinster makes the astonishing discovery that WhatsApp messages aren’t lost when you change phones
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“I have written a very strict letter to the golf club, demanding they change the arrangements I agreed with them when I resigned my membership a couple of months ago.”
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How is it “undermining” a police investigation (or putting “pressure” on them) to say you will respect the outcome and make a personal choice about your own position?
Sir Keir undermining a police investigation while lecturing about undermining the country...
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I’m not an apologist for the Privileges Committee but:
1 They’re investigating because the House of Commons told them to
2 They’re not relying on the Sue Gray investigation, they’re doing their own /1
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This guy doesn’t have a clue how public inquiries work. (Or I assume courts, or parliament, or any committee …)
Fairly disgraceful that the Covid Inquiry doesn't sit until 10am, doesn't work past 5pm, and doesn't sit on Fridays.
Dragging this on for far longer than necessary, and at greater cost as a result.
What a microcosm of government efficiency.
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What a strange state of affairs. “Let’s make a huge change, it will bring great benefits for the country”. “OK we’ve done that, can anyone now suggest any benefits we might get out of it?”
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Can even our politicians and supposedly serious journalists not understand that both these things are true: 1. GB & NI are part of the same state. 2. NI is subject to different trading rules from GB because of a binding international agreement freely entered into between UK & EU?
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This “the Prime Minister is expected to announce ...” business is very irksome. Especially on something so important for the country & still so contentious. Rather than drip feed to the media, why not announce properly in Parliament, where our elected representatives can ask Qs?
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Now this cocktail is bang up to date. No 10 gin. Highly corrosive acid (lime juice). More heat than light (ginger liqueur). Shake chaotically over shards of ice until melt-down. Add media froth (champagne). Garnish w/ tears and (wasted) thyme. Do suggest names.
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Sunak could simply say he’s not proposing to put forward any resignation honours - for Johnson, Truss (if anyone thinks she’s entitled to nominate any), or himself when he leaves. It would be a modest, sensible step
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However you look at it, it is curious to resign from a job because it’s the “right thing to do”, “the business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes”, “carrying on” wouldn’t be “serious politics”; and take the same job just days later
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I don’t think you can have negotiating “red lines” on things you have already agreed and signed up to.
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There’s a risk of a turkey shortage this Christmas. So if any turkeys would like to come over and help out, they’d be very welcome. Only until Christmas Eve though.
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It’s complete tosh isn’t it, and really unfair. All civil servants, up to Permanent Secretaries, are subject to thorough performance reviews. They’ve been working their socks off over Covid, inc MANY weekends, not least my colleagues in
@GovernmentLegal
and Home Office.
Is
@christopherhope
really so gullible and ignorant as to print this rubbish? *All* civil servants have performance reviews. That is well-known and on the public record.
Lazy and unprofessional journalism.
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“The fact that the EU is now denying us the benefits of membership (eg free movement) shows it’s a vindictive, controlling organisation, which proves how right we were to give up those benefits.” Makes my head hurt.
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Could chronic failure of an MP to attend parliament, or fulfil their duties as a member, amount to a contempt of parliament? I’m not aware of a precedent. But it might be regarded as conduct “bringing the House into odium, contempt or ridicule or by lowering its authority”
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“The common law replacing European law”. What a load of rubbish. EU law has already been replaced by statute law passed by parliament. And under the Bill that will now be replaced either by nothing, or by regulations made by ministers. “Common law” has nothing to do with it
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Lots of muddle here. Eg why is there a need to “devise a mechanism” for government to introduce legislation? We already have these things called “Acts of Parliament”. Unless of course there’s another attempt to *reduce* Parliament’s involvement.
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I’m sorry this is hopeless. No acceptance that UK bears any responsibility for what it agreed. Or that the “reality that now exists” (only months later) was foreseeable if not inevitable. The implication that EU must agree changes, or else. Blaming the Art 16 episode yet again...
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The minister responsible for our justice system doesn’t think “guilty” is an appropriate term for someone who, after an investigation, is found to have done a bad thing (and apologises for it)
The car crash interview of the year as Justice Secretary Dominic Raab shamelessly defends the indefensible
Superb from
@susannareid100
@GMB
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For those who favour a model where Law Officers are primarily dispassionate legal advisers & guardians of the rule of law, and above the hurly-burly of politics … this is not that model
PARLIAMENT: Attorney General Suella Braverman accuses Emily Thornberry of being "embarrassed of our flag" 🏴💥
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A reminder that the ERG’s own “Legal Advisory Committee” recognised that the Protocol “leads to checks being required between GB and NI”. It was precisely what the government signed up to.
Suella Braverman complaining about a border being erected between the UK and Northern Ireland... that was put there... by BREXIT and... agreed by Boris Johnson and her own fucking government
#bbcqt
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This government has an ambiguous attitude to the law. It wants the full “force of the law” to apply to everyone else (immigrants, covid rule-breakers, protesters ...), but not necessarily to itself.
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Wouldn’t it be great to have politicians who (a) understand the effects of the treaties they sign up to, and (b) don’t lie about those effects?
The U.K. needs to intervene urgently to free the flow of goods between GB and Northern Ireland. The U.K. needs to uphold the U.K. single market for all users.
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This is all quite entertaining. But I’m afraid the Ministerial Code is now mostly a waste of time & space. No-one can have any confidence that it will be properly enforced.
Lord Geidt is clearly pissed off with
@BorisJohnson
over Partygate.
But he's classic pass-ag, establishment-ese pissed off...
The PM is the ultimate arbiter, so may be not so bothered by it.
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This “being forced out of parliament by a tiny handful of people” is rubbish. He couldn’t be “forced out” without a vote of the whole House of Commons, a recall petition and a by-election
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Still seeing some quite misleading stuff about covid FPNs.
1. Breach of the relevant covid regulations was a criminal offence (not “civil” or something else).
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Apart from anything else - why always the dig at civil servants? It’s not mostly their day jobs to “come up with” imaginary animals, but some of them are as creative as anyone I know, including spare-time novelists, musicians, actors, producers, designers...
"Yesterday I went to Peppa Pig World... I loved it, it's very much my kind of place"
PM Boris Johnson tells CBI conference "no Whitehall civil servant would conceivably come up with Peppa" as he praises the "power of UK creativity"
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The “imposition of one side’s rules”? Nothing was “imposed”: UK agreed to the deal freely, it was a great triumph. “Legal purism”? Sticking to the agreed terms. UK is entitled to ask for changes but the idea that the EU “must” agree is legally wrong and deeply unhelpful
David Frost: the EU must revisit the Northern Ireland protocol
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We’ve had Lord Frost proposing a “tailored mechanism” for accelerating changes to retained EU law. Now Mr Raab suggests a mechanism for “correcting” court judgments. What can such mechanisms mean other than more hasty policy, less scrutiny, a reduced role for parliament?
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The ERG Opinion on the TCA is predictably vacuous. What does it even mean to say that the agreement "preserves the UK's sovereignty as a matter of law"? Like any such agreement, it imposes obligations on the UK under international law.
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Those wriggling over the PM’s Savile comment - “it was literally true - Starmer was head of the CPS, he didn’t in fact prosecute Savile, he apologised” - of course missed the point. It was all about context & intention. A nasty slur designed to stir up hostility.
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I was due to be presented with my knighthood today. I’m having to improvise.
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It’s so wearing. Why is everything a conspiracy or a witch-hunt or revenge for Brexit or someone else’s fault? Whether you agree or not, isn’t it possible the Committee did its best to consider all the evidence and reach what it (or a majority) felt was the right answer?
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I’m aware
@JolyonMaugham
is not everyone’s ☕️ (in my previous life I used to act against him) but I agree with much of this: the importance of governments/ministers obeying & caring about the law, and the weakness of some of the existing controls, especially the Ministerial Code.
Lots of people are asking what the consequences are of the High Court's holding. It's a good question. THREAD.
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What, all of it? The “EU laws” that successive UK governments promoted or supported? ALL the safety rules? The rules that UK businesses will have to comply with if they want to trade elsewhere?
If I am elected, by the time of the next election, I will have scrapped or reformed all of the EU law, red tape and bureaucracy that is still on our statute book and slowing economic growth.
Read my
@Telegraph
article and sign up
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Things that are legally inaccurate or irrelevant as regards Partygate:
- the definition of a “party”
- existence or otherwise of a “workplace bubble”
- whether something would have counted as part of the working day in non-covid times
- whether people had been working hard
(etc)
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Obviously I’m not remotely privy to the latest negotiations but I do know that some government lawyers (and of course other civil servants) will have been working round the clock for weeks now, at huge personal cost. They deserve masses of credit for that.
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Why passport checks? A simplified summary
1 Brexit ended free movement of people
2 The UK didn’t want a mobility chapter in the Brexit agreement because (apparently) that would be incompatible with taking back control of our borders
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It’s one thing for a government to say: “this is a controversial policy, we expect to be challenged in the courts, but we’re confident we will win”.
Quite another thing to say: “we expect to be challenged and *lose* - so blame the successful lawyers”.
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But what is it that Whitehall is supposed to have blocked? Not Brexit, not all those trade deals she celebrated at DIT, not even her/Kwarteng’s budget.
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The Treasury Solicitor mediating between
@Number10cat
and
@PalmerstonFOCat
in Downing Street. Tricky job, this.
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I was knighted today by the Princess Royal (after a bit of a delay for obvious reasons). I’m very grateful and it was an excuse for a truly excellent lunch. (Not that I need an excuse.)
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Seeing familiar comments that “civil servants wouldn’t last 5 minutes” outside. Just off the top of my head, former civil servants I know include: Supreme Court justice, High Court judge, numerous other judges, heads of Oxbridge colleges + others in academia, Govt minister, MPs,
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“When we determined the ‘Dry January’ policy 4 days ago, we did not at that stage have full evidence of the impact this would have on aspects of well-being. Given the alarming deterioration we have seen over those 4 days, we have decided to adjust the policy.”
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The government will certainly have been advised about the formidable legal risks. The PM has said they are expecting challenges from “politically motivated lawyers” (i.e. any lawyer, whatever their politics, representing their client’s interests)
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Surely any foreign tyrant will back down in the face of UK ministers photographed looking solemn in front of flags
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Is it becoming clearer why it isn’t acceptable or workable if individual countries can decide when to ignore treaty commitments they don’t like? (Even in limited & specific ways)
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I Don’t Understand Politicians (No 76 in an occasional series)
I am the Home Secretary & former Attorney General. I’m caught speeding. Do I seek special treatment?
Do I ask the civil service to help?
Will this become public?
How will it look?
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There we are. Senior civil servant leaves after many years of outstanding public service to take up political role. Complies with procedure for clearance of new role. Independent body approves appointment subject to normal conditions
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Prompts many questions. Which actual reforms have civil servants thwarted? Does the government want to change the ex-EU laws mentioned at the end, and if so how could civil servants stop that? What is the role of the AG in such policy matters? …
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About a year ago I was due to have a party to mark my departure from the civil service. This did not happen for - well - legal reasons. (I’m only really tweeting this so that I can use “for legal reasons” properly for once.)
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I wonder who would be Attorney General in a Suella Braverman government?
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I’m not surprised officials are said to have advised against this statement. What’s the point of it if not personal animus?
NEW: Cabinet office inquiry into Sue Gray concludes there was a "prima facie" breach of civil service code when she spoke to Keir Starmer in late October.
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4 points on the Rwanda judgment:
1 The Supreme Court may overturn the Court of Appeal
2 The CA are not “the blob”. They are senior independent judges applying the law as they see it
3 This week the Justice Sec confirmed the UK would “firmly remain in adherence with” the ECHR …
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Just because a lawyer has political views, may possibly vote in elections, even be a member of a political party does not mean they are “biased” when giving legal advice on politically salient issues. There. Shouldn’t really need saying.
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I don’t think we should have to *choose* between standards of probity in government and “delivering on the people’s priorities”.
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Patel is being urged to stand because Braverman and Baker are too “mad”. Just leaving that there.
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The point of the Ministerial Code is that it contains standards set *by the Prime Minister himself*, as leader of the government & the country. His own words: “we must uphold the very highest standards of propriety … the precious principles of public life must be honoured …”
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The government said this week that the protection of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement was an essential interest of the UK.
The GFA requires participation in the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporation of the ECHR into NI law and power for the courts to enforce it.
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If however the govt thinks problems are emerging with the deal they agreed, they should recognise that and work with the EU & member states to address them. That need not be a matter of shame & would be more constructive than misrepresenting the deal and blaming everyone else.
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They’re not EU laws. They’re UK laws which derive from our membership of the EU and which parliament said should be kept. “Deleting” them all would cause chaos. And we don’t even know whether that is in fact what ministers will decide to do
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I was privileged to have a wonderful career as a civil servant for more than 30 years, and worked with some of the most outstanding people I’ve ever met, both politicians & officials. But you know there are times when I’m glad I left.
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