Tag: the Bill should be amended to safeguard expressly the separateness of the Scottish

2 July 2004 saw the publication of the report of the House of Lords Special Committee on the Constitutional Reform Bill (see No 335).  The Committee confessed to sharp divisions over the Supreme Court reform as well as the abolition of the Lord Chancellor.  In particular it could not agree on whether the establishment of the court should await the creation of permanent premises for it.  The Committee did however agree a number of matters relating to the structure and administration of the court, in particular that it should be funded directly by the Treasury rather than through the Department of Constitutional Affairs, and that its rules should not be subject to ministerial control either.  The appointments commission should provide only one name, chosen on the basis of merit alone, and the name put forward could only be rejected if the minister thought that person was not the best suited for the job.  Like the commission, the minister should consult the senior judges and the devolved administrations before reaching a conclusion.  The Prime Minister should be merely a conduit for carrying the minister’s decision to the Queen for appointment.  There should be 12 justices of the court.  On Scottish aspects, the Committee agreed that the status quo should continue with regard to both civil and criminal appeals, including the matter of leave to appeal, and that it should remain a convention (rather than a statutory rule) that at least two of the judges be Scots lawyers.  There was no need to rid the Bill of the definition of the court as a superior court of record”.  Devolution jurisdiction should be transferred from the Privy Council to the new court.  Judicial independence in Scotland was a matter for the Scottish Parliament