As the new Prime Minister stamps his arrival with sweeping changes at all levels of Government, John Ludlow looks at what the Brown era means for the Legal Profession


That the ministerial changes of this last week seem more like the appointment of a new government than merely a mid-term reshuffle surely owes something to the fin de siècle feel of Tony Blair’s departure.



It also has much to do with the sheer number of changes to personnel, particularly at cabinet level, where every post bar defence changed hands. Even at the minister of state and junior levels, the scale of the new appointments gives the impression that we are looking at a post-general election scene. That being said, there is a distinct feeling of déjà vu in the air, with the same old faces reappearing. With so little new blood, the cynics may well ask whether anything else will be new.



At the Ministry of Justice, for instance, we now have Jack Straw at the helm. The press, rightly, has made much of him being the first Lord Chancellor to sit in the Commons. This is indeed historic stuff.



But Mr Straw has been a cabinet minister for ten years, and is a former Home Secretary and a barrister to boot, so his involvement in the legal world hardly seems novel. It’s almost as if he has never been away.



At the minister of state level, the department has lost Harriet Harman to the leadership of the Commons, but her replacement, Michael Wills, is a true retread, having been a minister at the old Lord Chancellor’s Department between 2001 and 2002.



Vera Baird has also moved on – a promotion to Solicitor-General – with her junior ministerial post taken by solicitor MP Maria Eagle, who moves from the Northern Ireland Office. In the Lords, the well-liked Baroness Ashton has left to become leader of the House, her job taken over by the widely-experienced Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, most recently at the Department of Work and Pensions. The only continuity, in fact, is provided by Bridget Prentice and David Hanson, and he has only just arrived with the prisons brief from the old Home Office.



The more important issue, of course, is what this game of musical chairs means for policy. Will anything change? Naturally, this is a very difficult question to answer, but certainly Jack Straw is a different political animal from his ennobled predecessors, Lords Falconer and Irvine.



For a start, he is a politician who happens to be a lawyer, rather than a lawyer with a political job. His main interests lie in constitutional change, developed in his time as leader of the Commons and chairman of the modernisation committee. It is no accident that at one of the very first cabinet meetings, he was able to present proposals for revamping the constitution, thought to include giving Parliament the final say over going to war, citizens’ juries to boost local democracy, and a possible written constitution. Add to that the task of completing Lords’ reform and we can guess where most of his time will be spent.



What we do not know is whether he will interfere much in the workaday issues of his department, or simply give his ministers the autonomy to get on with the job. There is no doubt, for example, that Bridget Prentice will continue piloting the Legal Services Bill through the Commons, but Mr Straw may well become involved in the very final stages, where concessions are more likely to be made. Indeed, in this context, he may well be more responsive to the profession’s concerns than Lord Falconer might have been.



The departure of Vera Baird, and her replacement by a solicitor, may well give a boost to those who have been dismayed by the government’s proposals to reform legal aid. But there is nothing to suggest that policy is about to change. For all her seeming intransigence, Ms Baird was a junior minister who acted as a spokeswoman for a policy already adopted. If there are to be concessions, the decision will again lie with Jack Straw, though I suspect that in this case, the Treasury is the more important part of the equation.



The opinions of secretaries of state do matter. Had Mr Straw become Home Secretary once again, as some had hoped, identity cards would have had a good chance of being scrapped. By contrast, the new incumbent, Jacqui Smith, is known to be highly in favour of their retention.



Likewise, if we had got Liberal Democrat Lord Carlile as Attorney-General, as was mooted for a short while, then the issue of removing juries from fraud trials would have been shelved. But with Baroness Scotland in the role, the issue may get a new lease of life.



And what of home information packs? Again, we simply cannot tell, but Yvette Copper is still housing minister despite the fiasco, so the signs are not good. We can only hope that the new Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears, has the good sense to draw a line under the proposals and cut the government’s losses.



But ultimately, of course, the power in our constitution lies in the person of the Prime Minister. What matters most is what Gordon Brown thinks and wants. True, he is likely to be looking for bold gestures and for policies that appear to distance himself from some of the unpopularity attached to the Labour government in recent years. So yes, that could mean an end to the packs, or even a more generous legal aid settlement.



But he too is constrained. There are events (‘dear boy’) of course, and the ever-present opinion polls. So while, for example, he may be genuinely more sympathetic to civil liberties issues than his predecessor, the terrorist threat, so vividly demonstrated in recent days, could stiffen his resolve. It is perhaps surprisingly unclear where Mr Brown stands on some of the more important issues which affect or concern the profession. But I suspect that we will find out very soon.



John Ludlow is head of the Law Society’s parliamentary unit