Lord Bingham of Cornhill was sworn in as Lord Chief Justice on June 4, 1996 after illness forced the retirement of the late Lord Taylor.

For the previous four years he had served as Master of the Rolls and elevation from head of the civil division to Chief had happened only twice before.

Like his distinguished predecessor, he has not been notably wary of engaging in public debate and recently played a crucial part in the only defeat suffered by the Government as the Crime and Disorder Bill progressed through the House of Lords.Lord Bingham has diversified his judicial activity to a greater extent than his immediate predecessors found it possible to do.

"I spend about half the time in the criminal division and the remainder divided between the divisional court and the civil division.

I greatly value that because my background is not primarily in the criminal field and also because it reverts to an older pattern that has the Chief doing many more things than it has been possible to do in recent years.

Provided that one can do it to a reasonably good standard that's desirable.

And although I have only done it twice, I have found it enormously interesting and valuable going out and sitting as a judge for a week at a time in the provinces.

It is quite a strain as a matter of fact if one hasn't sat in a criminal trial for twelve or so years."The most challenging aspect of the job for Lord Bingham has been the "unending process of change in the criminal justice system over the last ten years.

Really nothing is settled with one Act of Parliament before another Act is breathing down its neck.

The most difficult thing is to be absorb these changes and give effect to them and secure a general understanding of them.

One used to think of the administration of the criminal law as being really quite simple.

It certainly isn't now.

If one looks, for example, at sentencing provisions it's a nightmare.

These provisions are scattered through numerous Acts with modifications here and amendments there and cross-references from one to another." But just considering the roller-coaster of criminal justice legislation since 1991 is it not also philosophically all over the place? "Yes it is.

There is no coherent philosophy." Where does this place the Court of Appeal? "Clearly the Court has to administer the law as it is.

If an Act of Parliament has a clear intention we don't have any choice as to whether we give effect to it or not.

We have undoubtedly expressed concern at a number of sentencing provisions, and the tide of punitiveness is one that if it does go on rising will become a source of increasing concern.

While ther e are, of course, people who have to be sent to prison for long periods there are also lots of people who don't have to be."How does the Lord Chief Justice see the courts coming to terms with the concept of risk, which is very much on many people's minds at the present time? "I don't think the courts have too much difficulty with the notion that if someone has committed very serious offences of a violent or sexual nature and if there is cogent evidence that they are likely to do it again, and one can't simply judge when they will cease to be likely to do it again, then there is a powerful case for an indeterminate sentence which enables them to be constrained until a careful assessment by an objective professional independent body judges it safe to release them.

But I am worried if orders of that kind are made too readily and therefore I think the qualifying conditions need to be looked at very carefully in every case .

.

.

the threshold must be clearly crossed before the order is made." This issue is one which is clearly to the fore regarding serious sex offenders.

"Yes it is, certainly.

I am just a little bit worried that the current, I think it can be called, campaign, against paedophiles seems to me to have the seeds of injustice in it.

There is great public anxiety, in large measure whipped up by the media.

It is very very important that we stay close to the facts and the research evidence on this subject rather than simply assuming that anybody who has ever committed any offence against a child is likely to go on inevitably doing it for the rest of their lives.

We surely have to got to be guided by the evidence on this."Lord Bingham has stressed, on several public occasions, the need to preserve a discretion with the courts and has warned against tying judges' hands with mandatory sentencing provisions of one sort or another.

"I have never objected to statutory maximum provided they are sensibly fixed, but to impose rigid rules (other than in cases such as driving) is simply bound to lead to injustice.

The United States is the great pioneer in this field and I don't think the experience there is at all happy." In addition to his opposition to the mandatory aspects of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997, which he shared with Lord Taylor, he also favours the abolition of mandatory life sentences for murder.

"I think the case is unanswerable.

To remove the mandatory penalty would not mean that the most serious murderers would get away more lightly but it would mean, in my view, a more effective and constitutionally more acceptable sentencing regime."It is likely to be a long-term campaign.

"There is no sign of the Government being attracted by it in the short-term.

But I find it very difficult to think the existing arrangements will survive scrutiny at Strasbourg for ever.

So far the European Court has accepted a clear distinction between discretionary and mandatory life sentences but the problem is bound to arise again.

There has been a constant stream of challenges in this field which is indicative of restiveness, unease and dissatisfaction on the part of the public and their advisors which goes beyond mere dislike of anybody going to prison for a very long time.

I can't begin to see myself why the same sort of regime that governs discretionary life sentences can't be applied to those convicted of murder, subject always to the qualification that if there is a very serious case of murder and it is considered that the judge has imposed an inadequate sentence the Attorney General can invite the Court of Appeal to reconsider it.

It is then dealt with as a judicial matter which is what the sentencing of criminals should be.

Again subject to the vital qualification that the decision as to whether it's safe to release somebody should be a matter for the Parole Board."Looking at the Crime and Disorder Bill now being considered by the House of Commons, why did he support the provisions on sentencing guidelines ? This is not, after all, an idea that has always had the ready support of judiciary.

"Because it leaves the judgment on sentencing guidelines with the Court of Appeal, which in my view is where it should rest.

It also gives the Court of Appeal the benefit of expert opinion reached as a result of consultation and, one hopes, professional research.

I can't see any possible objection to the Court of Appeal being properly informed.

But that is a rather negative way of putting it.

It is positively beneficial that the Court of Appeal should have access to best possible opinion available, so potentially this is a helpful mechanism." Perhaps with the strictures of the Oxford legal scholar Andrew Ashworth in mind, Lord Bingham added: "It may be that the guidelines panel will find that far from there being huge areas of criminal activity that are uncharted in terms of guidelines there are relatively few such areas where there could reasonably be full guidelines.

Furthermore, there are some offences, such as manslaughter, for which it would be virtually impossible to construct a guideline that would be of any value."During the debates on the Crime and Disorder Bill, Lord Bingham drew attention to what might be regarded as a creeping managerialism within the courts.

"It is desirable that courts should be efficiently and as so far as possible economically run and managed.

We shouldn't tolerate an inefficient shambles just because it is the administration of justice.

But we have at all times to bear in mind that the administration of justice is what it is about.

If there is a choice between fairness and economy, we have to regard fairness as paramount.

In the particular context of the magistrates' courts I am a great supporter of lay magistrates and it is fundamental that their judicial role is preserved.

While therefore I am completely happy that justices' clerks deal with administrative matters, such as the grant of legal aid, it is very dangerous if they begin exercising judicial powers.

That would be a threat to the survival of the lay magistracy.

It must only be a matter of time, if the justices' clerks exercise more and more judicial powers, that people will begin to ask what is the point of having the justices at all.

I have tried to make it plain at all possible stages that this view is not held out of mistrust of or hostility to justices' clerks.

Indeed, their role is just as fundamental as the justices' themselves, but it's a different one.

Justices' clerks have suffered an enormous diminution in their numbers." He is very much aware that justices' clerks are apprehensive as to the future.

"There are now very large geographical areas covered by a single justices' clerk which is a threat to the very important relationship between the justices' clerk and the justices." Lord Bingham takes some satisfaction from his interventions in the House of Lords debate on safeguarding the judicial functions of the lay magistracy.

"The Government have introduced amendments with which I am perfectly happy and I am very grateful to them for that."Another aspect of the Bill is the mixing of civil and criminal proceedings.

This is apparent with a number of clauses but nowhere m ore clearly than with the proposed anti-social behaviour order.

Does he have concerns in this area ? "I expressed the view on Second Reading that a number of these orders would call for considerable judgment and discretion both on the part of those who have the power to apply for them and also on the part of those who have the power to make them.

But I think they are directed to an undoubted social problem and I don't object in principle to the merging of civil and criminal procedures.

In a sense this has always existed.

One has always been able to bring the civil law into play in aid of the criminal law, so to speak, and I am not sure that I see any inherent mischief in that.

Up and down the country in housing estates and small villages and so on there is unease about misbehaviour of various kinds which it would be difficult to make criminal in the first place.

I am not sure if this is not a shrewd way of dealing with it." Under civil procedures there is a maximum of two years imprisonment for contempt and the Bill proposes that breaching an order may be an indictable offence carrying a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

"I find it quite hard to think of anything that could merit anything approaching five years' that didn't constitute some other substantive offence.

On the other hand, in the ordinary way, to have a high maximum does little harm."A crucial part of the criminal justice context within which the Court of Appeal is working is the quite extraordinary rise in prison numbers over the last five years, which the Home office is projecting will continue to increase at the present rate.

How concerned is Lord Bingham about this? "Very much so.

I have tried to make it plain that I don't myself blame the judges or the magistrates.

There is a sharp distinction to be drawn between the individual case and cases generally.

Any judge or any magistrate who is provoked by public clamour into passing a severe sentence in a particular case is really abdicating his or her duty.

On the other hand, people passing sentence have to be alive to the climate of the society in which they live up to a point.

If the judges and magistrates are routinely castigated in the press and on political platforms for not doing their job or for undermining confidence in criminal justice and so forth I don't think they should shut their ears to that and even if they should I don't think they can.

If the climate of opinion has to be altered it won't happen by chance and this requires effective leadership, education and explanation."Ten years ago there was a very different period when ministers, officials and senior judges tried to create some space for calm discussion around a set of ideas that had begun to drive practice in another direction.

There is little sign of a climate of that sort around the corner today.

"I am quite sure the Home Secretary is concerned at the rise in prison numbers and is anxious to do everything he can to make alternatives effective and to encourage the public to understand that alternatives are capable in the right cases of being effective.

In particular, it is important that a community service order should not be seen as being let off.

It is meant to be punitive and to involve a deprivation of liberty, to be exacting and strictly administered.

My own exposure to it suggests that those criteria are met but it is important to persuade the public that this is so.

So long as the newspapers report that someone has been let off because he has been given two hundred hours' community service it is hard for the courts to impose that penalty in the case where something punitive is plainly called for."Lord Bingham has used several public occasions to speak out on key policy matters.

Does he regard this as part of his role as Lord Chief Justice? "Yes, but there is room for two views about the merits of this.

On the whole I see great force in the old view that judges should give judgment and otherwise shut-up.

But I think there is a greater need nowadays for some form of communication with the public and the fact that the Lord Chief Justice has always had a place in the House of Lords is recognition of the fact that there are occasions when he ought to be heard." Writing recently in The Guardian, Hugo Young drew attention to Lord Bingham's "valiant fight against mandatory life sentences", and it is this quiet but fiercely independent voice which makes the present Lord Chief Justice such a powerful presence to be reckoned with.