Lord Falconer still has to persuade many of the need for some of his constitutional reforms, and he has not made the best of starts, to judge by an interview with Joshua Rozenberg in the Daily Telegraph (8 January).

The Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs explained that the Constitutional Reform Bill would not be published until the spring, and with the government keen to get it passed by the end of parliamentary session in November, Mr Rozenberg asked: 'What's the hurry?'

Lord Falconer said he needed a Bill 'in order to get things going' and also because by the time it is expected to become law, around 18 months would have elapsed since the reforms were announced last June.

Mr Rozenberg - who proffered his own views on the subject throughout the article - was clearly unconvinced of the need for such a rush, especially as the new supreme court will be largely identical in operation to the House of Lords.

He also questioned the haste with which the post of Lord Chancellor is being abolished.

Lord Falconer emphasised the importance of separating the judiciary from the legislature, and ensuring that any suggestions of politicisation of the judiciary were laid to rest.

'If you are appointed as a judge, you should be ruling on the laws, not making the laws,' he insisted.

But the Lord Chief Justice, who will be recognised for the first time as the 'chief judge' in England and Wales, will not have direct control of his budget, which judges consider a threat to their independence.

Mr Rozenberg commented: 'Call me cynical, but I remain unconvinced that all this is being done by a benign government, concerned purely to correct constitutional anomalies and strengthen the judiciary.

'The Constitutional Secretary is right to say that the role of Lord Chancellor needs reform.

But this rush to judgment makes many people suspect an attempt to centralise government power.'

Another critic of the government's timetable for reform found a platform in the Financial Times on the same day.

Lord Alexander of Weedon QC, the chairman of Justice, said that 'reforms that are sound in principle may be endangered' by the apparent haste behind them.

'The government for years showed indifference to [a supreme court and independent judicial appointments commission],' he wrote.

'Now that their time may have come, they should be tested by, at the very least, pre-legislative scrutiny of any bill by a committee of both Houses of Parliament.

But the government shows no appetite for even this modest measure of democratic consultation.'

More food for thought for Lord Falconer came in an article on the Asylum and Immigration Bill by Vernon Bogdanor (The Times, 9 January).

Mr Bogdanor, professor of government at Oxford University, described as 'obnoxious and constitutionally far-reaching' the provision to exclude the courts from jurisdiction over decisions made by the new asylum and immigration tribunal.

'It is a constitutional outrage, and almost unprecedented in peacetime,' he thundered.

'Even in the Second World War, regulation 18B allowing the home secretary to detain suspected enemies of the country was reviewable by the courts.'

At least the government can escape blame for the remarkable inequality between barristers and solicitors in the new Who's Who (The Times, 7 January).

The 2004 edition has added 115 QCs to its pages, but only four solicitors, one of whom is long out of practice - Robert Pickering, now chief executive of Cazenove Group.

In all, 16% of new entries in Who's Who are from the legal profession, and legal correspondent Frances Gibb commented: 'It seems to be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a solicitor to be listed in Who's Who, a fact that will fuel the desire of solicitors to be rid of the QC system altogether.'

The other three solicitors are James Dallas, chairman of City firm Denton Wilde Sapte; Imran Khan of London firm Imran Khan & Partners, described by the paper as the 'the only household name of all this year's legal entries'; and Roger Smith, the director of Justice.

But Ms Gibb noted that with Lord Falconer's decision on the future of the QC system expected shortly, it may be that next year Who's Who 'will have to find another way of selecting what it regards as the legal establishment's elite'.

Neil Rose