The views of the new Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, or Derry as he will be known in the newly-informal Cabinet, are not widely known.

Yet this successful commercial barrister, as the friend and mentor to the Prime Minister Tony Blair, would seem to have unparalleled power to influence the course of legal policy.Constitutional changes, including the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law -- a measure he has strongly supported -- are likely to preoccupy the Lord Chancellor's Department, at least initially.But Lord Irvine's views on such issues as adoption law reform, legal aid and the Woolf reforms, are well-formed and hold the promise of much legislative and other activity in the medium term.There are several likely areas of conflict between Lord Irvine and his austerity-minded Treasury colleagues, for instance, the matter of extending legal aid to cover industrial tribunal cases, a policy which he is known to favour.Clearly much will depend on how well he succeeds in adhering to the ideal expressed in a speech to the Bar Conference on 28 September 1996: 'I accept that a Lord Chancellor should fight his corner for justice in Cabinet.

He must not be a mere hand-maid of the Treasury.' Other extracts from the same speech follow:LEGAL AID'A major contemporary challenge for an incoming Lord Chancellor is to restore legal aid to the status of a public social service, so highly regarded for its economy and efficiency that, with public support, it can compete for scarce resources with the most highly valued public social services, health and education.''Of course I do not exclude cost capping if the cost of a demand-led system makes that unavoidable.

Cost capping, however, is unattractive in principle, because legal aid would cease to be a benefit to which a qualifying individual is entitled .

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.'CRIMINAL LEGAL AID'I have already expressed my hostility to arbitrary cash limiting of the legal aid budget.

A denial of criminal aid, because a pre-determined budget has run out, could be contrary to our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Unrepresented defendants would lengthen trials at greater cost to the public purse.'LEGAL AID FRANCHISING'Broadly, I favour block franchising.

It will have an important role in our plans for a Community Legal Service.

Quality, however, cannot be ensured merely by practice management requirements, transaction criteria and 'outcome measures.' The [Legal Aid] Board should develop more sophisticated quality controls.

Nor am I yet persuaded that legal aid should be provided exclusively through franchised firms.

That would exclude some high quality firms and restrict client choice.'BLOCK CONTRACTS'Beyond [pilot contracts for advice assistance and limited representation], block contracting for full ci vil litigation is a possibility, which I would not exclude, but it must be a long way down the line.''The attraction of block contracting in a cash limited system is obvious; but the overriding question in our review will be whether block contracts for advice and assistance but not civil litigation together with effective control over the high cost cases which consume so much of the budget, and with a tougher merits test, would be enough without a system of block contracts for litigation .

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'ADVOCACY BUDGETS UNDER BLOCK CONTRACTS'Again l make no commitment, but it must at least be seriously arguable by the Bar that both the public interest requires a separate budget for advocacy costs, so that solicitors' decisions whether to expend public monies on the services of the Bar are disinterested; and that this budget could be effectively controlled through the medium of graduated fees.'LORD WOOLF AND CIVIL JUSTICE REFORM'An incoming government will have to review both the reform of civil legal aid and of the civil justice system together.

The reform of civil legal aid is not a distinct issue, hermetically sealed from the reform of the civil justice system itself.''[Lord Woolf's] reports are a bold and creative attempt to address the twin evils of civil litigation, excessive cost and delay .

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this chimes with what Labour has for long been advocating.'Quoting from his article in Law Reform For All (published in 1996) Lord Irvine continued: 'Over the long term there may be substantial cost gains to be secured from the implementation of Woolf, but there are clear resource issues in the shorter term, in terms of the burdens put on the judiciary by the fast-track cases; by judicial case management of the multi-track cases; and by the availability of sufficient judges for hands-on management; and their training for that purpose .

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.'As I have said before, there are many good things a Labour government can do, but one thing it cannot do is make money grow on gooseberry bushes.

The law under Labour will enjoy no exemption from our settled policy of sound and prudent finance: public expenditure is going to be tight.

That is why a cost-benefit analysis of Woolf is critical.'INDEPENDENCE OF THE JUDICIARY'The role and independence of the judiciary will be vigorously upheld by the next Labour government.

Politics must never enter into the appointment of any judge.''I repeat my hostility to any legislative attempts to restrict the powers of judicial review, which I believe directly promotes the rule of law.'