The Lord Chancellor last week admitted that the new Ministry of Justice should have at its head a member of the House of Commons rather than a peer, but only 'in the long term'.


Appearing before the constitutional affairs select committee, Lord Falconer was challenged over potential problems facing the new ministry.



Asked if the Secretary of State for Justice should be a member of the House of Lords or of the Commons 'as a matter of principle', Lord Falconer admitted that 'it may well be that in the long term this is a ministry or a secretary of state that has to be in the Commons'.



But, he said, he anticipates he will be the head of the new ministry when it is created on 9 May. Lord Falconer did not say what timescale he meant by 'long term'.



He was also questioned by MPs on serious judicial concerns - voiced again this week by a former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf - about the danger of conflicts of interest inside the department, and in particular between the prisons budget and the independence of the judiciary.



Lord Falconer said he was 'obliged by statute to ensure there is a reasonably resourced courts service' and that there 'need to be processes in which the judiciary have confidence'.



Rupert White