The Prince of Wales was in Bordeaux yesterday, watching his side beat Fiji 32:26 in its opening match in the Rugby World Cup. But, in spirit at least, part of him was in Cardiff. Three years ago the city was due to host the Covid-delayed 50th annual Commonwealth Magistrates’ and Judges conference – this week it finally gets to host the 53rd.
In a welcome message printed in the front of the programme, Prince William praised the 'best possible judgement' of the association for picking Wales. Invoking the 10th century lawgiver King Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good), he said that the country ’is currently evolving within the legal system of England and Wales’. His grandmother would surely have approved of the tact with which he touched on - but did not enter - a current political debate.
Also unable to attend was lord chancellor Alex Chalk - and not just because of the embarrassing escape from prison of terror suspect Daniel Khalife. Chalk was instead heading to Riga for the Council of Europe justice ministers’ conference, to discuss rebuilding the Ukrainian justice system, tackling the atrocities being committed by Russia and holding war criminals to account.
Lord Bellamy KC, the government’s justice spokesman in the House of Lords, was therefore dispatched to Cardiff to offer his boss’s apologies and good wishes to the delegates from around the world. Before joining the government, of course, Bellamy conducted the government-commissioned independent review of criminal legal aid, recommending that fees for solicitors and barristers be increased by a minimum of 15% 'as the first step in nursing the system of criminal legal aid back to health.'
Speaking at the conference welcome reception, hosted by the Welsh government and the Ministry of Justice, Bellamy said that his work reviewing legal aid fees meant that he spent a lot of time on the front line. 'If there was a competition for who has seen the inside of more police cells in Wales, I think I might have it,' he said.
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