It's been a busy year for former judicial top dog Sir Brian Leveson, who was commissioned by the government last December to come up with an action plan to cut the record criminal court backlog. Reaction to his recommendations has been somewhat mixed, so Obiter headed to Portcullis House to get the former Queen's Bench Division chief's take on the controversy - and any spoilers for part two of his review.
But at the scheduled start time of 2pm, when the screen outside the Grimmond Room said the public session had started, we were still waiting to be allowed in. Committee chair Andy Slaughter eventually emerged in the corridor, looking like he was waiting for someone. That someone was Sir Brian, who was still getting through security. We got going some 15 minutes behind schedule.
With part one of Leveson's review running to 388 pages, there was plenty to talk about. So Obiter was surprised to see the session being wrapped up at 3.27pm. It turned out that MPs needed to head over to the Commons chamber to hear about another crisis in the criminal justice system - prisoners being wrongfully released.
We look forward to Sir Brian being invited back by the committee once part two of his report, which will be dealing with criminal court efficiency, comes out - and his session won't be cut short by another criminal justice crisis.
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