The Courts and Tribunals Bill’s second reading in the Lords not only brought out some big- hitters, such as former lord chief justice Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, but some lordly joshing.
Former Conservative solicitor general Lord Garnier (Sir Edward Garnier) expressed sympathy for Lord Leveson ‘who has twice now been asked to carry out inquiries and write reports for two different governments, and has not found that they have met universal approval by the politicians. I have had that problem myself, but I have borne it with such fortitude as I have been able to muster’.
Crossbench peer Lord Carlile of Berriew (Alex Carlile), former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, revealed that an unnamed Labour member of the Lords ‘referred to the rather undistinguished fact that my first jury trial was not defending a TV star on a shoplifting case but was actually a breath-tester case for an incident that occurred outside Birkenhead public library’.
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