We’re going to have a Royal Commission. At least, we might if the polls are correct and what confronts us on 13 December is a Boris Johnson majority Conservative government. The last Royal Commission on Criminal Justice, more than a quarter of a century ago, was established on the very day that the Birmingham Six walked out of the Old Bailey as free men after 16 years wrongly convicted.
Boris Johnson’s commission, as outlined in the Conservative 2019 manifesto published last week, will be a different beast. The so-called Runciman Commission was the establishment’s belated and begrudging recognition of a crisis caused by the collapse of public confidence in a system shaken by a series of miscarriage of justices.
It is uncontroversial to observe that our justice system is now in crisis albeit of a different kind. Even Tory Lord Chancellors have been forced to acknowledge the dire state of the courts. Michael Gove, in the brief time that he was Lord
