Jon Robins reviews the new Lord Chancellor's debut justice committee session
For many lawyers it was not so much what Michael Gove did say in his debut appearance in front of a newly-constituted House of Common’s justice committee earlier this month, as what he didn’t that caught their attention.
Bruised feelings
The new Lord Chancellor couldn’t have been more understanding as to the tensions caused by an increasingly militant tendency in one part of the profession—for example, he spoke of his “admiration” for Tony Cross, the chair of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) and the other leaders of a group whose troublesome members had just voted to support direct action. Michael Gove told MPs that the CBA vote might be down to “bruised feelings in the past as much as anything else”.
What Gove didn’t address was the more pressing dispute between his government and solicitors, already manning the barricades over the imposition of a second 8.75% legal aid fee cut.
In fact, the word “solicitors” only received one brief mention in the entire session—and that came in the context of the justice secretary’s concern
