A FORMER Lord Chief Justice has called on politicians to stop attacking judges and making “spur of the moment remarks” that damage public confidence.

In his first public comments since stepping down last October as Britain’s most senior judge, Lord Woolf said that it was counterproductive for ministers to make “ill-informed comments” about individual rulings. “If you knock and knock again, and knock again, at individual judges in intemperate terms, then really it is very damaging,” he told the BBC Radio 4 programme Law in Action. “It maybe is an open goal but it is an own goal which the Government scores in those circumstances.”

Lord Woolf said: “However exemplary a government’s behaviour is normally, there will be occasions when, consciously or unconsciously, it will do things unlawfully. It’s the job of judges to ensure that if it does step out of line, and acts unlawfully, then somebody puts them right.”

Tension between the judiciary and government was healthy, and he recognised the right of ministers to be critical when the criminal justice system went wrong. But he did not support “ill-informed comments on individual decisions in individual cases”.

Judges, he said, could not answer back. “The Government has an open goal, a free hit, because there is no response.” But the Government had an interest, as did judges, in the public having confidence in judicial independence.

“Anyone is capable of making remarks on the spur of the moment but they have got to try to exercise self-control and realise the damage that this is going to have on the independence of the judiciary.” The danger, he said, was that judges who were not of a “hardy calibre” might be deterred from making the right decision.

At the start of this month Tony Blair criticised a ruling that nine Afghan asylumseekers could remain in Britain as an “abuse of common sense”. John Reid, the Home Secretary, said that he would seek to overturn the ruling, which appeared “inexplicable or bizarre to the general public”.

Lord Woolf also issued a staunch defence of the Human Rights Act, at a time when the Prime Minister has suggested that it might need to be reviewed. He said: “Notwithstanding the recent clamour, which I think is not based on sound foundations, the reality is that the Act has — day in, day out — been applied by the courts with no one being at all disturbed by the results.” He emphasised the importance of the public being informed about how such measures worked.

Lord Woolf’s comments coincided with a lecture last night at Gresham College, in London, by a leading constitutional lawyer, who said that the Human Rights Act had led to a constitutional clash between judges and politicians with remarkable speed.

Vernon Bogdanor, Gresham Professor of Law at Oxford University, said: “There is a clash between two conflicting constitutional principles — the principle of the sovereignty of Parliament and the principle of the rule of law. This could easily lead to a constitutional crisis.

“The Government believes that issues of human rights should be settled by Parliament. The judges believe that they should be settled by the courts.”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating