20 years of mySociety 20 years of mySociety

TheyWorkForYou

Menu

<p>The Independence of the Judicial System</p>

2. 2. Questions to the Counsel General – in the Senedd on 22 March 2017.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mike Hedges Mike Hedges Labour

(Translated)

5. What discussions has the Counsel General held regarding the independence of the judicial system in Wales? OAQ(5)0030(CG)

Photo of Mick Antoniw Mick Antoniw Labour 2:39, 22 March 2017

Thank you for the question. The independence of the judiciary is fundamental to the rule of law. The Welsh Government rebuts very strongly any challenge to the integrity of our Welsh tribunals’ judiciary. Their decisions are based on the evidence before them and are independent of the Welsh Ministers. The Member will be aware of the written statement that I issued yesterday.

Photo of Mike Hedges Mike Hedges Labour 2:40, 22 March 2017

I’m not only aware of it, but I’m going to quote from it now. Yesterday, in that statement, you said:

It is equally important that our judicial institutions know that they command the confidence of the legislature’.

How do you think this can be achieved?

Photo of Mick Antoniw Mick Antoniw Labour

I think it is an important statement and it is an important point and it is something that we do have to achieve. Can I say, first of all today, that I learnt this morning that the Lord Chief Justice, in giving evidence to the House of Lords Constitution Committee, made a specific reference to that statement and to two particular parts of that? I won’t repeat the two parts of the statement, but he read out quite a detailed part of it and he went on to say that it will increasingly be a test of this Assembly’s maturity as a legislature and Parliament that it recognises and understands the importance of the independence of its judicial institutions and the principles on which they are founded and operate, and it is equally important that our judicial institutions know that they command the confidence of the legislature and the people of Wales and that they are defended from political interference, unwarranted and unsubstantiated attacks and criticism in the exercise of their public responsibilities.

He, in fact, then went on to say: ‘It seems to be a pretty clear statement, actually, of the duty of the Lord Chancellor’. And he went on to say: ‘I regret that I have to criticise her as severely as I have, but, to my mind, she’s completely and absolutely wrong. I’m disappointed and I can understand what pressures there were in November, but she has taken the position that is constitutionally, absolutely wrong.’

I believe that is an endorsement of the position that we’ve stated as regards my role as law officer and the position of this Assembly. I think what is important is that the individual Members of this Assembly and the leaders of the political parties always stand up for those fundamental principles because they are a bedrock of our institutions, and if we wish to be taken seriously, as a jurisdiction and as a Parliament, then we have to ensure that everyone upholds those principles.

Photo of Elin Jones Elin Jones Plaid Cymru 2:42, 22 March 2017

(Translated)

I thank the Counsel General.

Whoops! There was an error.
Whoops \ Exception \ ErrorException (E_CORE_WARNING)
Module 'xapian' already loaded Whoops\Exception\ErrorException thrown with message "Module 'xapian' already loaded" Stacktrace: #2 Whoops\Exception\ErrorException in Unknown:0 #1 Whoops\Run:handleError in /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/theyworkforyou/vendor/filp/whoops/src/Whoops/Run.php:433 #0 Whoops\Run:handleShutdown in [internal]:0
Stack frames (3)
2
Whoops\Exception\ErrorException
Unknown0
1
Whoops\Run handleError
…/vendor/filp/whoops/src/Whoops/Run.php433
0
Whoops\Run handleShutdown
[internal]0
Unknown
/data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/theyworkforyou/vendor/filp/whoops/src/Whoops/Run.php 
    /**
     * Special case to deal with Fatal errors and the like.
     */
    public function handleShutdown()
    {
        // If we reached this step, we are in shutdown handler.
        // An exception thrown in a shutdown handler will not be propagated
        // to the exception handler. Pass that information along.
        $this->canThrowExceptions = false;
 
        $error = $this->system->getLastError();
        if ($error && Misc::isLevelFatal($error['type'])) {
            // If there was a fatal error,
            // it was not handled in handleError yet.
            $this->allowQuit = false;
            $this->handleError(
                $error['type'],
                $error['message'],
                $error['file'],
                $error['line']
            );
        }
    }
 
    /**
     * In certain scenarios, like in shutdown handler, we can not throw exceptions
     * @var bool
     */
    private $canThrowExceptions = true;
 
    /**
     * Echo something to the browser
     * @param  string $output
     * @return $this
     */
    private function writeToOutputNow($output)
    {
        if ($this->sendHttpCode() && \Whoops\Util\Misc::canSendHeaders()) {
            $this->system->setHttpResponseCode(
                $this->sendHttpCode()
[internal]

Environment & details:

Key Value
type senedd
id 2017-03-22.2.13555
s speaker:26141
empty
empty
empty
empty
Key Value
PATH /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
PHPRC /etc/php/7.0/fcgi
PWD /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/theyworkforyou/www/docs/fcgi
PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN 0
ORIG_SCRIPT_NAME /fcgi/php-basic-dev
ORIG_PATH_TRANSLATED /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/docs/section.php
ORIG_PATH_INFO /senedd/
ORIG_SCRIPT_FILENAME /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/docs/fcgi/php-basic-dev
CONTENT_LENGTH 0
SCRIPT_NAME /senedd/
REQUEST_URI /senedd/?id=2017-03-22.2.13555&s=speaker%3A26141
QUERY_STRING type=senedd&id=2017-03-22.2.13555&s=speaker%3A26141
REQUEST_METHOD GET
SERVER_PROTOCOL HTTP/1.0
GATEWAY_INTERFACE CGI/1.1
REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING type=senedd&id=2017-03-22.2.13555&s=speaker%3A26141
REDIRECT_URL /senedd/
REMOTE_PORT 37240
SCRIPT_FILENAME /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/docs/section.php
SERVER_ADMIN webmaster@theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org
CONTEXT_DOCUMENT_ROOT /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/docs
CONTEXT_PREFIX
REQUEST_SCHEME http
DOCUMENT_ROOT /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/docs
REMOTE_ADDR 18.191.165.192
SERVER_PORT 80
SERVER_ADDR 46.235.230.113
SERVER_NAME matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org
SERVER_SOFTWARE Apache
SERVER_SIGNATURE
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING gzip, br, zstd, deflate
HTTP_USER_AGENT Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)
HTTP_ACCEPT */*
HTTP_CONNECTION close
HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO https
HTTP_X_REAL_IP 18.191.165.192
HTTP_HOST matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org
SCRIPT_URI http://matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/senedd/
SCRIPT_URL /senedd/
REDIRECT_STATUS 200
REDIRECT_HANDLER application/x-httpd-fastphp
REDIRECT_SCRIPT_URI http://matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/senedd/
REDIRECT_SCRIPT_URL /senedd/
FCGI_ROLE RESPONDER
PHP_SELF /senedd/
REQUEST_TIME_FLOAT 1732544247.3172
REQUEST_TIME 1732544247
empty
0. Whoops\Handler\PrettyPageHandler