A person “may not be recommended for appointment as lord chancellor unless he appears to the prime minister to be qualified by experience”. So said parliament just over 20 years ago when it passed the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.
What experience qualifies Alex Norris MP for his appointment yesterday as lord chancellor and secretary of state for justice?
“After Labour won the [2024] general election”, he writes, “I served as a parliamentary under-secretary of state in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, responsible for local growth, building safety and fire. In September 2025, I became a minister of state in the Home Office with responsibilities for border security and asylum… Prior to my election, I had worked as a trade union organiser; and for the Labour Party and Nottingham City Council.”
Experience as a minister of the Crown and experience as an MP are factors that the prime minister may take into account in deciding whether a lord chancellor is qualified by experience. So there is no suggestion that Andy Burnham has not complied with the law.
But experience as a legal practitioner or a law lecturer are also factors the prime minister may take into account. And there is no evidence of those qualifications in the new lord chancellor’s background.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton, father of the new minister for intergovernmental and European relations, was the secretary of state who introduced what became the Constitutional Reform Act. He told the House of Lords constitution committee in 2014 that parliament had added the requirement for the lord chancellor to be qualified by experience because “parliament envisaged the role of the lord chancellor as being a departmental minister but with these special added responsibilities and, therefore, these special qualities”.
And what special qualities were they?
First of all, it involves understanding what the rule of law means in a way broader than simply what everybody understands the rule of law means, which means complying with the law. Secondly, it means having personal qualities that mean that you will actually stand up for the rule of law. Thirdly, it means understanding that there will be occasions where your obligation requires you to do something other than simply comply with the collective responsibility.
Others told the committee that it would be would be an advantage to have a lawyer or constitutional expert in the post. But one witness firmly disagreed.
My view is that it is a positive benefit for the lord chancellor not to be a lawyer… I think that not being a lawyer gives you the ability to take a dispassionate view: not from one side of the legal profession or the other.
That was said by the then lord chancellor, Chris Grayling. He was not a lawyer himself.
The Lords committee recognised the advantages in having a lord chancellor with a legal or constitutional background but did not consider it essential. However, peers thought would be undesirable for neither the secretary of state nor the permanent secretary at the department responsible for the legal system and maintenance of the rule of law to be legally qualified.
I made the point yesterday that David Lammy, the former justice secretary, appeared not to have had anyone to remind him of his constitutional responsibilities.
Attorney general
Ellie Reeves KC MP has been promoted from solicitor general to attorney general. She studied law at Oxford and was called to the bar before practising as an employment rights lawyer, mainly representing trade union members.
Reeves was appointed to the law officers’ department last September and received the customary appointment of King’s Counsel in January. The new solicitor general, her successor, will be the fourth in just over two years.