What a joy it was to see the RT HON Lord Goldsmith QC having to be lectured by Alan Beith and his fellow committee members on the Constitutional Affairs Committee about what he actually does for a living.
What we were privy to was a fine example of the man who advised the PM about the legality of going to war, getting confused about the most basic thing we must all know – our own role in life and work. See: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmconst/uc306-i/uc30602.htm
The problem we have here is that whilst he bounced off the ropes under intelligent, but nonetheless 'wet lettuce leaf' questioning, he was unable to define his own role and worse, his role in some of the most important decisions taken by our own government.
An example of this was the issue of discontinuing the enquiry into the alleged bribes in connection with the Saudi arms deals. Despite admitting that he had the overall superintendency of the SFO and the DPP, and that he attended meetings where the decision to discontinue the enquiry was discussed, he insisted that the decision was not his, but was down to the Director of the SFO.
We can of course imagine a meeting with the boss where a significant issue is decided and even though we are supervised by that boss, he didn't have any input into that decision!
The truth is of course that the boss not overriding the decision is the same as participating in the final outcome – in this case the decision not to continue with the investigation into bribes that the SFO were about to confirm with the paperwork awaiting them in Switzerland.
On the question of 'advice', he even undertook to make known the advice of counsel on other issues, but to this day we await the sight of his advice to invade Iraq. He is OUR lawyer, but cannot tell us what his decision making processes were when advising OUR government.
Turning to the latest hot potato, the 'cash for honours' scandal, he as a lawyer can see no problem in sitting with the government, and at the same time being the supervisor of those who will potentially be tasked with prosecution of the members of that government. Is there not a conflict of interests here?
There are two ways to interpret what we saw on the 7th.
One viewpoint was that we had a man who doesn't even know what our unwritten constitution entitles him to do, and he the governments own lawyer; the other was a man protected and enabled to do as he pleases by our wholly inadequate and unwritten constitution, even if what he is doing is saving his boss and colleagues from the full application of the law.
Time for a clearly defined separation of powers then.
