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Judiciary

Question for Ministry of Justice

UIN 38427, tabled on 22 July 2021

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent steps he has taken to uphold and protect the independence of the judiciary.

Answered on

10 September 2021

The Lord Chancellor is committed to his statutory duty under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 to defend judicial independence. An independent judiciary is one of the cornerstones of the United Kingdom’s constitution and vital to the proper functioning of our democracy based on the rule of law. Judges must be free to make their judicial decisions without being subject to interference by Parliament or the executive.

The Lord Chancellor is consistently clear on the importance of an independent judiciary both privately and publicly including when answering questions about the importance of parliamentarians respecting judicial independence to the House of Commons Justice Committee in December 2020; and in his recent speeches at Queen Mary University in March 2021 and at the Lord Mayor’s Dinner for HM Judges in July 2021.