Despite a low-key consultation paper offering questions but no answers Labour still has no policies
Despite a low-key consultation paper offering questions but no answers, Labour still has no policies to offer in tackling the legal profession's restrictive practices such as the continuing limitations on solicitors competing with barristers in presenting cases in the higher courts.The Labour Party traditionally opposes more competition in the labour market. Whenever the Tories have tried to get hospitals and their doctors to compete with one another, "wasteful duplication" has been Labour's mildest term of abuse. It is well known that five ministers have been looked at particularly carefully, of whom one, Kenneth Clarke, has promised to offer his resignation if he is criticised. The word is that he may come to see this as a rash offer.But Scott, it seems, is gunning not only for individuals, but also for the Whitehall culture which hoards information in departments, and within departments, and is obsessively reluctant to communicate, either to itself or to Parliament.Sitting writing his report in solitary splendour, the judge is believed to be criticising not just a series of ministers and ex-ministers, but the closed central core of the system of British government - the key departments, senior officials, MI6, the government lawyers, the law officers. Thus an exercise originally intended to buy the Government a few weeks' breathing space has turned into a constitutional review.Sir Richard's admirers see this as both entirely logical, given what the inquiry has revealed, and as characteristically brave.
His political detractors portray him as an isolated figure with a gleam in one eye and the other eye fixed self-importantly on posterity.Whitehall certainly believes in the ambitious nature of the looming report. As the weeks and months pass, the tension and rising alarm of Britain plc has become palpable. Departments have been responding in the only way they know how: with massive salvoes of paper. As Scott sends out draft sections of the report to those who are criticised, he gets back mounds of new evidence.
And because of the Howe-type criticisms, he is under pressure to sift them with meticulous care.The result is that the inquiry is way behind schedule. The judge and his people, who have complete control over the publication date, are still hoping to publish it by the beginning of July. But this depends on the reaction to the next set of drafts, which are the hyper-sensitive ones relating to the collapse of the Matrix-Churchill trial itself. Given how much paper has already been fired back at the inquiry team, suspicion that the report may be delayed until November - a full year late - is hardening.Sir Richard has huge power simply because, if it comes to a battle for credibility between himself and a group of politicians then, given the nation's mood, the politicians are so likely to come second.
But this is a critical period, during which some observers believe the whole inquiry could veer out of control, overburdened by its own ambition and the fear and paperwork it has generated in Whitehall.The inquiry team itself radiates quiet confidence. But it is certainly possible for Sir Richard to overplay his hand. Any hint that, in the end, he has been less than scrupulously fair will be seized upon by a system which now feels threatened and which, in its heart of hearts, denies his right to stand in judgement over it.He may be a good judge and a fair man - qualities he will seek to demonstrate tonight. But Sir Richard had better understand that Whitehall is getting ready to rumble He's going to have to prove himself a fighter, too.. Labour's leaders speak the language of competition, but Perri 6 is not convinced You go to your local car showroom.
