Corruption is a Crime

Bad news about Labour’s intentions is emerging from Government, where a constitutional reform bill is currently being drafted. As The Guardian reports:

Lady Scotland, the current attorney general, wants the draft constitutional reform bill, to be published shortly, to spell out a statutory power for the attorney to direct the Crown Prosecution Service or Serious Fraud Office to drop a prosecution on grounds of national security or international relations.

This would be at odds with signals sent out in response to the controversy over apparent conflicts of interest while Lord Goldsmith was in the role.

Last July Gordon Brown announced: “The role of the attorney general, which combines legal and ministerial functions, needs to change.” And in the Governance of Britain consultation paper, issued shortly after Brown took office as prime minister last summer, the government pledged to “renew the role of the attorney general to ensure that the office retains the public’s confidence”…

David Howarth, MP for Cambridge, reader in law at Cambridge University and the Lib Dem spokesman on justice, said: “There’s no way a minister should have power to direct over prosecutions, even in national security or international relations. It’s outrageous.

“I don’t mind the attorney general being a minister as long as that minister has no power over prosecutions at all.”