John Jackson chairs the law firm Mishcon de Reya, is a director of openDemocracy and History Today and is on the committee of Unlock Democracy.

Recent articles

John Jackson (London, Mishcon de Reya): At the end of her judgement in the BAE case one of the law lords, Lady  Hale, said “- - I would wish that the world was a better place where honest and conscientious public servants were not put in impossible situations such as this - - -“. I would wish that too. I would also wish that people and nations did not seek to advance their interests by violence or the threat of violence. If that were so there would be no need of armaments industries and questions of national security could be dealt with in a more open and satisfactory way.

The impossible situation to which Lady Hale referred was the dilemma confronting the Director of the SFO in deciding, with incomplete information, whether, to quote Lord Bingham, “the public interest in pursuing an important investigation into alleged bribery was outweighed by the public interest in protecting the lives of British citizens”. The incompleteness of information available to the Director is the link to my second wish and my remark about how questions of national security are dealt with.

John Jackson (London, Mishcon de Reya ): Doubtless some, perhaps many, will be disappointed by the unanimous decision of five law lords to overturn the judgement delivered, and probably crafted, by Lord Justice Moses in the Serious Fraud Office’s BAE case. And those disappointed will include some who have convinced themselves that the Blair government acted cravenly to protect the commercial interests of BAE - a large employer and taxpayer - or even that this all fitted in with a longer term plan by Blair himself to grease his passage, post-premiership, to a position from which he could enjoy the trappings of international office and advance the interests of his friends in the United States in the maintenance of oil supplies from the Middle East.

John Jackson (London, Unlock Democracy): Many political commentators are enjoying great sport by sniffing out and pursuing members of the presently besieged government who smell like attractive quarry. With increasing frequency the victims deserve this attention because of incaution, stupidity or breaking cover at the wrong time. It is rare for a minister to attract praise for doing something rather brave. One such should be Michael Wills at the Ministry of Justice responsible for the discussion paper "A national framework for greater citizen engagement" (pdf).

I have just reread Wills' paper "A New Agenda-Labour and Democracy" written when he was a backbencher and published by the Institute for Public Policy Research in June 2006. In the introduction he says "This essay argues for a programme of reform, that may have to be driven not by the political class who are seen as responsible for undermining faith in our constitutional arrangements but by the people themselves who are served by such arrangements. It suggests that the time may be coming for an elected, one-off, fixed term constitutional convention to heal the fracture in our politics".

It is easy to contrast that imaginative idea, set out in clear and refreshingly honest words, with the caution, correctness and need not to be too costly pervading the ideas outlined in the discussion paper and either damn Wills as a cowardly backslider with faint praise or dismiss him as someone of no consequence with caustic snidery. It would be wrong and unfair to do either.

John Jackson (London, Unlock Democracy): David Davis has spoken of the possibility that the Parliament Act will be used to force through the Government’s proposed “42 day” legislation, despite any objections made by the House of Lords. Theoretically this is possible.

I’ve been asked, what exactly is the Parliament Act? How does it allow the Lords to be over-ruled? And also, following a hint of David Davis, why might it be illegal in the case of 42 days if the government does attempt to use the Parliament Act?

John Jackson (London, Mischon de Reya): In the current issue of Prospect, Philip Collins and Richard Reeves assert that “Labour is failing to win-or even to grasp- the big political argument: how to ensure people are in control of their own lives.” From that starting point they take their readers on a journey that ends with the conclusion that Labour has a stark choice-it must abandon its liking for central-state diktat and either liberalise or die

They signpost the journey with, for example, references to the dangers of the Fabian brand of “mechanical socialism”, Labour being heir to another tradition too, "Radical liberals, seeking to provide the conditions for people to live flourishing lives of their own choosing, having driven many of the social advances of the 20th century” and "Unless there are strong arguments to the contrary, power should reside with individuals."

It is very striking that the article does not recognise that ordinary people are entitled to decide for themselves how they should take control of their own lives. In essence it is a discussion of what a political party should do to “give” ordinary people such control in pursuit of its own opinions and interests. That is something very different and is an affront to the notions of personal liberty and human rights.

This goes to the root of an increasingly serious problem. The political parties have acquired a large amount of unconstitutional and unaccountable power. Their grip on our electoral arrangements coupled with the whipping system and the payroll vote have destroyed our system of representative democracy (so that it is neither representative nor democratic) and reduced Parliament to a role largely junior to that of the Government.