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England’s most senior judge reasserted the independence of the courts on Tuesday as she condemned as “unacceptable” recent comments by Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch about a tribunal’s immigration ruling.
Baroness Sue Carr said she had written to the prime minister to take issue with language used by him and the opposition leader after they were critical of judges’ decision to allow a family from Gaza to settle in the UK. The family applied under a scheme originally designed for Ukrainian refugees.
The lady chief justice’s remarks are a sign that tensions persist between the judiciary, the executive and parliament under the UK’s uncodified constitution, despite the change of government last year.
Senior members of the legal establishment had been troubled by the previous Conservative administration’s perceived intrusion on the courts’ authority, particularly in its attempts to push through its Rwanda removal scheme.
Legislation put forward before the general election last year declared Rwanda “safe” for asylum seekers, directly contradicting a finding from the UK Supreme Court.
Starmer’s Labour government has been widely expected to be more respectful of the separation of powers.
While the recent tensions are not of the same degree, Carr told reporters on Tuesday that she “was deeply troubled to learn of the exchanges” in parliament last week.
“It is for the government — visibly — to respect and protect the independence of the judiciary. Where parties, including the government, disagree with their findings, they should do so through the appellant process,” she said.
“I have taken this up, as you would imagine” with the prime minister and Shabana Mahmood, the lord chancellor.
In the exchange at prime minister’s questions, Badenoch put it to Starmer that the judges’ decision concerning the family from Gaza was “completely wrong and cannot be allowed to stand”.
Starmer agreed that “it is the wrong decision”, although he added that the decision had been taken under the previous government’s “legal framework”.
The prime minister added that the government was “looking at the legal loophole that we need to close in this particular case”.
Carr said that “both the question [from Badenoch] and the answer [from Starmer] were unacceptable”.
In response to her comments, shadow home secretary Chris Philp said politicians are “perfectly entitled to comment on decisions by judges”.
He added: “This is especially the case with human rights-based cases, where judges have adopted increasingly bizarre and expansive interpretations of vaguely worded [European Court of Human Rights] clauses.”
More broadly, Carr said she had been alarmed by what “appears to be a mounting campaign of attacks on judges” ranging from physical assaults to online abuse.
She added: “It is really dangerous to make any criticism of a judgment without a full understanding of the facts and the law. The judgment is the only accurate source of information.”
Judges “cannot speak out to defend themselves”, she noted.
“It is not acceptable for judges to be the subject of personal attacks for doing no more than their jobs.”
