Resignation of justice minister a blow to UK government
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The resignation of Lord Wolfson over the ‘partygate’ scandal is one the UK government can “ill afford”, Joshua Rozenberg QC (Hon) has said.
The legal journalist pointed out that Lord Wolfson, who tendered his resignation as parliamentary under-secretary of state for justice yesterday, was “personally committed to the government’s policies”, “highly respected in the House of Lords” and “did a great deal to get the government’s legislation past a sceptical bunch of peers”.
In his resignation letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the barrister said:
“I regret that recent disclosures lead to the inevitable conclusion that there was repeated rule-breaking, and breaches of the criminal law, in Downing Street. I have — again, with considerable regret — come to the conclusion that the scale, context and nature of those breaches mean that it would be inconsistent with the rule of law for that conduct to pass with constitutional impunity, especially when many in society complied with the rules at great personal cost, and others were fined or prosecuted for similar, and sometimes apparently more trivial, offences. It is not just a question of what happened in Downing Street, or your own conduct. It is also, and perhaps more so, the official response to what took place. As we obviously do not share that view of these matters, I must ask you to accept my resignation.”
Mr Rozenberg suggested that in Downing Street it will “no doubt be said” that Lord Wolfson “had nothing to lose” as he can make a return to One Essex Court where he had a busy commercial practice.
He added, however, that the QC had taken his role in government seriously.
He said: “In reality, though, it was a post that Wolfson was immensely proud to hold. He was personally committed to the government’s policies. He was highly respected in the House of Lords and did a great deal to get the government’s legislation past a sceptical bunch of peers.
“At the Ministry of Justice, he was the only serious lawyer in the ministerial team. If he believed that Johnson’s behaviour was inconsistent with the rule of law, where does that leave his secretary of state — or, indeed, the government’s law officers?
“Wolfson made sense of policies — on juries, for example — that even Dominic Raab seemed unable to explain. He was responsible for all the department’s business in the House of Lords and led on human rights, the issue on which Raab is seeking to legislate in the next session of parliament. That will be much more difficult now.”
In September 2020, then Advocate General for Scotland, Lord Keen of Elie QC, resigned following a debacle arising over the UK Internal Market Bill and a proposal to “disapply” rules agreed over the goods that cross between Britain and Northern Ireland. Brandon Lewis, who was Northern Ireland secretary, said the law would break international law in a “specific and limited way”.
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