Over kedgeree and a cool, crisp Gavi di Gavi at The Delauney, the country’s foremost court artist explains why she welcomes cameras in court even though it could put her out of a business, and reveals secrets from the trials of the rich and famous.

Texan-born Priscilla Coleman has had a ringside seat at the most high-profile and infamous cases of the last three decades.

Her oil pastels and water-based sticks have documented the trials of serial killers and celebrities, including Rosemary and Fred West, Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr, Barry George, Harold Shipman, Rolf Harris, Dave Lee Travis and Max Clifford.

The Wests, she recalls, didn’t look evil, just ‘ordinary’. Publicist Max Clifford, convicted of indecent assault under Operation Yewtree, she describes as ‘happy-go-lucky’. while DJ Dave Lee Travis, convicted in the same operation, teased her for making him look like Rolf Harris.

While fellow artist Harris, she says, was very friendly and even signed one of his books for her while he was in the court café. But, in the witness box, she says, he ‘could be pretty angry and bossy and looked quite fierce’.

In the phone hacking trial she compares Rebekah Brooks to Botticelli’s painting of the Birth of Venus, with her ‘high forehead, angel lips and mane of red hair like a Pre-Raphaelite model’.

Brooks, who was cleared of all charges, recalls Coleman, was ‘dignified, held herself tall and straight and was usually always controlled, except when she broke down in the witness box.’

Coleman witnessed part of the secret trial of Enrol Incedol, which she describes as ‘really weird’ and at the other end of the spectrum Gillian Taylforth’s unsuccessful libel case against The Sun, the Hutton inquiry and the inquests into the deaths in the July 7 bombings.

In her long career, those who have stood out include Christine Hamilton, wife of disgraced former Tory MP, Neil Hamilton. During his unsuccessful libel action against Mohamed Al-Fayed, Coleman recalls how ‘Christine Hamilton was shooting daggers the whole time at George Carman QC [who represented Fayed] and Al-Fayed’.

While she was charmed by supermodel Naomi Campbell, during her successful 2002 privacy action against Mirror Group Newspapers. ‘She was gorgeous – such a pretty girl, but she was really naughty’ airing her opinion of the newspaper’s barrister, Desmond Brown QC, in tones not so sotto voce that her views went unheard by those in court.

Beatles star Paul McCartney also won her over. Though the proceedings were closed to journalists, Coleman sat outside the court. McCartney and his ex-wife Heather Mills went in through separate doors, she recollects. ‘He walked through the door like a gentleman and greeted people, but he seemed very sad.’

While Mills, Coleman recalls ‘was a real contradiction and seemed happy with the attention, even though some of it was not very nice.’

After discovering what had gone on in court, Coleman produced this sketch of the moment Mills doused Macca’s solicitor, Fiona Shackleton, with a pitcher of water.

But it’s not all about the A-listers. ‘Judges and lawyers are fun to sketch and fun to listen too – they are always full of surprises’.

The late George Carman QC, who bought some of her pictures, she remembers especially. ‘He was mesmerising, flamboyant, naughty and always full of surprises.

‘He was a showman – similar to how lawyers behave in the States. It’s kinda frowned on now to be like that here, but it’s more entertaining’.

From the bar, Coleman also singles out the ‘charming’ Orlando Pownall QC and Courtenay Griffiths QC. Of the latter, she notes ‘he also has a little bit of an American style. And he charms jurors a lot. He’s really charming and that is so important as a barrister, particularly a criminal barrister’.

Having recently sketched the Hatton Garden robbers, she says how ‘nice and sweet’ the sentencing judge, His Honour Judge Kinch QC, was. ‘All the other judges were really jealous of him; they all wanted that case,’ she adds.

His Honour Judge Drake, who presided over several high profile defamation cases in the 1990s, she recalls with fondness. Attending an often crowded court 13, he would allow her to sit on the steps leading up to his dais.

‘Some judges are so strict it feels like torture, but when you meet them, they are often really nice,’ she says, adding that the clerks can be fiercer than the judges.

In 2013 Coleman made legal history becoming the first person in almost a century to be allowed to sketch inside the Supreme Court, despite the fact that filming has been permitted in the country’s highest court since 2009.

She studied fine arts and graphics at Sam Houston University in Texas and then worked for advertising agencies and a printing company, before getting into court sketching.

Coleman got her first gig when her college professor recommended her to cover a big case for the television news in Texas, because she liked to draw quickly.

‘Two police officers had thrown a Mexican guy who was really drunk and wearing army boots into the Buffalo Bayou. He drowned and they were charged with murder’.

Though initially she had little idea what to expect, after that case, she got the bug.

In her early years working in Texas, Coleman drew prisoners being given lethal injections, from accounts given to her by her cameraman and other witness, as she never attended an execution.

Married to an English banker, Coleman crossed the pond in the 1980s. ‘I had my tape with all my work on, but I didn’t know how things were done in this country. I went to ABC who told me that most of their graphics were done in New York and they didn’t need a court artist.

‘So I thought I’d go to the Old Bailey. There was a big trial there – a child abuse case where the parents had killed their little girl. A couple of reporters were outside doing a piece to camera. One looked a little bit grouchy, but the other, Simon Cole, who worked for ITN, looked friendly.

‘I spoke to him and he told me to go and see his news editor, who liked my work and sent me to cover another case at the Old Bailey.’

The second case she covered was the 1986 Jeffrey Archer libel trial. ‘It was just wonderful,’ she recalls, ‘so exciting’.

In the States you can go in to courts and draw at will, but doing so here is banned, due to a 1925 law – section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act to be precise.

Coleman learned that the hard way. ‘I had my notebook and I was doing little tiny drawings in the Archer libel case. Someone in the public gallery told the court clerk and I got in trouble for it. She took me out and said I could have been fined me’.

Taking out her notepad, Coleman explains how she works. ‘I take written notes – names, arrows, directions, colours. It’s like studying for a test and making things stick in my mind’.

Her shorthand aide memoir helps her draw at speed, which is crucial as she sometimes has as little as five minutes to complete a sketch in time for the news bulletins or print deadlines.

And her working environment can be hit and miss. While there are long tables in the corridors of the Royal Courts of Justice, she is often forced to sketch al fresco — in the car park at Belmarsh, where everyone is kicked out as soon as the court rises; on the grass outside Southwark Crown Court, and even on a bench in a graveyard.

‘There used to be a sofa in the ladies at the RCJ – I’d sit in there and work. PA’s (Press Association) room is pretty good, but they’ve got quite a big crowd in there and all the tables are taken.’

Coleman published a selection of sketches from some of the most famous cases, in a book, Court Scenes: The Court Art of Priscilla Coleman, written by the Evening Standard’s pre-eminent former court’s correspondent, Paul Cheston. The duo are set to publish a second volume later this year.

But capturing the scenes is not always easy. First off, getting a seat in court can be a scramble.

‘They make it so difficult for even me to go in. For the Adam Johnson trial I had to get up at 1am to stand in a queue, because it was first come first served for the tickets and there were only eight places’.

When she does get in, the views can be limited, because of where she has to sit, court furniture obstructing her view or security measures that restrict visibility.

She recollects a time at the Old Bailey, where she was supposed to sit in a position from where she could not see the defendants.

Coleman suggested she bring in a couple of bookshelves from home for her and the other two court artists to sit at, so they could see. She was given permission and brought in the shelves strapped together with gaffer tape.

‘When we weren’t there the solicitors used them. I thought they might be needed again, so I left them there. I think they’re still there — in court 12, I believe. And I’m missing two book cases.’

Public access to the courts, she bemoans, is getting worse. ‘It’s not because the courts are old – the modern courtrooms are worse than the old ones. The design of them is pretty bad’.

She is particularly annoyed by the changes made to several courts up north, where she complains that reflective glass has been used as a security measure to prevent members of the public from seeing the jury, resulting in observers being unable to see the person in the dock.

‘Somehow they have decided that the public are really dangerous and they don’t want them to see. They are afraid they will intimidate jurors.

‘So you only get a glimpse of defendants when they walk in and out, but that’s it – it’s pretty bad’.

On the positive side, she thinks that court 1 at the Old Bailey is ‘pretty good for general all round letting people see’.

She suggests courts should be built ‘on the model of a church where everyone can see the preacher’. At present, she says: ‘It’s like courts are kinda open, but not really’.

The increased use of cameras in court, she hopes will improve things. And she is pleased to have been asked for her opinion. ‘No one ever thinks to ask me about it when it’s being debated,’ she says.

Cameras have filmed the Supreme Court since 2009. Judgments from the Court of Appeal have been caught on camera since 2013 and a pilot filming judge’s sentencing remarks in six crown courts will begin soon.

‘I’ll be put out of business,’ she predicts, judging by the American experience where court artists have become ‘unusual and kinda rare’ due to televised hearings.

But she is concerned that filming must be done well. Good examples, she says, are the trial of Oscar Pistorius – ‘they got some pretty good shots there’ and the House of Commons, where ‘they have really worked at it and done a wonderful job – it’s beautiful.

‘If they could do it like that in the courts, they would be doing a really great job’.

Even in the States, where trials have been filmed for some time, Coleman notes ‘they get some really crummy camera angles’.

At other times, the technology can be too good. ‘I saw a trial on TV with subtitles instead of sound. I was told they couldn’t use the sound because it was too good and picked up all of the comments that the lawyers made to each other’.

A long-suffering aficionado of court IT, she makes a plea for the technology to be better than the kit used to relay hearings via videolinks into media annexes.

The quality of the video link in the hacking trial, she says was poor. ‘The screens showed fuzzy black and white images. You couldn’t even see one of the defendants and the sound was not good.

‘When you can get great shots on a mobile phone, I don’t understand why they couldn’t have done this better. It was a very important case. I guess it all comes down to money.’

Another gripe is the numerous rules about what she can and cannot portray – an art made harder by the fact that the rules are unwritten and inconsistent. ‘They make it so hard. I don’t know if they realise or care.’

The definite no-nos are that: you cannot show children; you can indicate their presence, but you cannot show the jury and, where identity is in issue, you can only show the back of a defendant’s head.

Other issues are a matter of taste. For instance, although she drew a picture of the bath tub exhibited in the trial of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr in relation to the deaths of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, he did not publish it.

During that trial, the judge, Alan Moses ruled that no interactions between Carr and Huntley, that the jury might not have seen, could be depicted.

And during the trial of Barry George for the murder of TV presenter Jill Dando (his conviction for which was subsequently overturned), drawings had to be shown to the judge and barristers before publication and for while they were only permitted to depict three-quarters of his face.

While the pictures drawn during an Old Bailey trial of Real IRA members had to be oked by the defendants themselves. ‘Their barristers didn’t want them to be portrayed in a bad way, looked guilty, with a five o’clock shadow or a grouchy expression’.

With some frustration she harrumphs: ‘They never really go all the way and give you everything, yet the court proceedings are public and anyone can walk into a court and try to see what’s going on, providing there’s room’.

Therein lies another problem that she thinks cameras would solve – the lack of space in many courts for the press and public to attend. ‘In the trials that the public will want to see there will not be room for them to fit in the court.

‘A lot of times even reporters get stuck outside and have to rely on PA when their publication might want a different angle. Having cameras in court would solve that.’

She continues: ‘I would hate to prejudice a trial, but they should just get over it. If the judge and jury can hear and see something, let everyone.

‘You can’t keep a secret anymore with the internet and social media; people are always tweeting and gossiping’.

Coleman thinks cameras should bear all about what goes on in courts. ‘Just put it all out. Stop trying to be secret all the time; it’s not going to work.’

Over pink champagne, fishcakes and shepherds pie at Inner Temple’s Pagasus Bar, the highest placed lawyer in the Indy’s The Independent on Sunday newpaper’s 2015 Rainbow List, LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex) activist and poster boy for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrant’s ‘I’m an Immigrant’ campaign discusses the launch of a new group to promote LGBT+ issues at the bar, the need for greater visibility of gay judges and why heterosexual couples should be allowed to enter civil partnership.

In a profession that in the eyes of many remains synonymous with pale, stale, conservative, public school chaps in dull suits, Chelvan stands out from the pack – loud and proud.

‘I will wear colourful shirts because it suits my complexion rather than dusky blue’, he states.

It is not just a sense of style that makes Chelvan stand out. In trendy parlance, he ‘self-identifies’ as a gay, black (international classification for non-white) Hindu, with a hearing difficulty – and if that doesn’t tick enough diversity boxes, he grew up in Worthing.

But first — an explanation of his name – his chamber’s website lists him as S Chelvan, but, as he explains, Chelvan is his ‘given’ name used to represent his last name, in accordance with Sri Lankan Tamil tradition. It is prefixed by the ‘S’, which is the first letter of his father’s last name.

He shares a modest room with two colleagues at No5 Chambers, tucked away off Fleet Street, far from its Birmingham ‘mother ship’.

Chelvan’s corner is super-organised, with bookcases bearing neatly filed cases, ordered on ascending shelves according to the tribunal level that each has reached.

Behind his desk a sketch by court artist Isobel Williams, done during his first case at the Supreme Court, AA (Somalia) v Entry Clearance Officer (Addis Ababa).  He was led by Manjit Gill QC in a case that challenged the lack of protection by the immigration rules in family reunion cases to cover non-biological children adopted by wider family members under the Islamic custom of kafala, often after a child has been orphaned.

Chelvan has developed an international reputation in asylum and immigration law, in particular in asylum claims based on sexual or gender identity. In many countries, he bemoans, ‘it is still dangerous to be gay’.

There are 80 countries in which consensual same-sex activity is a criminal offence, and it remains punishable by death in five countries.

As for the UK’s attitude to those fleeing persecution because of their sexual orientation, he recalls ‘the dark days of gay asylum law were 2004-10’. The Home Office operated a policy of ‘reasonable tolerable discretion’.

Where it accepted claimants were gay and would face persecution or death if returned to their home countries, it suggested they could avoid such threats by voluntarily exercising discretion and concealing their sexuality.

‘They could only get asylum if they proved that it was not reasonably tolerable to do so.’

A landmark judgment in July 2010 in HT (Cameroon) and HJ (Iran),  in the cases of two gay men, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the policy was wrong.

‘No-one would proceed on the basis that a straight man or woman could find it reasonably tolerable to conceal his or her sexual identity indefinitely to avoid suffering persecution,’ said Lord Rodger, delivering the lead judgment.

From there, the Home Office’s policy moved from one of discretion to disbelief, explains Chelvan. ‘Claimants would be asked degrading tick-box questions to prove their sexual orientation – such as did you wear a condom or did you ejaculate’.

The types of humiliating questions were revealed in a leaked Home Office document in 2014 in The Guardian.

To improve the process for determining the credibility of LGBTI asylum seekers and to make the interviews less like an interrogation, less judgmental and less intrusive, Chelvan developed a model of open-ended, non-adversarial questioning.

Its premise, is that there are several characteristics that are almost universal among LGBTI people that they will be able articulate – difference, stigma, shame and harm (DSSH).

He explains: ‘You realise you are different, you realise that difference sets you apart from the rest of society, which brings stigma and shame. And what makes you a refugee is that you face harm because of that difference’.

His model was endorsed by the UNHCR in 2012 and has been adopted around the world, which, says its creator, is ‘mind-boggling’.

‘The bar gives you the opportunity to do that, to change things – you are not just a litigator – you are taking a lead’.

Despite the strides made over recent years, says Chelvan, there is much still to do. To that end, he sits on two Home Office committees, advising on policy and helping ensure it complies with its international obligations and keeps in step with legal and other developments – although, he notes, it does not always heed his advice.

Immigration and asylum, he says, is ‘such a politicised area of law’ and the Home Office has a perpetual fear that people will abuse the system and too many article 8 – the right to family life — claims will be allowed.

The current moves to codify article 8, designed to restrict its application, he says, will serve only to increase the numbers of people forced to go underground and live in servitude, as the government is trumpeting its Modern Slavery Act.

The expanding lexicon of sexual identity, emerging in the population at large, is reflected in new asylum cases – moving from lesbian and gay to bisexual and, more recently, to address trans and intersex claims based on gender identity.

The latest buzz acronym – LGBTIQA – has the additions, he explains, of queer (Q) – either another word for gay, or questioning – and straight allies (A) – those who support and promote equal rights for the others.

If the world can still be an unsafe place to be an out LGBTI-er, what of the bar?

LGBTI campaigning charity Stonewall has just published its 12^th Workplace Equality Index, which features a dozen law firms in its top 100 and at 13^th, Simmons & Simmons, highlighted as a ‘Star Performer’ in recognition of its long-standing commitment to creating workplace equality.

Chelvan has been out since university and overtly so in practice – in his applications to chambers he was frank about his reasons for coming to the bar – ‘to change the law in relation to gay equality issues’.

Despite efforts made by groups including the InterLaw Diversity Forum and the Bar Lesbian And Gay Group, he says, prejudice remains and many do not feel safe to come out.

‘Only the other day I heard of someone taken on at a really right-on set, who only felt able to come out after completing pupillage,’ he says. ‘The bar should have been a safe place for them to feel able to be out from the start.’

He understands that for some, sexuality is private, but for others, ‘it’s not about coming out and making a statement that you are gay, but being able to tell your colleagues honestly what you did over the weekend and correctly identify the gender of your partner’.

‘We have an urgent crisis in relation to dealing with diversity, not just in relation to LGBT+ issues,’ he warns, citing the fact that England and Wales appointed only its second South Asian minority ethnic High Court judge last year.

‘We need to do something pretty quickly. I’m not patient enough to wait another 50 years – there are candidates with merit, but because of the message that is being sent out, they are not applying’.

To help hasten the change, Chelvan is involved in a new project to promote LGBT+ equality at the bar.

The forum – FreeBar – initiated by Matrix, Hardwicke, No5 Chambers, 5 Paper Buildings, 3 Hare Court and Stonewall, aims to work with chambers, employers and individuals, be they LGBT+ or straight allies, to promote inclusion and best practice and to celebrate LGBT+ role models and allies.

Its guiding principle is Stonewall’s tag line ‘acceptance without exception’.

‘We aim to work alongside other groups to ensure LGBT+ issues are at the forefront and people feel safe to be who they are in the workplace without discrimination or prejudice,’ says Chelvan.

The group officially launches on 17 February at an event hosted by City firm Travers Smith. For information about the forum and the launch, email info@freebar.co.uk.

Would he like to be a judge?

He can only think of two ‘out’ gay senior judges – Lord Justice Adrian Fulford and the Chancellor of the High Court, Sir Terence Etherton — and says: ‘Things would have to change in the judiciary before I’d feel it was a safe space to do that.’

He adds: ‘There are countless other people ahead of the queue who aren’t applying or getting selected. I want to see a change happening in visibility before I would even consider applying.’

In any event, he gets a ‘buzz’ from the work he is doing now – ‘advocating on behalf of your client’ – whether before the first tier tribunal, Court of Appeal or Supreme Court.

‘It’s not a job, it’s a vocation’, he says, noting that there are two types of barrister – ‘the first instance barrister, who just wants to go to court and win the case, and the appellate barrister, who wants to change the law.

‘I’m not here just to apply the law; I’m here to change it, to empower my clients and a larger pool of people.’

But changing the law can often takes years. ‘My mother used to tell me “God says three things – yes, no or later.” I’ve taken that as my litigation strategy. When the Court of Appeal says “no”, I think “ok, we’ll come back later”.

‘And I’ve found that to work. Sometimes you will lose, but at least you’ve put a mark in the sand that you can come back to later’.

Chelvan views his role as his clients’ legal interpreter. ‘Instead of translating their words from their mother tongue to English, I interpret the words from their narrative to the law.’

A cerebral chap, he regards the bar as being about ‘intellectual curiosity’.

‘One of my favourite philosophers, Francis Bacon, said “knowledge is power” and that applies to the law. If you know your case inside out it really does empower you.

‘I find the weakest point in my case and so long as I can address that, I can build my argument.’

Among the altruism and desire to change the world, inside the flamboyantly dressed advocate is, a bit of a show off.

‘One of my earliest memories is being asked to recite Goldilocks and the Three Bears when I was five years old at primary school.

What I loved about it was not just telling the story, but seeing my friends watching me and listening – and that’s the thrill you get as an advocate. It’s not just speaking; it’s the fact that people listen to you.’

‘I’m living the dream; this is my dream job,’ he says, quickly adding ‘though not the money; the money is horrific.’

Predominantly a legal aid lawyer, he says: ‘Every time there are legal aid cuts I worry about money and about my age debt and paying the bills, but I can’t think of doing anything else.’

He has started doing public access work, taking LGBTI asylum claims from application. ‘That’s been a wonderful insight about the part of the process I hadn’t known about. And it pays, thank God.

‘But, I’m still a jobbing legal aid lawyer and will continue to be a legal aid lawyer because the majority of my clients don’t have any money – they have lost everything’.

He and his junior are even taking one Court of Appeal case on a conditional fee arrangement.

Hailing the importance of the solicitor-barrister relationship, he says: ‘I’m very lucky to work with solicitors who, even with ridiculous slashing of legal aid, will go above and beyond the call of duty for their clients’.

During his pupillage, which he completed at Doughty Street and Garden Court, he went to Harvard to do a masters degree as a Kennedy Memorial Trust Scholar, after which US law firm opportunities arose.

He rejected the possibility of a $120,000-a-year gig to come back to the UK and be a legal aid lawyer.

He has no regrets about the decision. ‘I do the same hours as my friends across the pond, but I don’t have two apartments overlooking Battery Park’.

On the flip side: ‘My friends in the States are not doing work that they are passionate about and they don’t get cards saying “thank you for saving my life” – which is priceless’.

One of the reasons he his passionate about his clients cases is because he has experienced rejection and ostracism as a result of his sexuality, growing up knowing that he was different, but not being able to express it.

‘I realised I was different when I was a child. When my brother was seven, he had a birthday cake in the shape of a football pitch. When I was seven I had a cake in the shape of a number seven decorated with pale pistachio green icing with pink roses.

‘When he was nine, he had an R2D2 cake; I had a cake with pale blue icing and marzipan roses and butterflies. Did anyone think I was gay? No, but I wasn’t conforming to the hetero-normal narrative. Years before sexual awakening you realise you are different.’

Chelvan says he realised his sexual identity at 14. During his school years section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 banned schools promoting homosexuality or teaching the ‘acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’. Indeed, it was not repealed in England and Wales until November 2003.

‘I didn’t know about that law, but I knew there was something that I couldn’t speak to my English teacher about, but she guessed and recommended books for me, like those by Alice Walker. It was the first time I’d ever read about a same sex relationship and I was able to identify with someone.’

He led a ‘traumatic double life’, outwardly conforming to what was expected of him, but knowing inside he was different from that outward impression.

He came out to his family at 21. The following day his mother gave him an ultimatum – be celibate for five years and then they’d marry me off to some girl or leave the home.

‘So, I was kicked out of home. My stuff was sent in dustbin bags to my halls of residence and I received a letter via the family solicitors saying I was formally disowned.’

It was, he recalls, a ‘dark and difficult’ part of his life. But he had already come out to his friends at Southampton University, who were hugely supportive.

‘As Armistead Maupin says, you have two types of family – your biological family and your logical family. Thankfully, I definitely have my logical family who accept me and have always been there and who I love dearly’.

During his time at university, the age of consent for homosexuals was still 21, gay men and lesbians were banned from serving in the armed forces and there were no anti-discrimination laws.

‘I knew I wanted to do something to change my world.’ He even tried to get the armed forces excluded from the university’s careers fair.

Born in Sri Lanka, Chelvan came to the UK when he was four. Being the eldest son, he was expected to follow his mother into the medical profession. But after doing work experience with a barrister when he was 14 he told his parents he wanted to become a barrister.

They suggested he qualify as a doctor and then switch to law. Ultimately he gained a first class degree politics and law and studied for the bar with a scholarship from Inner Temple.

Chelvan has achieved much success – he was voted barrister of the year in 2014 in the Legal Aid Practitioners’ Group’s Legal Aid Lawyer of the year awards and went straight in at position 43 out of the top 101 influential LGBTI individuals in the UK in the Independent’s Rainbow List (formerly the Pink List) last year.

At 41, he seems in a place where he is completely assured and comfortable in his skin. Such openness and honesty is unusual and appears to embolden and empower him.

Some may mistake his assuredness and tenacious advocacy for arrogance and he accepts: ‘I’m marmite – some members of the bar are not attracted to my personality and react negatively to me being overt and being who I am’.

But he is quick to pay tribute to those who have helped him, particularly his chambers and his ‘inner circle’, not least his husband, Mark, whom he describes as the ‘most wonderful man on the planet’.

They formed a civil partnership in 2006, and converted it to a marriage last year – both ceremonies taking place at Inner Temple –wearing Neru jackets embroidered with peacock feathers for the first (in Hinduism, peacocks symbolise immortality) and suits for the latter.

The extension of marriage to same-sex couples, ‘gave me goose bumps’ and he, says, he could not understand the opposition to it. ‘No one was forcing a straight person to get married to a person of the same sex. Just because I would have equality doesn’t discriminate against you’.

Making the upgrade was important to him as it gave him equality with heterosexual couples and removed the sense of ‘disenfranchisement’ he had felt.

‘When someone asks if we are married, we no long have to qualify the answer by saying “technically it’s a civil partnership”’.

He approves of extending civil partnerships to non-gay couples. ‘Equality is equality; you can’t redefine equality.’

What else does he want to do?

‘I want to have kids. I knew I wanted to be a dad before I knew I was gay. Mark and I hope to have kids one day through surrogacy – one fathering each. He will make the most amazing co-parent.’

Professionally, some might consider that a black silk jacket would be a deserved addition to his wardrobe.

Over slow-braised pork belly and sausage cassoulet the former Conservative attorney general now charged with chairing the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), discusses the legal justification for air strikes on Syria, his suspicions over changes to the ministerial code and why the government thinks lawyers are from the planet Fark.

Having been unceremoniously sacked in David Cameron’s last reshuffle, Dominic Grieve QC appears to be embracing the freedom to speak to his mind and pleased to have found a new role chairing the ISC following Malcolm Rifkind’s departure amid allegations of cash for access.

Grieve is keen to stress the corporate nature of the nine-strong committee, which he points out is not dominated by government backbenchers. ‘There are only four Conservatives on it, three Labour, one SNP and a cross bencher from the Lords.’

It has, he says, a ‘very clear scrutiny remit’ and has identified three weighty areas of interest: the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill (on which it will work closely with the joint bill scrutiny committee); drone strikes; and the historical rendition and detention involving the UK with the United States.

‘It’s early days, but my impression is that we’re working together well. We’ve started off an induction period, getting to understand the work of the agencies, and that’s brought us together. And we’re just starting to take evidence looking into the Investigatory Powers Bill.

The Investigatory Powers Bill

The controversial bill, dubbed the snooper’s charter, and which allows the security services to intercept communications between individuals, has been significantly watered down from the original, to include the requirement for judicial authorisation.

Under Rifkind the ISC prepared a report on the initial bill last March. ‘We’re going to want to compare what was recommended with what the government is now proposing,’ says the new chair, adding that in many places, the government has taken up the recommendations of the previous committee.

‘Where it hasn’t, we’ll probably want to look if there was a good reason for not doing so or whether we agree with the original committee’s view, or whether things moved on’.

But he adds: ‘I detect, quite independently of the committee’s work, that some of the polemic over this piece of legislation has died down a bit. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of detail to be looked at or that it isn’t controversial. It is controversial. Anything that gives powers to invade privacy and confidence is going to be controversial’.

He acknowledges the concerns raised by the Bar Counsel over legal professional privilege (LPP). But notes: ‘If you suspect that a communication is in order to further a criminal enterprise, whether it’s terrorism or serious crime, LPP doesn’t apply to you. If you’re using your solicitor or lawyer as a vehicle for committing crime, there is no privilege.

‘The difficulty has always been that if you strongly suspect that’s what is happening, the only you can find out if the privilege has been breached is by accessing the material’.

He suggests that a ‘whole series of safeguards’ have already been put in place, but accepts it is ‘an area that needs very close attention’.

Although, he adds: ‘The idea that some have put forward that you can simply treat this area as a no go area under any circumstances is unreasonable.

‘I’m afraid you’ll simply find that people find crooked lawyers or lawyers who share their ideological viewpoint in order to do their bidding, and in which case we’re going to be left poorly protected.’

He agrees that those who are likely to make confidential communications ought to have a special level of protection, but asserts that the current code guidelines for the intelligence agencies already make clear that that exists. Though he suggests: ‘It can be beefed up and the bill goes some way to doing that.’

Drone strikes

It is, he says, impossible to answer the question of whether, if he were still attorney, he would have advised the PM that the drone strikes were lawful.

But he is clear that Article 51 of the United Nations Charter provides a legal basis for taking action against individuals, be they British nationals or foreigners, who are operating out of ‘ungoverned space’ in a foreign country and are threatening you, your countrymen or your allies.

‘It’s absolutely crystal clear – you have a right to self-defence,’ though he suggests it is ‘desirable that you should try to get a UN Security Council resolution to deal with the matter’.

Explains Cameron’s for chief law officer: ‘The prime minister has made clear that the basis on which they were launched was the right to self-defence and the imminence of the threat.’

While accepting that, he says the committee is keen to look into the intelligence base behind the decision to make the strikes against the two men from Wales and the recent case of Mohammed Emwazi, aka Jihadi John.

‘I hope we will be able to do that and we will try to publish a report. But as with all reports by the ISC there is always the question about how much can be made public. But we will do our best.’

The legality of air strikes on Syria

As with the drone strokes, Grieve states: ‘I never thought that the issue of taking military action in Syria against Daesh/IS raises complex legal problems provided the factual basis is there for it.’

He is ‘comfortable’ with the legal basis, provided it is founded on the facts, which require that there is an ‘imminent’ threat and that the measures being taken to meet that threat are are ‘necessary and proportionate’.

Following the Paris atrocities, he notes that the UN Security Council has backed a resolution, authorising all necessary measures to deal with Daesh/IS.

‘That is in fact a lawful authorisation to take military action,’ he suggests, adding the caveat that it ‘doesn’t give you a blank cheque to do anything you like’ and raising the need of having a long-term strategy to follow any action.

‘We have examples in recent history of having a perfectly good legal base for taking military action, but at the end of the day the military action has not lead to some of the hoped for consequences.’

He cites the example of Libya. ‘There was never any question that the military action against Gaddafi to stop him slaughtering his own citizens had been authorised by the UN. But we also have to recognise fours years down the road that, although Gaddafi is gone and he’s no longer threatening his own citizens, Libya is not in a good a place.’

In insists: ‘That doesn’t mean that the decision taken was wrong. I still think it was justified. If we hadn’t taken military action against Gaddafi he would have killed several thousands of people. Unfortunately many thousands of people have been killed by others since.’

He will be supporting the government in the vote on taking military action, but stresses, that although such action is justified, it is not a solution to the problem of IS.

‘I think the House of Commons is looking for the prime minister to give some indication of a strategy for dealing with the problem. But in fairness to the prime minister that’s a very difficult thing to put together.’

Rendition

When considering rendition and detention, and the UK’s cooperation with the US, Grieve stresses the ‘historic’ nature of the issue.

‘In my time in government as attorney general I never had any reason to think the intelligence services were acting unethically. If anything, I was constantly impressed by their high ethical standards.’

But, he notes there is ample evidence already in the public domain that gives rise to ‘disquiet’ about what happened in relation to the UK’s involvement with the United States between 2001-07 and ‘whether in the process we may have allowed ourselves to participate in, or to be dragged into, practices we would have regarded throughout that period as being unacceptable.’

He is alert to the demand from certain corners for the matter to be dealt with by a judicial enquiry, which he states people are entitled to argue for. But he asks that they wait and see what the committee has to say first.

‘The committee’s been set a remit and I don’t think it’s one that’s improper for us to pursue.’

The chair is also conscious that some, particularly those who claim they were victims of the process, are reluctant to participate [such as British resident detained in Guantanamo Bay for 14 years, Shaker Aamer]. Accepting their position, he nonetheless encourages them to give evidence.

Taking part in the committee’s enquiry, he reasons, would not do them any harm or preclude them from seeking another form of enquiry if they are not satisfied with the committee’s conclusion.

Security services

The committee has also set itself the task of considering more broadly the role of the security services. Whether they have sufficient powers to counter the evolving threats, he says, is ‘a difficult question’.

But he has not formed the impression that they are hungry for extra powers, even after the incidents in Paris. And he notes the home secretary’s refusal to accede to Labour calls that the Investigatory Powers Bill be fast-tracked.

The rush to legislate to introduce oppressive pre-charge detention seen in the mid-2000s, he suggests, is absent at present.

‘Post 7/7, I was very much of the view that everyone lost their heads a bit. It’s understandable – governments feel they’ve got to be seen to be doing something and the easiest way of doing that is by legislating, but that’s not a very good idea.’

One area where the security services are keen for progress, he says, is the Investigatory Powers bill. And, he asserts, their desire is ‘with good reason’.

‘The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 is out of date; it’s not transparent and it creates difficulties which shouldn’t be there. The agencies are immensely keen to have a new structure and I think they should be in a position to get it.’

The committee’s programme, he indicates, is likely to take keep it busy through to the next parliamentary session and possibly the summer of next year. But he says there are other things he would like to look at – ‘the services more broadly and what I would call good house-keeping, which tends not to be so interesting to people, but actually is part of the committee’s job – are we getting value for money, what are the diversity policies like and how are they shaping up?’

Human Rights Act/British bill of rights

The government’s desire to introduce a British bill of bights and alter the status of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is one close to Grieve’s heart. His strident opposition to the proposals cost him his job as top law dog.

A copy of the proposed bill was apparently leaked to The Sunday Times earlier this month. Where it came from, Grieve is unsure, but he says there are thought to be internal government drafts circulating.

The content of the leaked bill is much watered down from the withdrawal from the Convention originally mooted. In something of a fudge it proposes that the UK remain a signatory, but that domestic judges are not bound by decisions of the Strasbourg court.

‘I have the impression that the government has begun to realise that its proposals are fraught with difficulty.’

He identifies two key problems. ‘The first one is that if you are going to create a bill of rights, is it your intention to create incompatibility with the convention?

‘Of course you can create incompatibility with the convention, but if you do, then the international consequences of doing it are very considerable. And the government may be coming to realise that, for all its imperfections, the convention is very important.’

He points out that it was only last week, in response to a question from Jeremy Corbyn about putting human rights experts in British embassies, that the prime minister declared the promotion of human rights internationally to be a key strategic objective of the UK.

‘If you’re promoting human rights internationally, how do you do that if the UK is in persistent breach of an international legal obligation that has probably done more than any single other thing on our planet to improve human rights?’ asks Grieve not quite rhetorically.

The second, ‘more parochial’ issue, he suggests, concerns the devolution settlements of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which are all underpinned by the Human Rights Act and the ECHR.

‘How do you legislate to include those without breaching the spirit and, actually I think now, the letter of the devolution settlements?

‘I always thought that this was going to be a very serious problem. You either have to take them with you or you legislate against their consent.’

He is unsure how the government will overcome this. ‘You’ll have to ask the question of government ministers, but I doubt very much you’ll get an answer.’

He questions whether the government intends the Convention to be the basis for the bill of rights, with different ways of implementation.

It has, he notes, been suggested for example that the clause in the HRA about read-down should be abandoned, or that the Rome declarations of incompatibility should be changed.

‘Another  proposal is that you tweak or gloss the text of the convention in its entirety, like article 3 (prohibition from torture) or 8 (right to family and private life) – in which case you have to ask the question to what extent you can do that and stay compatible with the convention.

‘These are all possible, but they start making it much more cumbersome to work the system domestically,’ suggests Grieve.

The thorn in the government’s side, says he does ‘not quite understand’ what legislating for parliamentary supremacy – a proposal in the leaked document – means.

‘Parliament is already supreme. As we’ve seen with prisoner voting, if parliament doesn’t change the law, the law stays as it is despite the fact that the ECHR has said something should be done about it.’

But, at the same time, where there is an incompatibility, he asserts, the government has a duty to try to resolve it. ‘That means either pulling out of the treaty obligation altogether if they don’t wish to resolve it, or initiating a measure to bring about compatibility, by changing the law.’

He continues: ‘What I don’t like about what’s been going on is the hint that the government is trying to find a justification for failing to try to meet its international legal obligations.’

He is ‘a bit suspicious’ about the supremacy of parliament proposals and ‘a little bit puzzled’ by the government’s ‘completely inexplicable’ decision to change the ministerial code to remove the reference to international legal obligations.

The Cabinet Office has made clear that, despite the redraft, the responsibility to respect international legal obligations remains the same. But, says Grieve, ‘the fact that they played around with the wording does strike me as very odd’.

He suggests the change may have been made so that ministers are not reminded so frequently by civil servants of the need to respect international legal obligations.

‘Having it in black and white on the minister’s desk is not a bad thing.’

Some international legal obligations, he explains, are capable of interpretation by international tribunals, but once they have been interpreted, the government has an obligation to follow that interpretation.

Though he would not go as far as Lord Kerr, in his dissenting judgment in the benefit cap case, in which he suggested ‘rather startlingly’ that the court should give direct effect to international legal obligations on the basis that the government must have meant what it said when it signed up.

Grieve dismisses Kerr’s ‘pretty radical’ view that would ‘rather blow open our dualist system of international and national law’.

Shuffled out

Grieve told the BBC in July 2014 he was ‘sad’ to have lost the AG job that he had held for four years. Though he did not go into politics with the ‘intention of being niched in semi-legal roles,’ he said he was happy to have to had the job.

And if future ministerial opportunities came his way, he would be ‘happy to have them’, though he is ‘slightly sceptical that is likely to happen’, due to the ‘degree of variance’ between him and his colleagues over the ECHR.

Brushing off the suggestion that he is the only principled person in the Tory party, he states there are plenty. ‘All political parties can only operate by being, to an extent, broad-church coalitions of interest. You do have to adjust your views to accommodate your colleagues.’

But, he says: ‘There does come a point where, if you think they’re doing something daft and unjustified, that it’s a red line. For me what they appear to be doing with the ECHR is a red line.

‘The prime minister knew that and I think that’s why he got rid of me. Indeed his press officer was kind enough to say that was the reason – 48 hours after I left.’

He adds, with a hint of disappointment: ‘So I think we can be satisfied that that was the reason why I went, even if he himself [Cameron] never told me that at the time I went.’

With humility, he says: ‘I’m sorry for it. In a sense it’s an admission of failure – I have failed to persuade him.

‘But on the other hand it’s liberated me to say what I like’.

During his time in government, Grieve says, he never considered resigning despite differences of opinion. ‘We were never at a point where there was an issue over which I might have had to resign.

‘Clearly, it was apparent to me that there was a likelihood that we might end up with an insoluble conflict. I think I had perhaps rather thought that there might be some more discussion on the subject before we came to that point.’

The role of the Lord Chancellor

Grieve skirts the question of whether he would have liked the role of justice secretary and lord chancellor. The latter post he does think needs to be held by a lawyer, but by ‘somebody who has an understanding of how the law works’. And the present incumbent, Michael Gove, he believes has a ‘very instinctive understanding’ of it.

And Gove’s understanding makes him [Grieve] ‘optimistic’ that he [Gove] will be able to manage the relationship with lawyers who raise policy issues.

There is no ideological aversion to lawyers, he says, rather a lack of understanding of the law’s importance. ‘One of the difficulties he [Gove] undoubtedly has is that lawyers are becoming sort of aliens from another planet. We pop up and say to government “this doesn’t feel very good to us” and they look at us if though we’ve come from planet Fark.’

While there are ‘plenty of civil servants and colleagues’ who understand the importance of the law, he suggests that 40 or 50 years ago there were many more lawyers doing roles in government.

‘I sometimes worry that there is a great divide between people who have some understanding of the way the law works and the importance of operating within in a legal framework and people for whom, although they may be outwardly deferential, don’t always see the point’.

It’s not that he thinks there is any ‘great crisis,’ but he goes on: ‘Is there less understanding than there was 30 years ago? I think probably yes – because there are fewer lawyers in government and above all fewer lawyers who have experience.’

Harking back to the days of Margaret Thatcher – ‘a stickler about legal propriety’, he observes: ‘She may well have been frustrated and irritated and angry, but she understood legal principles had to be upheld. I’m not sure things are the same way now.’

Background

Born in 1956 in Lambeth, South London, Grieve was the son of barrister and Solihull MP, Percy Grieve QC, and Anglo-French mother Evelyn Mijouain. He went to Westminster School and read history at Magdalen College, Oxford before turning to the law, which he says was ‘a bit of a fall back’.

Uncertain what he wanted to do, though ‘pretty sure’ he wanted to eschew a 9-5 office job, the city or banking, he tried for Foreign Office, but after taking the exams, was not accepted.

The need to earn a living doing something that could be combined with his interests in politics and his father extolling the merits of self-employment, put law in mind.

After Oxford, he did a diploma in law at Central London Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster).

It was, he recalls ‘rather learning by rote in those days’ and while he ‘quite enjoyed’ his legal studies, he ‘didn’t get carried away with it’ and only really started enjoying himself when he started appearing in court.

Called to the bar by Middle Temple in 1980, he always had politics in mind and became a local counsellor within a couple of years of starting out.

Pursuing his political ambitions, he was selected to fight an ‘unwinnable seat’ in Lambeth at the 1987 election. Coming second served only to fuel his parliamentary ambitions and he tried, but failed, to get a seat for the 1992 election.

Despite disappointment at the time, he says, it was a ‘very good thing that it happened’ because the next five years at the bar were ‘rather transformational’.

‘My practice, which had been interesting – diverse, but I don’t think particularly punchy – suddenly started to take off. I had changed chambers and started to specialise in health and safety and environmental law – and I really started to enjoy myself.

‘I had a period from about 1993-97 were I was always very busy. My earnings were going up and I thought this is a new world.’

Things were going so well that when, despite his efforts to do so, he initially did not get a seat to fight in the 1997 election, he announced to his wife (barrister Caroline Hutton) that was giving up all ambition of going into parliament to concentrate on his legal career.

‘She was very relieved,’ but a week later he became the candidate for Beaconsfield and was elected with a majority of 13,987 votes.

Grieve is measured, courteous and assured in a quiet and understated manner. He is, he says, ‘interested in what makes human society successful’ and in community cohesion, chairing the Citizens UK commission on the involvement of Muslims in public life.

‘I think that goes back to my time in Brixton, which exposed me very much to the world of a diverse UK.’

Brought up in a ‘rather more compartmentalised environment’ he had not paid a great deal of attention to the issues that surrounded multiculturalism and what the increasingly diverse and pluralist UK needs to do be a ‘successful country’.

His Christian faith – he is a practising member of the Church of England – to a degree informs what is does and makes him ‘accountable’ though he is quick to state that ‘faith doesn’t give you a monopoly on wisdom’.

A busy politician, he still tries to make time for his other interests, which include running, walking, mediaeval architecture and collecting oriental rugs.

With that, our lunch in Portcullis House’s ‘Adjournment’ café is adjourned. He has to meet a constituent keen for civil partnerships to be extended so that she and her sister can enjoy the tax and inheritance benefits – a cause with which he has sympathy.

A former Vice President of the Court of Appeal (Civil Division), retired mediator, and tweeter muses on the biggest disappointment of his career, and whether we can afford the common law system.

I meet the delightful Sir Henry Brooke at his Fountain Court Chambers, nestled discretely in London’s Temple.

Despite having been retired for nine years and stating several times how, at his wife’s insistence, he is trying to do less, he remains actively involved in overseas judicial training and several charities and NGOs, including the Public Law Project and the Prisoners of Conscience Appeal Trust.

His parents were Conservative politicians, Henry Brooke, Baron Brooke of Cumnor and Barbara Brooke, Baroness Brooke of Ystradfellte, and his older brother is another Conservative politician, Peter Brooke, Baron Brooke of Sutton Mandeville.

Despite this pedigree, there were no lawyers in his family, and he fell into law while thinking what to do with himself after completing National Service and a classics degree at Balliol College, Oxford.

‘I knew Tom Bingham (former Master of the Rolls and Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham) as a friend of my brother’s. He had gone to the bar with a history degree, so I went to see him. He introduced me to his former pupil master Owen Stable — I spent an evening with him and by the end of it, he’d offered me a pupillage in 3 years’ time..

‘I’m afraid that’s how things were done in those days’.

In fact, he became the pupil of Peter Webster and, after being called to the bar in 1963, he thought he’d give it a try.

‘If it didn’t work after five years, I’d do something else. But by that stage I’d got married, had two children and a mortgage and it wasn’t sensible to give it up’.

Says Brooke: ‘Although I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the bar, I think it’s probably been more love than hate’.

In the decade before his arrival at the bar, more people were leaving than joining. But the tide changed just before his arrival, due to the advent of legal aid, particularly criminal legal aid.

‘We did a lot of legal aid work and were paid the market rate less 10%, which was the contribution barristers and solicitors made to the scheme. It provided small but interesting work for beginners, which hadn’t been available before,’ he recalls.

Diversity is an issue that Brooke felt strongly about while in practice, and something he retains a keen interest in. He led the Bar Council on race relations, chairing its professional standards committee in 1987-1988 and, as a High Court judge, chaired its race relations committee in 1989-1991. His committee’s recommendation saw the bar appoint its first equal opportunities consultant, which led to the appointment of two equal opportunities officers a year later, under the chairmanship of the late Anthony Scrivener QC.

Brooke was also inaugural chair of the Ethnic Minorities Advisory Committee of the Judicial Studies Board (1991–1994), which introduced diversity training into the Board’s training programmes.

When he joined the bar, he recalls, it was a small profession — around 3,000. ‘It was heavily drawn from Oxford and Cambridge with a little bit from different parts of London University and elsewhere. One’s career depended fairly heavily on the links that one obtained at the start through one’s Oxford and Cambridge Colleges’.

‘It was a very slow-moving, traditional, self-confident profession. And like all traditional, self-confident professions, not always good at looking outwards and seeing itself as others see it’.

One serious problem, he notes, was how the Inns of Court treated overseas students drawn from the emerging countries of the Commonwealth – taking fees from hundreds of them and allowing them to retake the bar exams any number of times, but without giving them any significant support throughout their studies.

Lord Denning, he recounts, was shocked by the extent of the problem when told by overseas barristers and judges: ‘We remain very fond of your country, despite the way we were treated when we were bar students.’

With Brooke’s help Denning succeeded in getting each of the Inns, some of them reluctantly, to set up a residential weekend at Cumberland Lodge during 1962 to assist overseas students. And, notes Brooke, the Inns have continued to be active in supporting student barristers from wherever they hail.

There was also ‘serious discrimination against women’. ‘If you look at chambers in 1970 you will find very few women’.

‘I remember in the early 1970s being told that somebody had been offered pupillage by a good set of chambers in the Temple, but she needed to understand that it was chambers policy not to accept women tenants’.

His own set accepted its first woman tenant in 1978. ‘She had a 2:1 from Girton College, Cambridge and was the daughter of a High Court judge in Hong Kong and she couldn’t find a place in chambers anywhere – we eventually took her in.’

She subsequently became the chairman of the bar in Hong Kong, he recalls.

Brooke admits to being ‘disappointed’ with the slow pace of change with regards diversity — in relation to women, ethnicity and socio-economic background — and is ‘extremely worried’ about the effect of the slashing of legal aid on new entrants.

‘Things haven’t moved as quickly as I would have liked. It’s a bit like what the Red Queen said in Alice – one’s got to move extremely fast to stay in the same place’.

And, he adds, ‘it is an effort to keep things moving’.

‘One’s got to have political leadership, research, money and a willingness to go on and on and on proselytising about the problem and explaining the hang-ups which are preventing greater movement.’

It’s not that there is much deliberate discrimination; rather he suggests, it is unconscious. ‘People are comfortable with their own kind — whether they are white men, white women, black men, Asian women or whatever — that’s just part of the human predicament’.

He is not in favour of quotas to increase the pace of change, stating ‘quotas don’t work and they put people’s backs up’.

‘There is masses of American experience. If you get someone who is good, who feels that they have been deprived of opportunity when they see somebody who is significantly less talented than they are being given the job they hoped for, then you are going to get people’s backs up, and that’s going to put the cause of improving diversity backwards rather than forwards’.

Brooke’s assessment of the Proudman/Carter-Silk social media storm: ‘He [Carter-Silk] was pretty silly and if people, particularly the young [Proudman], get angry and go over the top, well good luck to them, if they are thick skinned enough to take what is likely to come their way’.

Technology is another issue that was close to his heart. The 79-year-old, who tweets from the handle @HenryBrooke1, embraced and championed the use of technology at the bar and within the judiciary.

As a barrister he chaired the bar’s first Computer Committee in 1985–1986 and was a founder member of the Information Technology and the Courts Committee. And from 2001-4 he was judge in charge of modernisation of the courts.

‘My biggest disappointment in my life was on the 15th July 2002 when the government refused to back the plans for modernisation of the civil and family courts’.

His committee’s work had the backing of Michael Wills, the junior minister in the then Lord Chancellor’s Department, the head of the courts service and the entire judiciary but, he laments, there was no new money available from the Treasury.

‘We had got plans afoot to put into action what they are talking about doing now, 13 years later. A huge amount of damage has been done because of that decision. It was absolutely devastating.’

Explains an exasperated Brooke: ‘It all goes back to the Treasury dogma of full costs recovery.

‘Because we don’t have a written constitution, there’s no constitutional right of access to the court spelt out. So the Treasury, going back to Victorian days, has always seen justice as something that, if provided by government, should be paid for in full by the persons receiving it.’

It is, he adds, difficult to demonstrate that if you enable judges to work more efficiently, they will be more productive and fewer would be needed.

‘The then [Labour] government was extremely keen to spend a lot more money on health and education. Now health and education are seen as protected elements of government spending and justice isn’t — and justice has suffered as a result.

‘It’s all down to the Treasury; it’s not the fault of luckless ministers in charge of justice. Although I disagreed very strongly with a lot of what [former Lord Chancellor] Chris Grayling was doing, he was simply complying with Treasury requirements, which were based on Treasury dogma.

‘There is no other country in the world that tries to produce justice in the civil and family courts on the basis of full costs recovery. Nobody else tries to make the customer pay for the whole thing, let alone over the top, which is what is going on at the moment’.

As a whole, Brooke reckons judges are comfortable with IT. ‘They are forced to be, so far as access to case law and statutes are concerned because of the slashing of the library budget’.

It was, he explains, the advent of the Human Rights Act that inclined more judges to explore the possibilities of IT in order to keep abreast of the decisions in relation to it.

Brooke, a fan of the Act, nonetheless flagged up, in advance of its passing, the potential danger that the judges would be criticised for making decisions on matters which had historically been seen to be political.

‘It’s been a pity that some politicians encouraged the right wing press in its antipathy to the Act,’ he says, but notes they have gone quieter since it is ‘becoming more apparent that, apart from some decisions on Article 8, there is very little in it to which they can reasonably take exception — apart from the rare decision by Strasbourg with which they disagree – a prisoner’s right to vote is the obvious example’.

So far as the case of radical cleric Abu Qatada, who for years fought against his deportation from the UK to Jordan, is concerned, Brooke insists that Article 3 of the Human Rights Convention merely applied the same requirements against sending someone to a country where there is a substantial risk of torture, as other international conventions.

And the saga, he says, has led to a great improvement in international law. ‘It was the latest Strasbourg decision which led to the courts of Jordan straightening its affairs out and refusing to accept evidence where there was a significant risk that the witness had been tortured’.

On the consequences of withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights, the former lord justice disagrees with Supreme Court justice, Lord Sumption.

‘He said that even if we have to leave the ECHR and the Council of Europe, it would be much better to have a British Bill of Rights even if that means we have less influence in showing other countries what a rights based system of law is concerned with.

‘But I’ve spent a lot of my time since my retirement in Eastern Europe and the work that I and others do out there would be significantly damaged if we withdrew from the Council of Europe, which is the logical consequence of what some of the ideas about the British Bill of Rights would lead us to’.

But, he adds, it remains to be seen what is proposed in the government’s consultation, expected later this autumn.

Looking to the future, Brooke would like to see ‘a greater spreading of what the Americans call corporate social responsibility’ across the legal profession, and particularly at the bar.

‘There are only three sets of chambers who go out of their way to make money available for NGOs working in interesting areas of what one might broadly call the human rights field.

‘Other sets of chambers say they are not willing or mandated to spend members’ money, although they seem perfectly happy to spend their members’ money funding professorial chairs at Oxbridge colleges in their name’.

There is, he suggests, a lot that could be done to ameliorate the shortcomings that have emerged now that the public sector is no longer willing for taxpayers’ money to be spent on legal provision.

‘That brings me on to another hobbyhorse – we have a very expensive system of law. If I were clever enough, I would write a long article called “Can we afford the common law?”

‘It would make me as unpopular as when I was campaigning for other not very popular causes’.

But, he states: ‘If you get five law lords all opining on interesting changes in the law, all saying different things and then you’re advising on the law with a low budget or no budget at all, how on earth do you cope?’

There is, he accepts, ‘no easy alternative’, because the alternative is a codified system of law and there are ‘huge disadvantages’ with that.

‘It is part of the Anglo Saxon make-up — we have always been pretty relaxed about having a system of law in which people can argue forever in fighting for justice, rather than getting their answer off the peg.

‘But getting your answer off a peg is greatly cheaper, especially if you’re also trying to run a criminal justice system that involves a jury system.

‘I’m not suggesting abolishing the jury system, but all these things in the present system of law are expensive and much more expensive than their equivalent on the continent’.

On that provocative slice of food for thought, we wander over to the Inner Temple’s Pegasus Bar for a light salmon lunch, washed down with a glass of crisp white wine.

And once again I come away with new reading matter — a copy of Now and Then: A Celebration of Sweet & Maxwell’s Bicentenary – a collection of essays about the future of the law, signed by my lunch companion.