The launch event of Lawyers for Reform in the Law Society, Chancery Lane, London, was kicked off by Danny Kruger MP, Reform UK’s head of Preparing for Government, and attended by Richard Tice MP, Reform’s Deputy Leader.

In welcoming the new group, Danny Kruger said: “If there is one mission for the Reform Party, it is to restore the foundations of our legal code, laws created in parliament and enforced by judges acting impartially.”

The President of Lawyers for Reform, Martin Howe KC, told the meeting that we are a newly formed group of lawyers who support the Reform Party UK.

“As well as barristers, advocates and solicitors, we include others in the legal community or involved in the law, such as legal academics and law students, other related professionals, and judiciary where they are able to participate in a political group, such as after retirement from the Bench, and anyone else with a special interest in the law.

Our first task is outreach into the legal community, to find lawyers who support Reform’s policies or can be persuaded to do so. Secondly, our task will be to support Reform’s campaigns by speaking or writing in their favour when legal issues are involved. Thirdly, we will seek to find people with special legal knowledge or skills who can contribute to developing the legal aspects of Reform’s policies and programme.

When Tony Blair came to power in 1997, he embarked on a huge programme of constitutional and legal change. The Human Rights Act embedded the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into UK law together with the judgments of its court at Strasbourg. Devolution was introduced. The law lords were replaced as our highest court by the new and assertive Supreme Court.

Many government powers were hived off to independent and supposedly non-partisan bodies, such as the Climate Change Committee in 2008. And one of the last changes made by Labour just before it lost power in 2010 was to pass into law the wide-ranging Equality Act.

These changes put many State functions outside the democratic control of voters through their MPs and elected ministers. Large areas of the State therefore ceased to be accountable to the electorate. But the decisions taken by these parts of the State did not cease to be political just because they were no longer taken in Parliament or by ministers. Most of these bodies were stuffed with appointees from an increasingly Left-leaning quangocrat class. Overall, Blair’s changes accomplished a huge transfer of power away from voters, and away from Parliament and elected ministers, to quangocrats, lawyers and judges.

There were many failings during the disastrous 14 years of Conservative government which followed, but probably the most grievous was total inaction in reversing any of these legal and constitutional changes after the Blair/Brown era ended. Indeed, the Conservatives made things even worse in many areas. They failed to resist the “woke” tide, and used their post Brexit freedom not to cut immigration as promised, but instead to open the floodgates to intolerable and unprecedented levels of “Boris-wave” legal immigration.

And the last Conservative government’s attempts to bring illegal immigration under control failed in the most spectacular and humiliating fashion with the collapse of the Rwanda scheme. This was a direct result of the Conservatives’ ineffective legislation which entirely failed to tackle the human rights/asylum/judicial review legal morass.

Blair and Starmer, both lawyers, well understand the importance of changing the legal and constitutional landscape to favour the Left. Starmer’s administration is building on the huge changes made by Blair (and untouched by 14 years of so-called ‘Conservative’ administration) and is taking the process begun by Blair even further.

By the end of this Labour controlled Parliament, the legal and constitutional barriers against the implementation of democratically voted-for policies by an incoming Reform government are going to be even greater than they are today. Unless these legal restraints are rapidly removed, incoming elected ministers in a Reform government will find that they are hog-tied by the legal system, and simply cannot put into effect the key policies on which they are elected.

This therefore is why lawyers will have an absolutely crucial role in getting a Reform government into office with plans which are legally sound and workable – and based on democratic principles and on restoring the historic balance of our laws and constitution by undoing the deep seated damage caused by the Blair years, by our involvement in the European Union and by the years of culpable failure and inaction of the Tories.”

Martin Howe KC then outlined the plans for getting the activities of the group up and running, followed by a long and lively question and answer session. The meeting was concluded by the Rt Hon David Jones (Honorary President of Lawyers for Reform and former cabinet minister).

The launch meeting was reported in the Law Society Gazette:

https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/reform-bids-to-mobilise-legal-allies/5126304.article