UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 48-iv

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS AND A SUPREME COURT

(COURT OF FINAL APPEAL)

Thursday 11 December 2003

RT HON LORD WOOLF, RT HON LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL,

RT HON LORD NICHOLLS OF BIRKENHEAD and RT HON LORD JUSTICE THOMAS

Evidence heard in Public Questions 438-495

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Constitutional Affairs Committee

on Thursday 11 December 2003

Members present

Mr A J Beith, in the Chair

Peter Bottomley

Mr James Clappison

Ross Cranston

Mr Jim Cunningham

Mr Hilton Dawson

Mr Clive Soley

Keith Vaz

________________

Witnesses: RT HON LORD WOOLF, a Member of the House of Lords, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, RT HON LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL, a Member of the House of Lords, RT HON LORD NICHOLLS OF BIRKENHEAD, a Member of the House of Lords and RT HON LORD JUSTICE THOMAS, Senior Presiding Judge, Royal Courts of Justice, examined.

Chairman: Lord Woolf, Lord Bingham, Lord Nicholls and Lord Justice Thomas, we are very pleased to welcome you, for what must be, so far in modern times, a unique select committee sitting. I think it reflects the very helpful and co-operative way the judiciary have assisted us in our inquiries since we were set up as a committee and in particular in this inquiry, not only yourselves, but also members of other parts of the judiciary and indeed from Scotland and Northern Ireland. We appreciate it very much and it will certainly help us to try to throw some light on the matter when we eventually report. Some of my colleagues may have interests to declare, so we will get that done first.

Ross Cranston: I am a barrister and recorder.

Keith Vaz: I am a non-practising barrister and my wife holds a judicial appointment.

Peter Bottomley: Through the Drapers' Company I am a trustee of Queen Elizabeth College, an almshouse at Greenwich with which Masters of the Rolls are traditionally involved.

Chairman: Please feel free, any one of you, to contribute to the discussion. The questions will not necessarily be directed at one or another individual amongst you. Has the government made a convincing case that reform of the kind they have suggested in the creation of a supreme court, whatever name we give to it, is necessary, desirable or proportionate to its likely cost?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: I think so, but I am very far from being an impartial witness on the subject. I happen to think - and Lord Nicholls equally strongly does not think - that it is high time we did have a supreme court divorced from the legislature and therefore representing, in institutional terms, what the constitutional reality is. Judges are not legislators, they are judges. My own belief is that while nobody is unaware of the fact that the overlap between the legislature and the executive is very great, everybody equally recognises that it is very undesirable in principle for there to be any overlap between judges and either the legislature or the executive. Since that is the reality, I myself think that it is highly desirable that it should be reflected in institutional terms. Of course the point is made that a change will cost money and so it would. However, there is no other country in the world which does not think it desirable to have its top court separate from the legislature. I have quite recently come back from the High Court of Australia, for example, which has a very substantial and impressive high court, which is of course its supreme court. I can think of no country in the world which cannot afford this particular constitutional provision and it seems to me rather amazing if the United Kingdom alone finds it too expensive to be implemented. Lord Nicholls does have opposite views and no doubt he will express them.

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: My answer to your question would be no, because I, in common with a majority of the serving law lords, have the misfortune to disagree with Lord Bingham. I could go on for some time explaining why, but as shortly as I can, we think that the change is not necessary and will be harmful. We think it is not necessary because what is really an issue is judicial independence. As far as judicial independence from the government is concerned, there can be no doubt that the law lords have it at present and that the proposed change will not in fact enhance that. What of course is the much voiced criticism is that the serving law lords are members of the legislature, but in practice, as a result of the convention of the House, the law lords' work, both formal and substantive, is conducted exclusively by the law lords and not by any other members of the House. So in practical terms there is a complete separation between the work done by the law lords judicially and the other work of the House. Of course the position is that the law lords may participate in other work, but, as with all judges, the law lords have to be careful that their other extra-judicial activities do not prejudice their judicial work. That has so far worked satisfactorily and in principle we can see no reason why the position needs changing. There are losses. The change is not necessary, but there will be real losses if in fact we make the change. First of all, in no particular order, it is very important that the actual building, the accommodation of a supreme court of a country, is suitably prestigious, reflecting the importance that the state attaches to the judicial function. At the moment the court of final appeal of the country is housed in a building instantly recognised, right at the very heart of governmental institutions and undoubtedly impresses everybody who comes as being an appropriately prestigious place for the final decisions of the judiciary to take place. We would lose that, we would lose the use of the description House of Lords, which would be a great pity, because it is generally thought that the House of Lords has a reputation throughout the world and that would just put a line under that and start again with a new name. It is for others to judge, but insofar as views have been expressed, the view is that the removal of the law lords from the House would be a loss to the House. Certainly I believe it would be a loss to the law lords themselves because I think participating in the work of the House, chairing committees and the like, does enhance one's understanding of what is really going on. I could go on at some length about this. I have written an article recently which I would willingly send you. In short, those are the reasons why I believe that the present situation is one which serves the country better. To start off with something fresh, new is simply not in the best interests of the country as a whole.

Chairman: A number of the particular issues you have iterated will come up in the course of our questioning this afternoon. That was a very helpful concise summary.

Lord Woolf: If I may, I will just add a footnote. Because of their special involvement, this is very much a subject for the law lords and not someone such as myself who normally spends his time in the Courts of Justice in the Strand. There are two aspects of this about which I have expressed concern, though I would feel it is not my job to advocate it. As Chief Justice, I have found that my ability to address the House of Lords on matters of concern to the judiciary could be of benefit to the House. It is certainly an opportunity, I feel, which is valuable so far as the independence of the judiciary is concerned. Although I have suggested in the past that there could be alternative premises for the Appellate Committee, it seems to me that at the very time when we are losing the Lord Chancellor, it is particularly a matter of concern that this ability of the Chief Justice to address their Lordships directly should be lost at the same time. It is almost inevitable, that if we do have a supreme court, what in other jurisdictions might be regarded as unusual, that a Chief Justice should be able to address the legislative chamber, would probably disappear as well.

Chairman: It is our understanding that these changes, not only a supreme court but also the intended abolition of the post of Lord Chancellor, were announced without consultation with anybody, including yourselves. Does that in itself present serious practical difficulties? If so, how might that be addressed?

Lord Woolf: In so far as I am concerned, I regret that there was no consultation beforehand, but when looking forward, as I feel we must now, it is not necessary to dwell on how the announcement was made. The only message that I draw from what happened then is that it did indicate that the checks and balances we believed we had within our unwritten constitution are sometimes shown to not have the vigour that perhaps we would like them to have.

Chairman: This does suggest, does it not, Lord Woolf, that reliance on the existence of the Lord Chancellor is not entirely safe, when the Lord Chancellor upon whom you relied might disappear in the course of an afternoon and the interests of the judiciary not be represented in the decision which is made later the same afternoon?

Lord Woolf: If I may say so, I agree with what you say and that is why I do feel it is very important now to look forward and if the Lord Chancellor is to be removed from the scene, it is very important that we introduce structures which will provide for the new situation, structures which we have not felt were necessary in the past, but which I now feel become very important.

Chairman: Do you think we have a clear enough picture of what the functions of a supreme court would be and what we regard as the functions of the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords now? Is it sufficiently clearly defined?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: Subject to one qualification, it is completely clearly defined. The one qualification relates to devolution issues which under the Scotland Act and the Northern Ireland Act and the Welsh Act were assigned to the Privy Council. The Scots in particular were keen that these issues should be resolved by the Privy Council rather than the House of Lords. It does have the advantage, which we have used on occasion, of being able to compose a panel which has Scottish Privy Counsellors in addition to law lords, so there is an extended eligibility to sit on devolution issues because they are in the Privy Council. If the devolution issues were assigned to the House of Lords, in whatever incarnation, it would be - and I think we are all agreed on this - unsatisfactory to have a court which was composed in a certain way to deal with this class of business and composed in a different way to deal with a different class of business. Despite the untidiness of it in a bureaucratic sense, there is in fact quite a strong argument for keeping the devolution issues in the Privy Council and not assigning them to the House of Lords. Otherwise, and indeed in that respect also, the jurisdiction and functioning of the supreme court remains exactly as it is. Everybody has made it plain, on every single opportunity that the subject has been addressed, that nobody is proposing that the existing rules so far as criminal appeals in Scotland are concerned should be altered in any way. They have always, since 1707, ended in Edinburgh and certainly nobody in London has ever suggested that rule should be varied in any respect. Its jurisdiction would remain the same.

Peter Bottomley: We all understand that there is a range of views among the law lords. Could I ask you what the minimal changes would be which would meet most of your concerns, what would be the smallest changes which would be necessary to meet your concerns? Most of the debate has been about the government's proposals. I am more interested in the simple ways. If the Lord Chancellor said "I will not sit", does that separate the executive? If they said "We won't have law lords speaking in debates in the House of Lords" would that meet your point?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: If you introduced a regime under which no serving Law Lord and nobody sitting in the Appellate Committee in whatever incarnation, played any part in the House of Lords whatever and it was publicly appreciated that was the position, that would meet my concerns. The question would inevitably arise: if these people are going to play no part in the business of the House at all, then why are they members of it? My view is that people should think of the law lords, in whatever body they serve, as being a court and not as being members of the House of Lords in their spare time. I am bound to say it does give rise to difficulties. If I pick up a point Lord Woolf has made, when I was Lord Chief Justice, the government of the day introduced a Bill and I, in very much the sort of way he has described, came down to the House of Lords and extended a general welcome and said it was no doubt a very well crafted Bill which addressed serious social problems, but I had certain reservations; about six points, to which I then devoted my speech. On the strength of those anodyne introductory remarks about offering the Bill a welcome, in a case which involved that legislation, both leading counsels signed a letter saying that they considered it entirely inappropriate that I should sit on the appeal. When one of my colleagues said "If I received a letter like that I would not sit", I thought I should not. There are difficulties here and people are much, much more acutely alive to potential conflicts than they used to be. I was reading an authority just the other day, in which a Lord Chancellor was ruling on the vires of legislation which was challenged in the courts. He was a leading member of the government which introduced it and there was not a quiver of objection. I do not think anybody could imagine that situation pertaining today.

Mr Soley: May I pursue that a little? May I put it to you and particularly to Lord Nicholls that the House of Lords is changing and will continue to change and I suspect very radically over the coming years? It is already getting much more overtly political. Is it not true that the more that happens, the more difficult it is to justify and sustain the law lords sitting in that chamber?

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: The law lords need to be careful concerning their participation in the work of the chamber. As long as they take care, no difficulty ought to arise and has not arisen so far. The separation of the work is complete, so one just needs to be careful when one participates in debates that one is not causing possible problems for oneself in the future.

Mr Soley: There is an option of simply saying the law lords do not take any part in the legislative programme whatsoever but they simply sit in there as law lords and that would cover separation. One of your concerns, and a difficulty you identified in answer to the Chairman, was the expense of the new building. That would obviate that, but would it not leave you sitting in a rather unsatisfactory situation and being seen almost as piggy-backing on what will become an increasingly political second chamber?

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: It has not given rise to difficulties so far. I am not sure one ought to foresee such a change as will give rise to difficulties beyond coping with for the future.

Mr Soley: The point I am putting to you is that certainly we in the House of Commons would experience a greater political involvement for the House of Lords and that has been happening and I do not have a problem with that. It needs it to reinforce its legitimacy, but if it does that and if it continues to do it, particularly after the removal of the remaining hereditaries, it gets increasingly difficult to argue that the law lords are part of it.

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: Obviously there are matters which are very political and party political in the House of Lords at the moment, but this has not given rise to difficulties in practice. Do you have a view Lord Bingham?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: Yes, I do have a view. It sounds as though we are being very antagonistic but we are far from it. The reason why there has been so little difficulty is because the law lords in recent years have played virtually no part in the business of the House of Lords at all. Within an astonishingly short period there has been a great change of culture. There was an instance some years ago when there was an issue which was debated in the House and it then became litigious. There was great difficulty composing a panel of people who had not already held forth on this particular subject. Because of this change of culture, in a very short time, people have contributed less and less to the business of the House. Several of my colleagues have never made a maiden speech, I myself have not uttered since I assumed my present office three and a half years ago. The chairman of Sub-Committee E certainly does participate and contribute on that subject. Otherwise contributions are extremely few and far between. I am bound to say that is why there has been so little trouble.

Mr Soley: Your argument does lead to a logical assumption that we have a new building - not necessarily newly built but a new building - to house the law lords in a proper way. Is that right?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: I of course agree with everything that Lord Nicholls says about housing this body somewhere which will express, as supreme courts round the world do, the importance which a liberal society attaches to the rule of law. It would be the worst possible advertisement for the values of the government, if they were to try to put us in some completely inappropriate building, not because we have delusions of grandeur, but simply because we, like Parliament, represent a very important democratic value.

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: May I just add that what I would say is that the present system works and works well as far as I understand the generally accepted view? My instinct is: why change it unless something fresh has emerged which makes it now undesirable?

Mr Soley: What I have been putting to you is that it is changing, that is the point. The House of Lords is changing and becoming more overtly political. Whether you are talking about perception of the separation of powers or the reality of it, the reality is that the House of Lords is changing and will go on changing and that makes it difficult. Do you not accept that argument at all?

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: I do not think at the moment I would accept it is changing in a way which undermines the existing arrangements regarding the law lords, no. For example, there are very many more crossbenchers now than there were and the House is becoming more important. To treat it now as having become more party political and therefore less suitable for law lords to be there is not something I would, with respect, accept.

Ross Cranston: I want to move onto some of the practicalities if there is a new supreme court and a court of final appeal. Some of the practicalities are: will the court have a separate corporate identity? Lord Bingham referred to the High Court of Australia and alluded to the centennial celebrations. Would the employees of the court be employed by the Department of Constitutional Affairs, or would they be employed by the court itself, by the corporate body? What about the budget? Would the senior Law Lord, if he or she is still called that, come along before the Committee of Public Accounts and talk about the budget or come before this Committee? What are the practicalities if we move in that direction?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: These matters have been the subject of discussion, constructive and on the whole rather encouraging discussion, but of course we can only propose and God disposes. We have urged that the supreme court, which is not of course an English and Welsh court and therefore cannot be and should not be administered by the Court Service of England and Wales, should have its own staff and employees and should have its own budget. We have had discussion as to how this would be done. You will be very well aware that in Australia the chief executive of the High Court of Australia goes and sees the permanent secretary at the ministry of finance or something and routinely agrees a one-line budget that the High Court of Australia then disburses. It is allowed to keep any unspent money from one year to the next and of course it is accountable and reports on how the money has been spent. We would very much like to get as close to that model as we can because we think it reflects the independence that the courts should enjoy to a greater extent than it would if it were dependent upon the bounty of any particular department which had a lot of other responsibilities and temptations.

Ross Cranston: The argument used by Lord Hobhouse is that at present there is independence because you are funded by Parliament and that gives you a greater independence than you would have if you were dependent on the executive.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: Yes. The point has been made, and it is a point that is worthy of consideration whether one accepts it or not, that a Cabinet Minister with a reputation to make is going to be more successful at extracting money from the Treasury than the chief executive of a court or the senior member of that court. Inasmuch as the reputation of ministers tends to stand or fall according to their success in getting money for their department, the point has been made that the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs would have a real interest in trying to do well for the supreme court. Of course he would have a lot of other demands on his time. At the moment we are pressing for a solution.

Ross Cranston: I never thought of Lord Falconer as God by the way. I wonder whether Lord Nicholls or Lord Woolf have any thoughts on the actual structure, if we do move towards that model?

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: It is certainly desirable that if at all possible the budget should be one which is not coming through the executive.

Ross Cranston: What about coming before a parliamentary committee, coming before the Committee of Public Accounts or something like that?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: I would assume that it would be the registrar, the chief executive or somebody who would do that rather than myself, not least because he or she would be much better at it.

Ross Cranston: May I ask you about accommodation? Lord Bingham has touched on that and has actually written about the importance of architecture to the administration of justice. I think you said you would want a prestigious location symbolising the importance of the rule of law. We have had evidence, for example Lord Holme was very concerned about the threat to collegiality if there should be a court on The Strand or Somerset House or wherever, because those from an England and Wales background would gravitate towards the Inns of Court and the Scots might be left out. There are several implications of the architecture. Could you just talk in principle about the guiding principles you would want in terms of accommodation?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: My own view - and I think we are at one on this - is that it is desirable in an ideal world that the court should not be on top of or at all close to the Royal Courts of Justice because it is separate and has a United-Kingdom-wide jurisdiction which, through no fault of their own, the Royal Courts of Justice do not. I attach very considerable importance in whatever building we are housed - and I am quite confident that I speak for all my colleagues in this and I would hope for a lot of litigants as well when I say I would certainly want to preserve the ambiance of our existing hearings. In other words I would not want a court which sat half way up the wall with litigants in pews way below, as is the normal pattern of courts. I would want to preserve the horseshoe table with counsel very close and on the same level and a lack of formality, in dress at any rate, on our part, because I think it is an extraordinarily good medium for discussion. By the time cases come to us, unless somebody has made a mistake, they are always difficult. They are not cases where the answer is obvious and at its best the discussion takes on the form of a seminar with which you will be very familiar yourself. It is a sort of discussion, an exchange of opinions, "What about this? What about that?" and everything is tried for size. You try to reach the right solution and it does not have the sort of gladiatorial adversarial sort of atmosphere which is inevitable in trials. I am not suggesting there is anything wrong with that; it is just undesirable in our hearings. I would certainly want to keep that and I am sure that Donald would agree completely.

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: Absolutely; absolutely.

Chairman: You do not fancy the Middlesex Guildhall then.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: I do not fancy the Middlesex Guildhall at all for a number of reasons, but one of them would be that I think English Heritage would want to keep the design of the existing court and I would be implacably against that.

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: We are at the moment housed of course in highly prestigious accommodation which symbolises the importance that we as a community attach to the judicial function. Finding something equivalent is in fact proving very difficult, as one might expect in the centre of London.

Chairman: Is there not a risk in fact that you end up continuing to sit there even if you are turned into a new body, a new supreme court, simply because they have not found anywhere else to put you? You will finish up sitting in the House of Lords while pretending you are somewhere else?

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: If the House will accept it.

Ross Cranston: A final question on the building. Lord Bingham mentioned the High Court of Australia. An argument could be made - and this goes back to the argument about the influence of architecture - that the Australian High Court became much more intrusive on government once it had that prestigious building on the shores of the lake in Canberra. There is that old quip about the Supreme Court of the United States, when it was in the basement of the Capitol, having a deferential approach and then once it got out into its new building it started to spread its wings. There may be a truth to some of these arguments.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: Well it does not really work, does it? Although the High Court of Australia had a rather activist phase a few years ago, the pendulum has now rather swung and everybody is now in a rather cautious and conservative phase. They are still in the same building.

Ross Cranston: Touché.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: There are cycles in judicial fashion.

Ross Cranston: It depends very much on personalities.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: Very much in that particular instance and you could demonstrate this more generally.

Peter Bottomley: What basically protects judicial independence and strength?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: What protects it most is the tradition and the culture. I could say, and I feel quite sure we would all agree, that in over 20 years of holding judicial office none of us would ever have experienced any attempt whatever by anyone in any official position to influence any decision which any of us was about to make no matter how sensitive the case might be. The general public have no conception of the degree of fastidiousness which on the whole governments and officials show in this particular respect and sometimes go to almost unnecessary lengths to avoid anything which could even be construed as an attempt to influence the thing, otherwise of course than by argument in open court when the government itself is a litigant. This is after all a culture which we have enjoyed for some time now. I think we all take it more or less for granted, but we certainly should not assume that these traditions will necessarily be fully honoured for ever and a day and no matter what the pressures outside. Therefore I would entirely agree with what the Lord Chief Justice said. We have in the new environment to do everything we possibly can to ensure that the safeguards are as effective as they possibly can be. One cannot assume the weather will always be as fine as it is at the moment.

Lord Woolf: The Chairman mentioned the original announcement of the changes. So far as I am concerned, I have suggested that this was a wake-up call for the judiciary. We have been too complacent about the strength of the independence of the judiciary in this jurisdiction because of the very matters to which Lord Bingham has just referred. In the new environment which we are now, it is a responsibility of the judiciary and a responsibility of the government and the legislature to ensure that we put in place the proper structures which will protect the judiciary. As a member of the Committee indicated, there has perhaps been a change of atmosphere in the Lords of late. The same thing might be said with regard to the activities in the political arena generally. We cannot assume that the reticence which three arms of government have shown in the past to respect each other's position and interests will necessarily be maintained. I am very keen now, and I hope we will bring about a situation as a result of the changes which are now being discussed and I am sure this Committee will play a part in assisting this, that we come to a situation where we put in place structures which perhaps we should have put in place before, but which were apparently not necessary, but which are necessary now.

Peter Bottomley: From the time of Henry VIII we have created this judicial independence; we did not have it with him and whether it is the common law applying to the governors as well as to the governed, the process - I am not a legal historian so I cannot talk about how it happened - it does seem to me with the temporary absence of a Lord Chancellor and a government who chose to believe that they could abolish the position of Lord Chancellor as though they were abolishing a Secretary of State for Wales or Scotland or some other ministry and then discovered they could not, not only have we had the discourtesy, the discomfort and now the difficulty, and if the only time the judiciary looks as though they have shaken the traditions and the culture which Lord Bingham spoke about was at a time when there was no Lord Chancellor, what kind of a structure could allow the views of judges to be put forward if you do not have a Lord Chancellor who can do that? Do they have to do it themselves, do they have to rely on the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs? What is the general feeling? I do not know whether Lord Justice Thomas has any views on this?

Lord Justice Thomas: You have to have structures which ensure their independence and now is probably the best time to create them in a feeling where there is no crisis between the three branches of government. I, like Lord Woolf, feel that now is an opportunity. We ought not to look back as to where we are, but go forward from where we are. One has to look at the appointments process as being important. You also have to look at guarantees for the proper provision of financing the courts in two aspects: one, making certain that there is proper input from the judiciary on the budgetary submissions; two, input from the judiciary on the way in which the courts allocate their expenditure. Obviously there comes a point in time where, if there are not sufficient resources available, you cannot administer justice properly. It is institutional structures which ensure that independence that I would see, if there is to be change - and that is not a matter on which I would express a view - as being a good result from where we are.

Lord Woolf: The process is a very subtle one by which independence can be undermined. It may not be the obvious thing; it may be merely that government has a policy, perhaps in relation to criminal justice, where it wants a certain type of case, because it fits in with its policy, dealt with more expeditiously and in a different manner from other cases which others would say should receive equal attention. You must not have, it seems to me, the ability for government to achieve its purpose indirectly by giving directions or regulating the activities of the judiciary. There are problems with regard to discipline. The Lord Chancellor up until now has been responsible for disciplining judges. That obviously has to change and there has to be a structure put in to take the place. The Lord Chancellor at the moment has responsibilities with regard to deployment of the judiciary, but I am sure the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State would accept that in the future that cannot be exercised in the same way because you cannot have a situation where, because a judge gives decisions which the government does not like, it decides that judge is not an appropriate judge to do that type of work and should move into another area of the court system. I am not suggesting they would seek to move but there are these vulnerabilities of the judicial system which at the moment are exposed and in relation to which we have to introduce proper structures. Resources are particularly important in weighing up. The government can have targets with regard to certain areas of the justice system, but it is not right that because that is government policy, other areas of the system should be starved of resources. There really is a need for structures which go into great detail now, as I see it, to be agreed and where appropriate enshrined in statute so there cannot be a repetition of a belief that you can really make fundamental changes to the justice system without the involvement of Parliament.

Peter Bottomley: Who should do discipline?

Lord Woolf: I have no doubt at all that whereas it is quite right for the Secretary of State to have an interest in discipline, discipline must be the responsibility of the Chief Justice outside the final court of appeal. Once you get to the final court of appeal, I cannot speak with any authority at all, because my constituency is England and Wales.

Mr Cunningham: May I ask what role you foresee for Parliament in the process of appointing members of the supreme court?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: I do not see a role for Parliament in appointing members of the supreme court. There has been a good deal of discussion over the years about the very familiar process of nomination which the United States have adopted and I myself have never heard anybody in this country who was other than completely hostile to it.

Mr Cunningham: How do you think we should go about appointments to the supreme court? What would your alternative be?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: We put forward quite a detailed proposal in our response to the consultation paper. Clearly it is capable of being varied and no doubt improved, but the principles we adopted are first of all that there should be representatives of all three jurisdictions, since the appointment may be made from England and Wales or from Scotland or from Northern Ireland as matters now stand. We have also suggested there should be a lay element. We have suggested that it should be largely composed of people with a very close knowledge of the judicial quality of the candidates. We have also tried to devise a scheme which would not run the risk that anybody who would ordinarily sit on the appointments commission would be a candidate, which is a risk which could exist. I think I mentioned that we supported a lay element.

Chairman: I am going to return to the appointments system in a moment, but I just want to clarify your answer to Mr Cunningham's first question. You dealt with the issue of confirmation hearings and involvement in individual appointments, but not with the wider implication of it, which was whether Parliament has a role in overseeing the process by which appointments are made.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: I am so sorry, I do apologise if I misunderstood. I would think that when legislation is enacted there should be specific provision as to how the members of this body should be appointed and the proposal we put forward is not necessarily the last word, but is certainly a formula which could be adopted. We would certainly wish to see that enacted. I am extremely sorry if I took you up wrongly; I do apologise.

Chairman: Perhaps we are not making ourselves clear enough. Under the present system, clearly we can call in the Lord Chancellor and ask him about the process of appointment, we can ask him why particular categories of people do not seem to be well represented on the bench; we can explore the broad issues without any reference to individual appointments. I presume, in answering Mr Soley, you did not wish to rule out that there would be some such process.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: One of the questions in the consultation paper related to the qualities which should be looked for in candidates for this body. We gave a fairly comprehensive list of the qualities we thought would be looked for. The question was asked in the consultation paper: should these criteria be expressed in a code of practice or in subordinate legislation? Our very emphatic answer to that, to which we attach some importance, is that these criteria should be expressed in legislation, because we feel it would be highly undesirable for what could be transient political purposes that the Order could be amended in order to put a premium on some particular quality rather than another.

Chairman: I am sorry to be persistent, but you still have not quite dealt with - and maybe others of your colleagues might want to - the general way in which this Committee, for example, looks at the way the system is working and is able to find someone who can answer to us about whether any further action needs to be taken to broaden the range of candidates coming forward. Not the legislative part of the responsibility, but parliamentary oversight of the effectiveness of the system. If we were merely asking the government minister those questions in the future and the system had changed so that minister had a position much more divorced from the judiciary, we should be asking someone else those questions, should we not?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: I think the proof of the pudding would actually have to be in the eating to some extent. If it were felt that the process of appointment was leading to bad appointments or less good appointments which could be made, then of course Parliament would have every possible right to review the matter and revise the procedures in order to make sure that better appointments were made. I do not myself see a mechanism which would be consistent with the constitutional principle and which would give any sort of continuing surveillance of particular appointments.

Chairman: To take a simple example, the chairman of the judicial appointments committee, whoever he might be, is sitting there and we might be asking him whether he is really satisfied that the system is bringing forward candidates with this expertise or this background; not in particular cases but in general.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: I do not see how the question could be asked in general.

Mr Soley: If, for example, the Committee were given a duty to get gender and ethnic balance in that and if that did not happen, would it not be right that we as parliamentarians asked questions as to why that was failing to happen?

Chairman: As we do now of the Lord Chancellor.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: Yes; of the Lord Chancellor. I confess I have not given perhaps as detailed a thought to this particular aspect as I could have done. I think I repeat that the first thing would be to look at the appointments which were made and see whether they seem to be the best possible appointments.

Lord Woolf: The appointments below the supreme court are much more controversial than at a supreme court level. One of the things which is true of our system and our tradition is that supreme court judges or members of the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords are quite easy to appoint because they are people with proven track records, their reputation by that time is well known to all those who are concerned and therefore it is really a question of choosing the obvious person to fill a particular vacancy. There may be more than one candidate; it may be a choice between two very good candidates. However, we are very lucky in our system that for the final appointments to the Appellate Committee the candidates are obvious. That is why in one way they have been uncontroversial. The Lord Chancellor has never been really criticised. He might have been criticised on the grounds of diversity, but the fact is that the system, until recently, had not produced a woman who was appropriate to appoint to the House of Lords. The individuals who were appointed were not complained of. You may say that the system should have done this earlier, but the facts on the ground were as I have indicated. If you come to the level with which I am concerned, which is the judiciary of England and Wales, it is much more important that the appointments system should be subject to scrutiny. In our discussions which are taking place with the Lord Chancellor to try to find what is the system which would be acceptable to the Lord Chancellor, to Parliament and to the judiciary, which is what we hope we will find, we have certainly considered the question of whether there should be oversight. We would welcome the continued involvement of Sir Colin Campbell's body to oversee the appointment process as he has overseen it so far, because we think it is very positive. We also would see that the appointments commission would produce a report every year which would be laid before Parliament. Looking at the judiciary as a whole for England and Wales I see no difficulty in that being discussed in Parliament and I see no difficulty in the Chairman of the appointments commission coming before a body such as this and explaining it. I would see no difficulty - and perhaps our presence today indicates our attitude - in us coming and trying to assist the Committee and to explain in any way we could. There is a difference. What a good appointments system would ensure would be that the right candidates were filling the posts which gave them the experience to make them suitable members of the supreme court. That is something which we try to bear in mind now; it is very important that we not only have very good high court judges, but we have very good high court judges with experience who will become one day very good members of the supreme court from this jurisdiction. The quality of our system is reflected in the quality of those people who eventually go into the final court.

Keith Vaz: All that is missing from your scenario, Lord Woolf, is the production of white smoke. This is a similar kind of system to the election of the Pope. What the Lord Chancellor and the government are proposing is a much more radical approach, where you have a wide appointments commission which has a number of stakeholders with a large lay element. What you are proposing today is that the judges keep the power of appointment to themselves, they will dominate this commission and they will decide who is going to be appointed to the bench with a little bit of lay involvement.

Lord Woolf: If I may say so, with respect, that is not what I am proposing. I am proposing a substantial lay element. I am not proposing a committee which would be dominated by the judiciary. I am proposing that it will have a variety of members from the judiciary on it because it seems to me that when we have 30,000 magistrates, it is very important that there should be a lay magistrate.

Keith Vaz: Indeed, but are the judges going to have a majority on this committee? Is this a proposal of all four of you? Do you all see the judges in the majority?

Lord Woolf: On the model which is being discussed - and I obviously cannot go into the detail - I am not suggesting a body which has a majority of judges.

Keith Vaz: What is going on at the moment is a private set of discussions between senior law lords, yourself as Lord Chief Justice and the Lord Chancellor, which is different in thrust to what is being said in response to the consultation document. Who is taking part in these discussions?

Lord Woolf: I make no secret of it. It is the fact that there was a consultation paper on appointments, which was issued. The judiciary, through a body of which I am the chair, the Judges Council, made a response. There were differences. The discussions which have been taking place - and I do not regard them as being significant in any way - are, I hope, finding a result which will be acceptable to Parliament.

Keith Vaz: This is different to the submission which has been put forward, a written submission which Lord Bingham and his colleagues have already put forward.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: We have made no submission at all on the appointment of judges other than to the supreme court, being the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary.

Keith Vaz: The proposal you have put forward in response to the consultation is for a body which is dominated by judges.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: Yes, it is.

Keith Vaz: With very few lay people on it.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: Certainly; it is, yes.

Keith Vaz: Are you not concerned that practically every other organisation, including the government's policy in having these changes, wishes to include a much more substantial lay element in whatever tier of judges we are looking at?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: We see a distinction between the tiers of the judiciary which the Lord Chief Justice has been talking about and on which we, being the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, have made no submission whatsoever and those at the level with which we are concerned, because we think there are differences in what you are looking for which justify a difference in the way you set about it.

Keith Vaz: I accept that, but in answer to the Chairman's question and Mr Cunningham's question, how can a body which is currently not really diverse, with no political statement as to getting a more modern and diverse judiciary, having more women, having more black and Asian people, be left with the responsibility of perpetuating itself, when it has no statement and no vision as to how it is going to be a modern judiciary?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: I think the premise of your question is that because one is white and male one is unsympathetic to those who are neither the one nor the other. That is actually the exact opposite of the case. I now have 11 years' experience of involvement in the appointment of judges and throughout that period, while successive Lord Chancellors have treated merit as their overriding criterion, they have also, as between candidates of approximately equal merit, preferred the woman to the man and the racial minority candidate to the alternative where there is one. There very frequently simply has not been one. I wish to disclaim, really quite vigorously, any suggestion that we would show any resistance whatever to people who were neither white nor male; indeed we would very, very greatly welcome their presence, as we have in the highly publicised movement.

Keith Vaz: That is precisely the point Mr Beith was making. If there is no connection and accountability, other than the annual report which is published, who is going to come to answer for the court, the commission you are going to create, who will say what the benchmarks are, what the vision is as to what you want to achieve?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: The Lord Chief Justice.

Keith Vaz: Will do it for his commission.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: And an annual report. In an ordinary year there is no appointment to the Appellate Committee. It so happens that we have had the misfortune to lose three colleagues all at once just at the moment, but that is quite exceptional and I hope it will never ever recur. It is a very unusual exercise. Usually it will be clear whether we are looking for a candidate from Scotland or Northern Ireland or England and Wales; clearly, because of the size of the respective jurisdictions, more frequently the latter than either of the former.

Keith Vaz: I have two quick final questions for both of your bodies, representing both tiers. For your tier, the supreme court, is it going to be recommending a number of candidates or one candidate for the vacant post?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: What we have so far suggested, but the detail is capable of almost endless amendment, is that one name should be put forward to the Secretary of State for onward transmission to the Prime Minister, for onward transmission to the Queen. We have proposed that the Secretary of State should be able on the first occasion to say he would like us to think again. When invited to do so, the body would obviously think again in good faith and with an open mind. It might choose a different name or it might choose the same name, but it would be open to the Secretary of State, who would give reasons on our proposal, to say he would like us to consider whether there was not a suitable female candidate because he thinks the court would be strengthened.

Keith Vaz: From the tier represented by Lord Woolf, those below the supreme court?

Lord Woolf: The tier below is the tier which will not have a majority of judges on it. That committee will be chaired by an independent lay person of, I hope, great distinction and what it will do is make one recommendation in the same way as just indicated by Lord Bingham. The Secretary of State should be able to say "Think again. I won't accept that candidate" for reasons he would indicate and then he would be required to accept the second candidate. Otherwise, if you have more direct interference in the system, what is the point of having an independent appointments commission? If we have an independent appointments commission, then we must trust that. We are not leaving it unsupervised; we are suggesting that it should be subject to the existing commission chaired by Sir Colin Campbell. We are also suggesting that it would make a report indicating it. This is something to which I attach importance: I would hope that clear criteria are set out by Parliament indicating the matters to which attention should be paid. I think the primary one should be merit - and I do not think that is controversial. Subject to that, I think a high place should be given to diversity.

Chairman: Do you really envisage in the longer term that the two bodies would continue to exist side by side, that is the body which makes judicial appointments and Sir Colin Campbell's current judicial appointments commission which oversees the way the system works? That is two entirely separate bodies.

Lord Woolf: I think that is a very valuable protection. It is not only the protection for the system itself as a whole. It can also be very valuable to those who are unsuccessful in appointments. To some extent you cannot have an open system for appointments to the judiciary. If you want people to apply to be appointed, they are entitled to confidentiality, because it could be very damaging for it to be known that a member of the profession had applied and had not been appointed and that would happen. First of all people would think he was not really interested in continuing in the profession. That would be a worry. It is a confidential closed system and therefore Sir Colin Campbell can play a very valuable role there. I would also see Sir Colin Campbell having to play a valuable role in relation to discipline. There is a need for the public to be represented within the disciplinary system by an independent body and I can see a similar role for Parliament, as I have indicated, in relation to the disciplinary system. I do say, for the protection of the independence of the judiciary, that it is very important that the Chief Justice should have a different role in regard to that now we are not to have a Lord Chancellor.

Keith Vaz: Lord Woolf, when you spoke in Israel, you spoke in much stronger terms than you have done today. You said you were extremely disturbed about the changes which are being proposed. Your brow is furrowed. Maybe Mr Rozenberg has not correctly reported your speech, so you have a chance to put this right, as he is also here. Can you tell me? There is obviously a big split in the judiciary as to what is going to happen; certainly there is as far as the supreme court is concerned. I do not recall a period where there is such a difference of opinion on such a major issue. We do not want to look back, because the decision has been made; as you said today, the process has begun. Do you think the government's timetable is actually too fast? The legislation is to be introduced very shortly, the plan is to get this in place this year. The consultation period is over. Should we have perhaps a longer period in view of the very profound changes which are being proposed, so that discussions you are having, that this Committee is having so far as the inquiry is concerned, should have longer to bed down before we have a final decision on this? Should we extend the timetable?

Lord Woolf: I do not know whether my views on the timetable would take the matter much further.

Keith Vaz: You are the Lord Chief Justice. I am sure what you have to say is going to be taken seriously.

Lord Woolf: What I do say is that the timetable is very tight. I am spending a great deal of time, as is the Lord Chancellor, trying to meet that timetable. It is not easy.

Keith Vaz: Lord Bingham, should we extend the timetable, give more time, have a more considered approach to this rather than rushing in to make sure it is all done in the next year or 18 months?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: The prospect of actually installing the existing members of the Appellate Committee in a new court simply cannot be achieved within the sort of timescale we are talking about. That is not necessarily an argument against enacting the legislation, but it is an overwhelming argument against trying to bring the legislation into force until it is feasible to do so. There are quite significant questions to be addressed about transitional arrangements and I am not alive to the fact that any clear conclusion has been reached on that at the moment.

Keith Vaz: Lord Nicholls, what about the timetable? Is it too short? Should it be longer?

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: I am bound to say that I think there is a very real danger that things are being rushed. What we are seeing happening is, as this public debate is just beginning to take place, that different points are beginning to emerge as to matters which need to be considered. In the ordinary course one might have expected that before a change of this sort was decided upon, there would have been public consultation in advance. That having not taken place, there is need for rather more time at this stage of the proceedings than normally would be the case. I certainly think that it would be more conducive to obtaining the right answer, if in fact the timetable could be rather less rushed.

Ross Cranston: This is more for Lord Woolf and Lord Justice Thomas; appointments at the lower level. We had evidence, for example, from Sir Colin Campbell, who said that the requirement to have served many years in practice may be harmful to diversity. We also heard evidence from the Fawcett Society where Katherine Rake said that often when people say 10 or 15 years' experience they are using that as shorthand for a set of skills and competencies. What needs to happen is a thorough review of what skills and competencies are really required. She then went on and advocated the appointment of people at a young age, say in their early to mid-30s, to have a career as a judge. They would be appointed as a District Court judge and then be promoted. What do you think of this idea of a more formal career for judges? How many years in practice do you think a potential judge has to have before appointment?

Lord Woolf: I am concerned that we do not have greater diversity than we have already within the judiciary. I would like to see greater diversity there. My experience is exactly the same as Lord Bingham has described, namely that the reason why there is not greater diversity is that there were no appropriate candidates to appoint at the time we were making the appointment; if there had been, then they would have been very welcome. That causes me to think that although I am absolutely committed to the idea that we should not have a career judiciary of the sort which exists on the continent, we do need, especially at the junior levels of the judiciary, where there is now a good representation of women district judges for example, but notwithstanding that, to be more flexible than we perhaps have been in the past. I do think that there is room for the appointments commission to look carefully to see whether we cannot square the circle of having the benefit of the experience which we now have of practitioners who have spent substantial time in practice before they become members of the judiciary and at the same time widening the range of people who can be recruited into the judiciary. We need to look at that, while always remembering the importance of merit, to see whether we should not perhaps be appointing people at an age which fits into the career structure which they wish, including their commitments to family and matters of that sort, to a greater extent than we had been able to do in the past. I think we are already becoming much more flexible than was the case in the past. I do think that it is important to look at the situation as a whole and I think that one of the benefits which could come from the new appointments commission is that a body of that sort can really study the system and find out the undoubted restrictions in the system which prevent a wider range of people not entering into it. I would certainly not, with regard to the high court judges, in any way weaken the emphasis that we have placed upon merit up until now. We are very fortunate in this jurisdiction that the quality of the persons who are being appointed, particularly at the high court level, is as high as it is and I hope very much that it will continue.

Ross Cranston: Maybe Lord Justice Thomas might actually address the issue of independence. If you do have, albeit a smaller, element which does have this career structure, would their independence be threatened because they are expecting promotion?

Lord Justice Thomas: May I add a footnote to what Lord Woolf has said? I see a tremendous opportunity with the recruitment, particularly to the district bench, of people on a part-time but permanent basis. There is no doubt that the pressures of being a lawyer in commercial practice these days are not easily compatible with family life. There is a tremendous opportunity for the judiciary, it seems to me, of people in their early to mid 30s accepting what I would look on as permanent part-time appointments. I could not see that people whose family circumstances permitted them to take this sort of role would in any way have their independence compromised and when their circumstances permitted, as one would hope, they could become full-time judges. What I would be against would be looking for full-time people to be appointed in their early 30s. One can draw a very sharp distinction and I can see it benefiting the judiciary by giving to us people whom commercial practice does not value sufficiently highly to alter their working hours to fit them. We can do that.

Ross Cranston: Let me get this straight. You would not expect them to go from district judge, to circuit judge to high court judge necessarily.

Lord Justice Thomas: You might see them going from district judge to high court judge. There is an immense pool of talent; people who are simply not prepared to work the hours which practice these days demands and it is very difficult to impose on law firms or barristers' chambers, which are commercial organisations which compete internationally, working practices which would enable people of that kind to work for them, who see a different value to life. I do see an enormous benefit in attracting that sort of person to the judiciary. It is a very important opportunity. Both Lord Irvine and Lord Falconer had tried to take steps and we have to take more steps.

Ross Cranston: What about the court of final appeal level? An argument has been put to us that the new body would be a different body, could become a different body and there might be direct appointments to that. Would you expect people to have been high court judges before they are appointed to the supreme court or the court of final appeal, whatever it is to be called?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: My own view, which is expressed in our response and which I think commanded general support, is that it is usually a good idea for anybody who is sitting in an appellate capacity to have had experience at lower levels because in some ways it is very easy to sit in an appellate capacity and say the judge made this mistake and that mistake. This kind of decision ought to be made by people who have actually sat in the hot seat and had to make these decisions themselves. When conducting a difficult criminal trial, for example, with several defendants and counsel who are not very co-operative and everything goes wrong, you have to make your decision there and then. You cannot say to the jury, as you can in the Court of Appeal, that you will give a decision on this question next week. The jury needs to know there and then. Most of us have suffered great agony in making these decisions because you do have to give a decision and you are not 100% sure it is right, you just hope it is. I think this is valuable experience and on the whole, while there are occasionally questions which could be described, without intending to be pejorative, as purely academic in the sense that they pose textbook questions of law, most cases, like for example the appeal we have just been hearing today, are not like that. Whereas I would not wish to say nobody could ever be appointed direct, which has happened before, I would not want to say that you should not go straight from the high court bench, the final court of appeal, as Lord Wilberforce did. I would not want to say, if somebody appeared in every way suitable, that they should not be employed direct from academe. I think it is a good working rule that people should have had experience. Perhaps I could just say this as a footnote, which really links to what both the Lord Chief Justice and Lord Justice Thomas have said: it is really important that in accommodating desirable changes we do not jeopardise the enormous strengths we have actually achieved. There are various respects in which the judiciary of the United Kingdom can say that it has no one who excels it in the world in terms of independence, in terms of incorruptibility, in terms of lack of political taint. While I am not saying that every judge is a genius, of course they are not, overall, judge for judge, we would certainly hope to compare pretty well with almost any jurisdiction in the world. These are not things to be lightly thrown away. They are prizes to be cherished and preserved while making such changes as are necessary to achieve the objects of transparency and diversity. Nobody needs to fear that diversity or transparency will jeopardise these things in any way; indeed we would hope that this would merely make it clearer that this is what we are recruiting.

Mr Dawson: Is the proposal to bring judges out of the House of Lords not entirely in line with not only ensuring the independence of the judiciary, but ensuring that the independence of the judiciary is seen to be in place? Surely this principle is beneficial for such a principle?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: That is certainly my very strong view.

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: Yes, I would certainly agree that appearance matters; I quite agree. The way I see it at the moment is that anybody who is properly informed about the position regarding the legal culture and the conventions of Parliament in the House of Lords could have no doubt whatever that the judges in the House of Lords are just as independent as those who sit in a separate building and are called a supreme court in another country. What we have here is no doubt a system very different from that in other countries in actual formal setup. No doubt, if we were starting from scratch, that is not the way this country would go. We would go the way later democracies have gone. We do have a system which we believe has great strength and we think it would be a great sadness and a great loss to this country if we jeopardised any of those strengths purely for the sake of making changes just for appearance.

Mr Dawson: With the greatest of respect, do you believe that the law lords actually bring something to the work of the House of Lords which would be missed if we did actually achieve that separation?

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: It is for others to judge whether we bring anything to it. All I would say is that the Wakeham Commission took the view that it would be unfortunate if the law lords ceased to be present unless it was absolutely essential and in recent debates which have taken place I think it was Lord Strathclyde who said that it was the view of most members of the House that to remove the serving and retired law lords would be a great loss to the House.

Mr Dawson: There are many other distinguished lawyers in the House of Lords at the moment who are not themselves law lords.

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead: There are certainly other distinguished lawyers. My understanding is that the general view is as I sought to express it.

Chairman: May I just take up one point about the implications of the proposals for Scotland and the provision of sufficient Scottish judges to deal with Scottish cases in the supreme court, particularly if the government has its way and devolution matters do come to the supreme court and do not remain in the Judicial Committee? The problem exists, whether or not that happens; it seems greater if devolution issues are brought in. Would you not have to have something resembling the panel system which currently works for the Privy Council for the supreme court? If you relied on the presence on the supreme court of one or two Scottish lawyers permanently there, is that really a workable system? If you decided you needed three then you are denuding the Scottish judiciary of resources which it cannot really afford on the scale it operates.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: There has never been, since 1707, a majority of Scottish law lords hearing Scottish appeals. Initially it was unclear whether there was an appeal from Scotland after 1707 to the House of Lords, but somebody tried it and they found it worked all right. For most of the nineteenth century, the Scottish appeals outnumbered English appeals by about 30 to 1.

Chairman: They have the claim of right; they have the assumption.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: They did not need leave and they did not have to pay until their appeal failed. There has always been a minority of Scottish judges, but I do not believe that there has ever been a problem with the Scots saying that the law of Scotland has been perverted because English judges insisted on putting in their own views and so on. Certainly my own experience on purely Scottish questions is that of course the English judges take a very great deal of notice of what their Scottish colleagues say because they are the experts on this.

Peter Bottomley: To sum up on one of the critical points, is it right that the present judicial role of the House of Lords passes the Bingham pudding proof test, but not Bingham?

Lord Bingham of Cornhill: Yes.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed, Lord Woolf, Lord Bingham, Lord Nicholls, Lord Justice Thomas. We are very grateful for your help. It is rather pleasant to be able to thank you in that way than rush out as soon as the bell goes. We bring our proceedings to a close.