The first Legal Week Comment of 2004 correctly predicted that the Government would preserve the QC system in a modified form.
The reasoning then was that the Department for Constitutional Affairs had enough on its plate as it was to consider pressing ahead with its threat to abolish that constitutional trifle that is the silk system in the face of trenchant opposition from the Bar Council. And in return for granting the QC system a stay of execution, the very least the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, could expect from the Bar Council was support for the rest of the Government’s constitutional reform programme. It is a testament to the Bar’s political clout that while the Government can pursue controversial plans to abolish the post of Lord Chancellor, create a Supreme Court and set up an independent judicial appointments commission, it has felt obliged to conduct a partial U-turn on silks.
