On 26 July the Government published a consultation paper on the role of the Attorney General, in which it examined “ways to strengthen confidence in the administration of the justice system and in the rule of law through reform of the historic role of the Attorney General”.
Certainly, the demand for a review of the role of the Attorney General has been heightened as a result of the controversy surrounding the decision to go to war in Iraq, the cash for honours inquiry and the discontinuance of the Al Yamamah arms inquiry. Over Iraq the controversy was caused not only by the almost unprecedented disclosure of the Attorney’s legal opinion a matter of days before the war on 17 March, 2003, but also that an earlier (leaked) opinion of 7 March that year apparently showed his opinions to have been initially more equivocal. This discrepancy between the two documents, unsurprisingly fuelled claims that the Attorney had changed his mind between these two dates because of political pressure from inside government, though he has denied such claims.
