While the press have concentrated on Baroness Scotland’s breaking of immigration law, it is worth casting an eye over the fact of her being Attorney-General in the first place.

The Attorney-General is the chief law officer for the Crown in England and Wales and has overall responsibilty for the work of the Law Officers’ Departments which include the Treasury Solicitor’s Department, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office, the Revenue and Customs Prosecution Office, the Army Prosecution Authority, Her Majesty’s Prosecution Inspectorate, and the Attorney-General’s own offfice. The Director of Public Prosecutions and the Crown Solicitor for Northern Ireland are also responsible to the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General is also specifically responsible for the enforcement of the criminal law, for the protection of charities, appealing against over-lenient sentences, considering the legal aspects of new government legislation, and issues of legal policy. The post dates from the 14th century, i.e. 400 years older than that of the Prime Minister and has hitherto been filled by an eminent lawyer of wide experience, but until 1912 not a member of the Cabinet.

Overall, the Attorney-General has a wider range of specifically mandated responsibilities than those of any other member of the government including the Lord Chancellor and the Prime Minister.

Baroness Scotland came to this country from the West Indies in 1958 and went to the Essex Technical College in Chelmsford (now part of Anglia Ruskin University) where she took an external London LLb degree in 1976. She was called to the Bar only one year later at the age 22 through the Middle Temple chambers. In 1991 at the very early age of 36 she was advanced to the coveted status of Queen’s Counsel (Q.C.) specialising in family law. In 1997, aged 42, she was created a Life Peer on the recommendation of Tony Blair as one of Labour’s “working peers” with no apparent qualification for the job, having stood for no public office, nor demonstrating apparently any outstanding achievements in her profession.

Given that the majority of the hereditary peers have been removed from the House of Lords on the grounds that they were there only because they were the first born of particular parents, Baroness Scotland’s appointment to the Lords was hardly a step in the direction of a more meritocratic society which Blair claimed to want (and which many British people really do want).

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