Missing: stage one

Lord Briggs was an inspired choice to send out to prepare the ground for the court modernisation. He produced two thoughtful and well written reports advocating the kind of change that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and the senior judiciary of that time wanted. After his opening artillery salvos had levelled the intellectual field, Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) arrived with the ground troops to clear up. Alas, in the move to implementation, concepts that he had argued as key were quietly removed. His reports are still brandished as enthusiastic endorsements of a general process even though specific elements of his proposals were countermanded. That raises some wider questions about the nature of the programme and its constitutional accountability.