I entirely agree. My right hon. Friend and I are both romantic Tories of an old school, which might surprise many Members. We share that common fount of Toryism that is important to us both and, within that, we utterly respect the independence of the judiciary. It is a separate part of our constitution. To trespass upon its domain—as, sadly, in the Post Office case we have had to—is something that we do extremely reluctantly, and I hope in a very rare and unique way in that tragic and scandalous example.
3.15 pm
As my right hon. Friend said, that does not mean that we are a carbon copy of the United States—in fact, the United States constitution is based on a misunderstanding of the British constitution. It is not right to say that separation of powers is the underlying principle. That fiction led us to error when we—to my mind, regrettably—took the House of Lords Judicial Committee out of this place and pretended that somehow it was entirely separate from Parliament.
If I may digress for a nanosecond, the point about the House of Lords Judicial Committee is that it was a body of Parliament making law. That was an elegant solution and response to our unwritten constitution. The same goes for the office that I used to hold. What a mess the previous Labour Government made of reform to the office of Lord Chancellor, which was the embodiment of the checks and balances that we have in our constitution. It is a bit of cod philosophy that is overused and is not part of our system, but I will go on to qualify that in an important way.