UK Supreme Court Blog

EDITORS: Dan Tench, Emma Cross, Zainab Hodgson, Francesca Knight, James Warshaw and Natalie Haefner (CMS)
Hugh Tomlinson KC, Matthew Ryder KC, Dévante Gravesande-Smith and Rebecca Khan (Matrix)

In last week’s Privy Council News Round Up we highlighted recent debate on the controversial role of the Caribbean Court of Justice as a replacement for the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as the final appellate court for Caribbean countries.

We thought readers might be interested to see the discussion of the role of the Privy Council in the House of Lords in October, which can be seen on the BBC’s Democracy Live website and on the House of Lords Hansard pages (col 971).

Lord Bach, answering for the Government, took 8 questions and confirmed that the Government had no plans to modify the system of appeals to the JCPC. He did however suggest that it was for the countries themselves to determine whether they sent their final appeals to the CCJ and, when challenged over the appropriateness of British judges participating in cases that involve the death penalty, argued that “the judges who sit on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council do so as privy counsellors and their task is to rule on the law of the individual country involved.”

This debate is also discussed by Dr Francis Alexis QC on the Caribbean Agency for Media Services website, where they also refer to the comments made by Lord Phillips earlier in the year.