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Sir Gavin Williamson MP: ‘The Attorney General Has Breached the Ministerial Code’

February 20, 2025 UKR Editor GOVERNMENT 0

Sir Gavin Williamson MP on Lord Hermer – ‘The Attorney General has breached the Ministerial Code’

SIR GAVIN WILLIAMSON MP


Sir Gavin Williamson MP has written to the Prime Minister raising his concerns that the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, has breached the Ministerial Code.

Mr Williamson posted to X:

 

The Attorney General has breached the Ministerial Code. Lord Hermer’s legal advocacy against British interests while serving as our chief legal officer makes his position untenable.

The law serves justice, not the lawmaker’s agenda.

 

Mr Williamson’s letter in full:

RT. HON. SIR GAVIN WILLIAMSON CBE MP

HOUSE OF COMMONS

LONDON SWIA OAA

The Rt Hon Sir Keir Starmer MP

The Prime Minister

10 Downing Street

London

SWIA 2AA

15th February 2025

Dear Prime Minister

I am writing to you to raise concerns that the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, has breached the Ministerial Code, and to ask you to refer him to the Independent Advisor on Ministerial Standards.

According to paragraph 3.1 of the Ministerial Code, ministers “must ensure that no conflict of interest arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests, financial or otherwise”.

Similarly, according to paragraph 3.8 of the Ministerial Code, “ministers must scrupulously avoid any danger of an actual or perceived conflict of interest between their ministerial position and their private interests”.

There are a number of incidents concerning the Attorney General that could be considered, or at the very minimum, reasonably perceived to be conflicts of interests:

1) On 15th January 2025, the Attorney General refused to say whether he advised the Government on their decision to repeal the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, sections of which would have denied figures such as the former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams payouts over his detention in prison in the 1970s for suspected involvement in terrorism.

Prior to his appointment as Attorney General, Lord Hermer represented Gerry Adams in 2023 in a lawsuit brought against him by three victims of provisional IRA bombings. He was paid £30,000 for this engagement.

2) On 19th January 2025, it was reported by The Telegraph that Lord Hermer had represented a group of Sri Lankan asylum seekers who had landed at Diego Garcia in an unsuccessful action against the British government in 2023.

Following Lord Hermer’s appointment as Attorney General, a “one-off” deal was agreed to give the wider 61-person group asylum in Britain. Moreover, he is said to have been involved in talks to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

3) On 7th February, it was reported by the Telegraph that the Foreign Office was preparing to meet representatives of the Reparations Commission of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) in April in order to discuss slavery reparations.

On 9th February 2025, it was reported by The Telegraph that Lord Hermer had previously assisted Caricom prepare legal cases seeking slavery reparations from the UK in as early as 2013. These reports are corroborated by claims made by Lord Hermer in a podcast in 2020 that he recalls “representing Caribbean nations on a potential reparations case”.

The Attorney General has refused to confirm whether he recused himself from advising on the above cases, claiming that he is “constrained by the law officers’ convention which prohibits [him] from identifying particular instances in which law officer advice has been sought”.

However, the Government’s lack of transparency on this issue has led to the widespread perception of a conflict of interest and as such is a breach of the obligation under the Ministerial Code to “scrupulously avoid any danger of actual or perceived conflict of interest” (paragraph 3.8).

The obligation to avoid any danger of actual or perceived conflict of interest has been further breached by the Attorney General’s decision to not disclose payments received after taking office. Previous barristers who have become MPs, including you, have made these disclosures and the decision to not do so has been termed an “irregular and clear break from “normal practice”” by two former Attorney Generals.

It is clear from these instances that either a conflict of interest has arisen, or at the very minimum, can be reasonably perceived to have arisen and that no action has been taken to “scrupulously avoid” this happening. As such, Lord Hermer is in breach of paragraphs 3.1 and 3.8 of the Ministerial Code.

Therefore, could you confirm the following:

1) Did the Attorney General recuse himself from advising on the decisions to:

a) Repeal the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023;

b) Cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius;

c) Open negotiations with Caricom on slavery reparations?

2) If he did not recuse himself from the above decisions, or will not reveal this information, will he refer himself to the Independent Advisor on Ministerial Standards for breaching paragraphs 3.1 and 3.8 of the Ministerial Code?

3) Will he adhere to the precedent set by previous Attorney Generals by disclosing. payments received after taking office?

4) If he does not voluntarily disclose the above payments, will you, as Prime Minister, insist that he adheres to the standards imposed on all other ministers by mandating a clear declaration of payments received since becoming Attorney General?

I look forward to your prompt response.

Yours sincerely,

Rt Hon Sir Gavin Williamson CBE MP

SOURCE: Ayes on the Right

*****

The Attorney General’s Radical Past is Coming Back to Haunt Him

LAURIE WASTELL

Whether it’s defending the likes of Gerry Adams and Shamima Begum, supporting slavery reparations, or his role in the ludicrous, dangerous surrender of the Chagos Islands, Richard, Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, seems the epitome of an evangelical human rights lawyer who can be relied on to side with so-called ‘international law’ against Britain’s national interest.

Yet while much of the recent opprobrium for the handpicked Starmer ally has focused on his dubious past clients and the apparent conflicts of interest resulting from them, attention has so far slid over his activities adjacent to his professional life: namely, his longstanding association with radical ‘anti-fascist’ Searchlight Magazine, and its former Editor, Nick Lowles, now CEO of Leftist campaign group Hope Not Hate.

So just how closely involved has Hermer been with these crusading organisations? Hermer “was an active and dedicated anti-fascist working closely with Searchlight” during his student days at Manchester, according to a Searchlight blog post celebrating his appointment last year.

This youthful far-Left politics is apparently not something Hermer wants widely known. In a recent interview with the House magazine, he details his career in student politics as chair of the students’ union and a National Executive member of the National Union of Students, but omits entirely his association with Searchlight. In reality, as the below Searchlight clipping shows, he might never have achieved the NUS role were it not for his being a Searchlight member and its campaign on his behalf.

No doubt understanding its association with Hermer raises eyebrows, Searchlight proceeds to downplay his involvement since leaving university. “Later in his career, Richard also helped Searchlight with occasional legal advice and was a patron of Searchlight Research Associates,” is all we learn. Though it can’t help but add: “We are proud to count him amongst our friends.”

Yet the Daily Sceptic has seen documents that show his involvement in Searchlight continued long after his student days, well into his career as a lawyer. So much so that in 1996, three years after being called to the bar, Hermer was being recommended to join the magazine’s Management Committee. The man who put his name forward was Gerry Gable, Searchlight‘s long-serving Editor, who once stood for election for the Communist Party and in the 1980s produced research for a BBC Panorama documentary that falsely alleged that two Conservative Party members were secret Nazis – after which the BBC lost a libel trial and had to pay damages.

Later, minutes show Lord Hermer missing a meeting in June 1999 and attending one in November that year – alongside a certain Nick Lowles, who was Co-Editor and then Editor of Searchlight between 1999-2011 and in 2004 founded Hope Not Hate.

It is unclear when (or whether) Hermer’s tenure on the Management Committee ends, but suffice to say his post-university involvement with Searchlight clearly went well beyond “occasional legal advice”. He was still part of Searchlight Research Associates as late as 2016.

(I come by these documents via Notes from the Borderland a “Left/Green… para-political investigative magazine”, whose complaints about Searchlight are long-running and legion. In particular, it alleges a link with MI5, citing a 1977 memo showing Gerry Gable preparing reports on other journalists for London Weekend Television with the assistance of propaganda input by MI5, as reported in the New Statesman in 1980. And while I cannot speak to its veracity, readers may be interested to read an extensive investigation it has carried out into the 1999 Soho nail-bombing, which killed three and was an important justification for the 2000 Terrorism Act, and which, it alleges, Searchlight had information about which could have led to its being avoided. NFB’s BlueSky handle can be found here.)

For our purposes, it is Hermer’s relationship with Lowles and Searchlight that is of particular significance.

Lord Hermer was instrumental to Keir Starmer’s authoritarian crackdown on speech during last summer’s unrest. It was he, reports the Telegraph, “who advised Sir Keir that it would be lawful to charge social media users with stirring up racial hatred online”, an offence which warrants significantly more prison time than offences under s127 of the Communications Act – up to seven years – and was used to charge the likes of Jamie Michael, so obviously not guilty that a jury took only 17 minutes to acquit him of the charge earlier this month.

One of the ongoing questions about Lowles is why he was never similarly charged for his tweet during the disorder spreading misinformation about an alleged acid attack against a Muslim woman – a story which was swiftly being repeated by Muslim groups on the streets, some of which would go on to visit sectarian violence on random white passersby.

The Attorney General’s office is not involved in charging decisions, its press office assures me. But one wonders whether Lowles’s willingness to spread inflammatory rumours – at a time of mass hysteria about online speech, not least from the likes of Hope Not Hate itself, which has blamed unrest on the “rapid spread of mis- and dis-information” – owes something to his knowledge that he has lawyer friends in high places. Probably not.

Certainly, it’s clear that after their time working together at Searchlight, Mr Lowles still has the Attorney General’s ear. Shortly before the Southport attack, Tommy Robinson courted a contempt of court charge at a rally in Trafalgar Square by playing his film SILENCED, a documentary about his legal battle with a Syrian schoolboy whom he was convicted of having libelled. It was Lowles, through Hope Not Hate, who informed the Attorney General’s office that the film had been played at the protest. A contempt of court charge was subsequently brought.

Whatever one thinks of Robinson, what many will be asking is why the Attorney General’s office is apparently receiving and acting on tip-offs from a far-Left campaigning organisation whose boss he used to work with. Indeed, given Searchlight and Hope Not Hate have little short of an obsession with Tommy Robinson, having published hundreds of articles about him going back years, one has to wonder whether this played any role in Hermer’s decision-making. To wit, did Hermer’s “dedicated anti-fascist” politics play a part in his encouragement of the authoritarian post-Southport crackdown? It is certainly head-spinning to imagine that someone associated for so long with a radical Leftist agenda is the highest law officer in the land.

Yet it isn’t just Hermer’s relationship with Lowles that is at issue here. For those who travel under the banner of ‘anti-fascism’ in Britain, a frequent preoccupation is attempting to minimise the attention paid to the issue of grooming gangs, for fear of giving succour to the ‘far-Right’. As I wrote here last month, for instance, Unite Against Fascism was among several groups to have campaigned with success to have a 2004 Channel 4 documentary showing grooming gangs in Bradford pulled from the airwaves.

It is perhaps little wonder then that today Searchlight continues in this mould. Mentions of grooming gangs are rather few and far between on its website. But in the wake of the media coverage of the issue last month, a grim article appeared by senior Searchlight researcher Amir Mohammed titled: “I’ll tell you who most despises so-called ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ – honest-to-goodness Muslims.”

In the course of a lengthy ethno-narcissist rant, Mohammed refers to the “so-called ‘grooming gangs’ scandal”, as if to suggest that it doesn’t exist. And he attributes recent attention given to the scandal to a desire to “bash Muslims”, accusing “racists in the media” of “bringing this issue to the fore”. After libelling GB News owner Paul Marshall as “a racist”, Mohammed then asks: “What has he, or any of his media fellow travellers, done to help the young women at the wrong end of this horror story? Nothing. They produce their hateful headlines but have nothing positive to contribute.” Apparently, not only is it Muslims that care the most about the victims of the grooming gangs, but no one else actually cares at all.

Perhaps he should speak for himself. GB News, for instance, as well as its important reporting helping to force local inquiries, has raised over £400,000 for the Maggie Oliver Foundation for grooming gang survivors – “I am just blown away,” says Oliver, the police whistleblower and tireless campaigner. If Mr Mohammed bothered to follow any of the coverage, he’d know that in GB News’s Charlie Peters’s reporting on this issue, it is the sentiments of victims and survivors that are unfailingly emphasised. Survivors in fact tell him that they are delighted with the surge in attention being at last being given to their cause.

Later, having talked up the “family values at the core of [his] community”,  Mohammed even ventures into victim-blaming the abused girls. While supposedly arguing that blaming the “loose moral values of a liberal society” for the grooming gangs, as some Muslims do, would be a mistake, he nevertheless adds that it’s “partly true” that “if Western societies objectify women by sexualising them then it’s no wonder that some Muslims have fallen into temptation”.

Hermer did not write this himself, of course. But some will wonder whether he might he agree with much of it. After all, it’s from an organisation that he was a “dedicated” activist for, that he played a leading role in during his career as a lawyer, whose “research” he was later a patron of, and which continues to count him as a “friend”.

At last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, trying to deny that the rogue’s gallery of Britain’s enemies Hermer has defended as a lawyer spoke to his errant “motives”, Sir Keir insisted that “lawyers do not necessarily agree with their clients”. Even if some are prepared to accept this excuse, it requires the cab-rank rule to do an enormous amount of lifting. Yet it cannot be made about his association with Searchlight Magazine, which was voluntary activism outside his legal practice. Just as he was building his legal career at Doughty Street Chambers in the 1990s, during which time he struck up a lifelong friendship with Sir Keir Starmer, he was moonlighting as a senior anti-fascist activist on Searchlight’s Management Committee.

In the view of Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, Hermer’s “far-Left political views” represent “a risk to our country’s security”. His association with Searchlight is hardly reassuring in that regard.

This article (The Attorney General’s Radical Past is Coming Back to Haunt Him) was created and published by The Daily Sceptic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Laurie Wastell

Featured image: desgnprogh.com

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