The Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales, co-chaired by Professor Laura McAllister and Dr Rowan Williams, produced its final report in January after two years of consultations, analysis and careful, evidence-based deliberations. I will be examining the report’s findings in a number of articles in the next few weeks and here I will begin with the Commission’s strong recommendation that justice and policing should be devolved to Wales as a matter of urgency.

The devolution of justice and policing is a no-brainer. Wales had its own historic tradition of very advanced legal systems before those structures were destroyed following England’s brazenly illegal annexation of Wales in the 16th century. Starting in the late 19th century, Wales again slowly began to accrue its own body of law when England permitted it, before devolution in 1999 accelerated that process dramatically. In the last 25 years Wales has gained a distinct legal identity differing from England’s across numerous spheres and, as more and more Welsh-specific legislation has inevitably been enacted over the years, the case for a separate Welsh jurisdiction has become unanswerable. A sequence of authoritative reports have come to the conclusion that it simply makes sense: the All Wales Convention of 2009, the Silk Commission of 2014, the Thomas Commission of 2019 and now this latest Independent Commission. Similarly, there is no valid reason why policing should not be devolved (as it is, without comment, in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Channel Islands) in order to connect the laws of the land to their implementation on the ground, provide the clarity and coherence that law must have and give the people of Wales the fit-for-purpose and democratically controlled police service we deserve.

These thoroughly sensible, logical and uncontroversial recommendations have been broadly welcomed by people of goodwill across the political spectrum in Wales. However, that of course doesn’t include the power-mad far-right imperialist thugs in control of the Conservative Party. Hardly had the 150-page report been published before Llanelli-born Robert Buckland, the Tory MP for South Swindon, stated that the devolving of justice to Wales would be “a mistake of catastrophic proportions”. He justified this ridiculous opinion by asserting that being part of the ‘England & Wales’ jurisdiction was “good for Wales” because it is a “bigger entity” and “one of the most respected jurisdictions in the world”.

What Last Days of the Raj planet does this odious Little Englander live on? Far from being “respected” anywhere on Earth, the jurisdiction of ‘England and Wales’ is such a laughing stock it can truly be described as “catastrophic” – on the basis of actual evidence rather than bigoted speculation. Yes, Buckland’s lauded justice system is on its knees. Even the Tory-controlled House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has described it as “close to breaking point”, with “shameful backlogs” at a staggering all-time high of 350,000 cases waiting to get to magistrates courts and 60,000 to crown courts. Over two million victims of crime have just dropped their cases rather than wait for an eternity in limbo when it can take up to five years for a case to get to court, and meanwhile the delays in criminal cases are having serious implications for defendants, witnesses and victims. It’s all been caused by reckless Tory cuts to this fundamental public service that have brought the mass closure of courts (162 of the 323 magistrates courts in ‘England & Wales’ have closed since the Tories came to power in 2010) combined with a crippling shortage of judges, legal professionals and court staff.

On top of this is the savage 25% cut to the Legal Aid budget that the Tories implemented in 2013 while simultaneously raising the qualifying threshold for Legal Aid so that 75% of the population were ineligible anyway. Vast numbers of people lost access to help in both criminal and civil cases with the poorest and most vulnerable particularly badly affected. Subsequently the service has shrivelled to virtual non-existence while pay freezes mean only 4% of defence solicitors can afford to take on Legal Aid work (a junior barrister earns less than the minimum wage, factoring in the hours worked) and the number of firms offering Legal Aid services has halved in the last decade. People without much money are thus being denied their right to free legal advice and representation: justice, like everything else in awful ‘England & Wales’, is reserved for the rich. Is this what Buckland is so adamant Wales must remain shackled to?

Prisons are another unequivocal catastrophe of ‘England & Wales’ jurisdiction. They are a byword for gross overcrowding, with a record 90,000 behind bars and 66% of prisons officially overcrowded despite police cells being permanently used for the overflow and criminals being released early by the ‘Party of Law & Order’ to free up some bunk beds. Then there are the crumbling buildings and the squalor, violence, brutality, suicides and completely inadequate rehabilitation and education programmes. Oh, and the ‘England & Wales’ probation service is a total mess too, destroyed by hasty, cheapskate privatisation and endless reorganisations that have gutted the system and led to an exodus of experienced and quality staff. This has delivered a service that has abandoned supervision, efforts to reduce re-offending, proper assessments of risk of harm, victim protection and keeping track of serious serial offenders, putting everybody in increased danger. No doubt these are more reasons for Buckland to proudly push out his paunch and brandish his Union Jack.

As for policing, what policing? 90% of reported crime goes unsolved, 75% is not even investigated and one can only imagine the amount of crime that is unreported simply because we all know there’s no point unless you want a ‘crime number’ to make a claim from your insurance company. To give just one example of the widespread lawlessness that the Tories actively encourage (unless, say, you’re protesting against the climate crisis and the annihilation of the natural world), shoplifting in now so widespread that it has become organised looting by violent gangs who openly sell off their booty in local pubs, on the black market or just hawked door-to-door. And the idea that Wales must be grouped with the rotten to the core police forces of England like London’s Met Police, where the problem isn’t “a few bad apples” but the entire bloody orchard, is just an insult. But Buckland specialises in insulting Wales. After all, his position that Wales cannot be an entity in its own right but must be part of “a bigger entity” is itself a deeply insulting statement that Wales is somehow incapable of doing what countries across the planet manage to do, and incapable of improving on the UK’s shower of shit. Unless he’s trying to say that “a bigger entity” is intrinsically preferable, in which case he should be campaigning for the abolition of all the world’s police forces, and all the 195 independent nations for that matter…perhaps to be replaced by those paragons of virtue in New Scotland Yard and those principled geniuses in Westminster…?

Buckland knows all about catastrophes. Having obediently followed his solicitor father into Law (always be suspicious of a man who lacks the imagination or the courage to chart his own path or rebel against daddy), he was educated at a fee-paying private school and had joined the Tory Party by the time he was 15. It must have been a lonely life being the only Young Fogey Tory in Llanelli; he got out as soon as he could, going to Durham University before being ‘called to the bar’ at the Inner Temple in London in 1991 – both institutions that are hot-beds of implacable Toryism. He joined a Law firm in Cardiff and practised as a barrister back in Wales while repeatedly trying and failing to get elected to Welsh seats in both the UK and European parliaments, before shifting his attentions to England. Eventually, after failing in 2005, he won the South Swindon seat in the 2010 election that brought the Cameron government to power. Buckland moved to Wiltshire and hasn’t lived in Wales since, thank heavens.

In 2014 he was rewarded for being a robotic party loyalist by being appointed Solicitor General in a Cameron reshuffle. This drew unwanted media attention to the fact that in 2011 he had been found guilty of ‘professional misconduct’ by the Bar Standards Board (the body that regulates barristers). Not to worry, fellow Tory Jeremy Wright, the Attorney General, ruled it was all a minor infringement and anyway it was over two years previously so his failure to declare it when appointed Solicitor General was fine. Tories are so forgiving – of each other. The rumpus also highlighted that Buckland continued to practice as a barrister while also being an MP – but Tories don’t mind that, they’re all at it: the £90k a year plus ‘allowances’ they pocket by moonlighting in Westminster is just pin-money. He also avoided any serious damage in 2015 when a tax tribunal ruled that he was not entitled to the tax relief he had claimed on his ‘investments’ because it was actually a tax avoidance scheme. Buckland had an explanation: he was only obeying orders from his ‘financial adviser’.

Oh yes, he’s a man of impeccable character. In 2016 he voted against a Labour amendment in parliament that would have required landlords to make the homes they rented out “fit for human habitation”. The fact he was one of the 72 Tories voting against this pretty inarguable proposal who personally derived income from renting out property had nothing to do with it. In the 2016 Brexit referendum Buckland was a convinced remainer – until he saw the result. Some remainers, like Cameron himself, recognised that their position was untenable and resigned, but not Mr Buckland; he had no problem changing his tack to support catastrophic new PM Theresa May – and keep his position as Solicitor General. When super-catastrophic Boris Johnson replaced May in 2019, Buckland was rewarded again for his ability to always put Tory loyalism ahead of other considerations and was made Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor to become a central figure in the Tory cabinet as Johnson purged the party of all old-school ‘one nation’ Conservatives and galloped to the far right. Now responsible for the efficient functioning and the independence of the UK’s courts, the first thing he did was to propose that those accused of serious crimes should be granted anonymity if the accusations “threatened their reputation”. Unbelievably, he was suggesting that the rich, the powerful and celebrities ought to be protected when under investigation for serious crimes while ordinary people would be afforded no such protection. Even Boris Johnson couldn’t swallow that. Buckland was publicly humiliated as his ideas were openly rejected and the Ministry of Justice announced he would be saying nothing more on the subject and such issues would in future be handled by Downing Street. This, let us remind ourselves, is the man who presumes to lecture Wales about jurisprudence!

As the Brexit farce dragged on and Johnson’s government repeatedly broke both international and UK law with cavalier disregard, our Lord Chancellor did nothing to defend the independence of courts while judges who defended the law were vilified and threatened by the attack-dogs of the Tory press. The Internal Market Bill, which became law in 2020, drove a coach and horses through a host of UK laws (including the devolution settlements of Wales and Scotland) but Buckland was quite relaxed about it, stating that he would only resign if the law was broken “in ways that I find unacceptable”. He hung onto his job until 2021, time in which he proposed a brand new prison in Wales which already had the highest imprisonment rate in western Europe (another Buckland brainwave that bit the dust), before Johnson ditched him.

In 2022 he was appointed Secretary of State for Wales to replace the dreadful Simon Hart in the chaotic final days of Johnson’s exceedingly catastrophic stint as PM. After the congenital liar was ousted, Buckland chose to support uber-rightwing fruitcake Liz Truss rather than Rishi Sunak in the Tory leadership election. He must have thought he was on to a winner when she beat the multi-millionaire, but he was wrong yet again (hey, a recurrent theme is emerging). Since she only had the shelf-life of a lettuce and brought whole new meaning to the word “catastrophic” he was out on his ear almost instantly after she was forced to resign in disgrace. His grand total of three whole months as Secretary of State for Wales meant his incumbency was the shortest since the post was created in 1964. What a record!

When Sunak became the fifth different Tory PM in six years, yet another one elected by nobody but a few Tories, Buckland’s ministerial career was over. He returned to deserved anonymity on the backbenches, having been knighted for services rendered in Boris Johnson’s stinking ‘resignation honours list’. Mission accomplished for any forelock-tugging fawner to wealth, snobbery, class war, deference, hierarchy and violent appropriation: Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire! Cor! How very unimpressive! Now he can concentrate on his other jobs, enjoy his favourite reading (hugely over-rated children’s author JRR Tolkein) and occasionally be unleashed as a useful idiot to repeat stereotypical, lazy, ignorant Tory mantras about both English law and Wales, as happened the other week. One thing’s certain: if Robert Buckland is against something you can be sure it is a very good idea indeed.