X-Nico

13 unusual facts about Attorney General for England and Wales


Angela Cannings

On 14 February 2006, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, announced that three of these cases needed to be reconsidered by the courts, but that the majority did not give rise to concern.

Charles Wetherell

He was elected MP for Hastings in 1826 but had to stand down when appointed Attorney-General.

Gary Gibbon

Gibbon won the 2006 RTS Home News Award with Jon Snow for his scoop on the Attorney General's Legal Advice on Iraq, and revealed details of Tony Blair's pre-war meeting with George W. Bush.

Gordon Hewart, 1st Viscount Hewart

He was made a Privy Counsellor in 1918, Attorney General from 10 January 1919 to 6 March 1922.

Lechmere baronets

Other members of the family include Sir Nicholas Lechmere, a Baron of the Exchequer during the reign of King William III and Member of Parliament for Bewdley, and his grandson Nicholas Lechmere, 1st Baron Lechmere, Solicitor-General, Attorney-General and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

Norman Miscampbell

He never held ministerial office, but served as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Sir Peter Rawlinson from 1972 to 1973, while Rawlinson was Attorney General.

Philip Havers

Havers comes from a leading legal family - his grandfather Sir Cecil Havers was a High Court judge, his father Michael Havers, Baron Havers, became Attorney General and then Lord Chancellor.

Robert Gifford, 1st Baron Gifford

Gifford was elected to the House of Commons for Eye in 1817, a seat he represented until 1824, and served under the Earl of Liverpool as Solicitor General between 1817 and 1819 and as Attorney General between 1819 and 1824.

Rye by-election, 1903

The press expected questions to be put to the Attorney General on the legality or otherwise of this practice.

Sir William Middlebrook, 1st Baronet

The seat had become vacant on the death of the sitting Liberal MP, Sir John Lawson Walton (1852–1908) who held the office of Attorney General at the time of his death.

Thomas Plumer

He was subsequently promoted to Attorney General in 1812 then, in the legal reorganisation that took place the following year, was elevated to the bench to take up the new post of Vice Chancellor of England.

Thomas Wallace, 1st Baron Wallace

Wallace was the son of James Wallace (1729–1783), a barrister who served as Solicitor General for England and Wales and as Attorney General, by Elizabeth, only daughter and sole heiress of Thomas Simpson, Esquire, of Carleton Hall, Cumberland.

Wales Office

The Attorney General for England and Wales therefore advises the United Kingdom Government on its law.


Baron Stratheden

Sir John Campbell, who in 1836 served as Attorney-General in the Whig administration of Lord Melbourne, had twice been overlooked for the office of Master of the Rolls, and was about to tender his resignation to Melbourne as a result of this.

Beaconsfield

Dominic Grieve is the Member of Parliament for Beaconsfield, first elected in 1997, and now the Attorney General.

Campbell Case

On 6 August it was announced in the House of Commons that the Attorney General for England and Wales Sir Patrick Hastings had advised the prosecution of Campbell under the Incitement to Mutiny Act 1797; however, under pressure from a number of Labour backbenchers, the government forced the charges to be withdrawn on 13 August.

Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service

Among these offenses, according to Attorney General Sir Thomas Inskip was "revealing the mysterious consonant by which the Chief of the Secret Service is known."

Chislehurst

Charles Pratt (1714–1794), Baron Camden from 1765 and 1st Earl Camden from 1786, Attorney General, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and Lord Chancellor, lived at Camden Place from c.1760.

Crown Prosecution Service

The CPS is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions (currently Alison Saunders CB) who answers to the Attorney General for England and Wales (currently Dominic Grieve, QC, MP).

Daniel M'Naghten

The case was prosecuted by the solicitor-general, Sir William Follett (the attorney-general being busy in Lancaster prosecuting Feargus O'Connor and 57 other Chartists following the plug riots).

David Southall

In February 2007, Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith announced that a review would be held into a number of criminal cases in which Southall gave evidence for the prosecution, following allegations that Southall kept up to 4,450 personal case files on child patients which were kept separate from the official hospital records.

Francis North, 1st Baron Guilford

Guilford had been an eminent lawyer, Solicitor-General (1671), Attorney-General (1673), and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (1675), and in 1679 was made a member of the Council of Thirty and, on its dissolution, of the Cabinet.

Minister for Co-ordination of Defence

Despite this, Baldwin's choice of the Attorney General Sir Thomas Inskip provoked widespread astonishment.

Newport by-election, 1956

The Labour candidate was Sir Frank Soskice, who had been Solicitor General and then Attorney General in the Labour Government 1945-1951.

Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 2nd Baronet, of Isell

In April 1705 Lawson’s widow petitioned the crown against this final bequest and in August the Treasury, following a report from the attorney-general that ‘the codicil containing the bequest is so worded that it carries a presumption with it that the testator was not in his senses when he dictated it’, awarded the £600 to Lawson’s widow.