Public Legal Education
Debate between Ranil Jayawardena and Joanna Cherry(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) on securing this important debate and on speaking so well in it. I do not want to be a churl, but I have to correct something that he said when he referred to the British legal system. It is not a nationalist point I am making. I can assure him that many of my colleagues at the Scottish Bar who are members of the Conservative and Unionist party would be just as anxious to say that there is of course a separate legal system in Scotland.
Mr Jayawardena
I was, of course, simply waiting for the hon. and learned Lady to call me out on that point.
Joanna Cherry
I should nevertheless declare an interest as a member of the Scottish Bar of some 20-odd years’ standing, although I have not practised since I was elected, almost three years ago. Since I have been in Westminster I have been touched by the friendship and hospitality of colleagues of all parties from the English Bar, and indeed from the Law Society of England and Wales. They have made me very welcome and invited me to many of their enjoyable dinners, which I was pleased to see are just as boozy as the Scottish ones; although perhaps, as I am from a country that has introduced minimum pricing for alcohol, I should not say that.
I am very proud that in Scotland I benefited from a free legal education. That was back in the 1980s, but law students in Scotland still benefit from the fact that there are no tuition fees there. It makes law more readily accessible to people from poorer backgrounds, although there is a lot of work to be done on that. I want to come on to discuss what my profession is doing, in the Faculty of Advocates and the Law Society of Scotland, to encourage people from more diverse backgrounds to enter the profession. In Scotland, public legal education starts at an early age because the study of human rights is part of the curriculum for excellence in Scottish schools. It is part of the core element.