Lord Sumption

Jonathan Sumption QC, Lord Sumption, 70, retired from the bench in December last year. He said that the case of Charlie Gard indicated how the system curbed personal choices.

Charlie, an 11-month old baby, suffered from a rare genetic disorder and died in 2017. Doctors had argued his parents’ wish to take him abroad for treatment was not in his best interests.

In the first of his Reith lectures, available on BBC Radio 4, Lord Sumption said the case showed how the law and judicial discretion had “cut down the area within which citizens take personal responsibility for their own destinations and those of their families”.

He added: “We are afraid to let people be guided by their own moral judgments in case they arrive at judgments which we do not agree with.”

He also criticised health and safety culture.

“Every time that a public authority is blamed for failing to prevent some tragedy, it will tend to respond by restricting the liberty of the public at large in order to deprive them of the opportunity to harm themselves. It’s the only sure way to deflect criticism.”

He added: “Every time that we criticise social workers for failing to stop some terrible instance of child abuse we are, in effect, inviting them to intervene more readily in the lives of innocent parents in case their children too may be at risk.”

Lord Sumption acknowledged that law could “enhance personal security”, but said that “its protection comes at a price and it can be a heavy one.

“We arrive, therefore, at one of the supreme ironies of modern life. We have expanded the range of individual rights, while at the same time drastically curtailing the scope of individual choice.”

Listen to Law’s Expanding Empire here