Lord McCluskey to be honoured with lifetime achievement award tonight

John McCluskey, Lord McCluskey, 87, is to be given the lifetime achievement award at the Scottish Legal Awards in Edinburgh tonight.

The peer retired from the House of Lords last month due to declining health.

Speaking to The Times, Lord McCluskey said he considers his lifetime achievement to be helping safeguard the independence of the judiciary from a provision of the Scotland Bill which would have allowed Parliament to remove judges.

He said: “I was horrified at the thought that the political establishment should be entitled to remove judges on a simple majority vote. I fought it from start to finish and ultimately persuaded a majority of the House of Lords to accept my proposal that the removal of the judge could only be justified by an independent, non-political body led by a privy councillor. That became law and I believe it safeguarded the independence of the judiciary and prevented it being destroyed in a way which would have made us a mockery in the civilised world.”

Lord McCluskey retired from the bench in 2004 but then conducted two high-profile inquiries, firstly on the relationship between Scotland’s courts and the UK Supreme Court. He concluded that only those cases of “general public importance” should be taken to the Supreme Court. “The UK and Scottish governments accepted entirely what we decided, which was very satisfactory,” he said.

The second inquiry, the “Scottish Leveson” prompted an outcry after Lord McCluskey suggested politicians establish a media watchdog. While some saw it as an attempt to enforce “political control” he still thinks the inquiry got it right.

Now that Article 50 has been triggered, Lord McCluskey said he is not optimistic in the short-term but added: “My sense is that the maturity of our political and legal systems is such that we will eventually work out solutions to all these problems.”