A Lawyer Writes

A senior official from the Ministry of Defence will be called before an appeal judge on Friday to explain why 97 million unique records were not disclosed to the Afghanistan inquiry. The material had not been considered or reviewed by the ministry when it responded to requests for disclosure over the past three years.

We are not living in an era of change but a change of era, writes Professor Richard Susskind in the 30th anniversary edition of his classic book on the future of law. Describing the emergence of artificial general intelligence — AGI — as the single most significant technological advance in the history of humanity, he tells me we could rapidly, see the development of systems “that are unfathomably more capable than us”.

How can we harness the benefits of artificial intelligence “with safety at its heart”, the King asked yesterday. And how can we build international cooperation to achieve this “so no nation is left behind but the human race is left in place?” King Charles had invited leaders of major technology companies — including Nvidia, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic — for a discussion with ministers and thought leaders about the future deployment of AI technologies.

Eighty years after Sir Winston Churchill said that a Council of Europe should be established to save the continent from “final doom”, the council’s secretary general has warned its 46 members states — including the UK — that the military weapons they are building today will outlast the governments that had commissioned them. Alain Berset, speaking at the University of Zurich last night “Governments change,” said Alain Berset.

Government plans to reduce the availability of jury trial in England and Wales are likely to be amended, the justice secretary hinted yesterday. Asked about the Courts and Tribunals Bill, Alex Norris told the shadow justice secretary that “legislation very rarely looks the same at the beginning of the process as it does at the end”. But far from setting out his plans, Norris gave the impression that he was not sure how far to go.

Catherine Atkinson MP has been elected to chair the influential House of Commons justice committee. She replaces Andy Slaughter MP, who is now solicitor general. Atkinson was a junior minister at the Ministry of Justice for just over two months at the end of the Starmer government this summer. She was brought in to replace Alex Davies-Jones MP, who had resigned. Andy Burnham sacked Atkinson and brought back Davies-Jones.

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -0:25 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. New legislation is needed to regulate the use of artificial intelligence, a parliamentary committee recommends today. The joint committee on human rights says the law should prohibit the development and provision of very powerful AI systems known as artificial general intelligence and artificial superintelligence.

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -0:33 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Who’s to blame for the Post Office scandal that saw innocent postmasters sent to prison for crimes which never happened? The lawyers accused of keeping Post Office executives in the dark? Or the Post Office executives accused of setting up lawyers to fail? Why didn’t the regulators step in? Are they doing enough now?

Victims of crime would have a greater say in whether a prosecution is in the public interest under a new charging code to be issued for consultation by the Crown Prosecution Service today. The current edition of the Code for Crown Prosecutors says that the circumstances of the victim are “highly relevant”: the more vulnerable the victim, the more likely it is that a prosecution will be required.

An employment judge who engaged in inappropriate sexualised behaviour towards multiple female staff members over an extended period would have lost his job if he had not retired from office. The former judge, named by the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office as Christopher Gaskell, was found by a more senior judge to have committed gross misconduct.