SENIOR LAW LORD WANTS 'POT' TO BE LEGAL

The judge in Britain's highest court called yesterday for cannabis to
be legalised, putting himself in direct conflict with government
policy.

Lord Bingham, the senior law lord, said he would legalise the drug,
adding: "It is stupid having a law which isn't doing what it is there
for."

In an interview in the Spectator, he described the English criminal
justice system, which ministers want to make tougher, as already one
of the most punitive in the world.

He told the magazine's editor, Boris Johnson: "Everybody thinks our
system is becoming soft and wimpish. In point of fact, it is one of
the most punitive systems in the world - perhaps not as much as the
American.

"It's the perception of crime, not the reality. Take an average
evening's telly viewing; it's all about old women being beaten to
death and rapes on the towpath." Lord Bingham, a former lord chief
justice, repeated his desire to set up a US style supreme court,
removing the top judges from the House of Lords.

"We ought to be seen for what we are, which is judges," he said,
adding that virtually none of the law lords took part in the debates.
"The House of Lords should not have non-playing members." The lord
chancellor, Lord Irvine, insists that a supreme court would be hard
to house, because it would need an imposing building. But Lord
Bingham, asked where he would like the supreme court to be, replied:
"The inland revenue occupies two wings of Somerset House - why not
throw them out of there? And what is going on at the Scottish Office
at the moment?"

When asked whether the judges might miss "the best club in London,
the bars, the libraries", Lord Bingham replied: "I don't speak for a
united college," implying that some would be loth to relinquish their
peerages. But speaking for himself, "I don't give a fuck whether
we're peers or not."