Lord Neuberger introducing Leducate

We were very lucky to have our patron, Lord Neuberger at our Launch event in June 2019. Here is the full transcript of his eloquent introduction.

“I think that we live in an increasingly complex world and an increasingly unfair world, and it’s something that struck me as I went through my legal career. I must admit I came from a privileged background. I’m fortunate; I know about the law—I hope—now. I think that the fact that the world is increasingly complex and increasingly unfair means that an organisation such as Leducate is to be congratulated and supported and admired, and when you listen to what has been said to about the way they intend to proceed, you have to be more than admiring; it is remarkable and should be strongly supported. I don’t think I’m doing them a favour by being here, I think they’re doing me an honour by involving me.

What do I mean by increasingly unfair, increasingly complex? Well, I think the world is increasingly complex in two obvious relevant ways. One is there are more and more rules, regulations, more and more paper, whether you look at the criminal law, the civil law, whether you look at housing regulations, whether you look at social security regulations, whether you look at what councils require of you, whether you look at criminal law; it is all very complicated, and increasingly so. And it seems to me, ironically, that the more you have laws dealing with ordinary people with small problems on the grand scheme of things, but very important to them—small in the grand scheme of things, the more complex the law seems to be. And at the same time the world is more complicated because it’s so easy to get so much information on your screen in a way that it wasn’t before, just deciding what is accurate and inaccurate, and deciding what you want to read, and what is good guidance and what is bad guidance is extremely difficult. That means that people have to be educated to understand what their rights and applications are. It means they have to be able to detect, or have a good chance of detecting, what’s fake news, what’s fake advice, what’s good news, what’s good advice. I use fake news in the real sense, not in the Trump sense.

It is ironic that the world at the time of getting has got more complex but it’s also getting more unfair. It has got unfair in two relevant ways. One is in terms of the haves and the have-nots. And the other is in the sense of access to legal advice and legal recommendation. In both areas, things are, if not getting worse, certainly not getting much better. If you come from a fortunate background like I did, your chances of understanding the law or being able to get access to legal advice are pretty good. If you come from a less privileged background, I’m afraid that with legal aid cuts, with even Citizens’ Advice Bureaus and Legal Aid Centres finding it difficult to make ends meet, it is disgracefully difficult to get legal advice. Now people like me and others have said what they feel about it in public to the government, but it does not look very promising that we are going to get much in the way of money, extra money for legal aid and so on.

Now in those circumstances, it seems to me that you add a complexity to the unfairness. The need to educate people at school is absolutely vital when it comes to legal matters when it comes to the sorts of issues that Leducate has identified and is seeking to get children to understand. And it seems to me that the younger you can get them, the better. Because there’s another dimension to this. The law generally stands for justice, and if we don’t stand up for fair treatment for people, giving them the opportunity to understand their rights and obligations, then nobody’s going to do it. The law stands for justice.

But there’s another point here too that’s been discussed with you when we started, and that is that you will encourage some people who would not have thought of becoming lawyers to become lawyers. Now we all know that the proportion of women judges, the proportion of women and ethnic minority judges, the proportion of women and ethnic minorities in senior positions in the law is not what it should be. But in many respects, things are getting better, although very slowly and they should get better a lot faster. But the real deficit and the much more difficult deficit even to know how to deal with is people from poorer backgrounds coming into the law.

And what’s so magnificent about Leducate is not merely that you’re teaching people about the law and making them interested in law who otherwise may have had no opportunity to think of it, but you’re actually getting them to debate and do things. And involving people in discussing things is so much more important than just talking to them (which is what I’ve been doing to you). Getting them to say things, just to end, it occurred to me when I was hearing just now about the fact that children would be encouraged to debate, that why do we have—why do judges have to write judgments? And the answer is that if you listen to a case and decide what you think is right, it is not nearly as good as writing out your reasons as to why you think it’s right. And the frightening thing for me—well, certainly when I became a judge; I got used to it as time went on—is that when I came to write my judgments, I often thought I was going to go one way, and by the time you’ve written out what you think and why, you realise that actually you should be going the other way. And writing things out means that you actually understand them. And by standing up and having to argue about cases and argue about propositions and argue about global warming and how you deal with climate change; those sort of issues, and that sort of action, will teach children a terrific amount, and it will encourage them to think and raise their sights to a job which will benefit them.

And of course, finally, it’s not merely benefiting individuals that Leducate will do, it’s benefiting as a result society as a whole. And in what may be becoming a more populist age, that is very important as well. So I could not be more impressed with what Leducate is doing. I thank everybody here for supporting them and I hope they have a long and successful career and maybe we will remember this as an important event in the history of this country.”

Lord Neuberger, Middle Temple, 5th June 2019