Nottingham North and Kimberley MP and former Unison area organiser Alex Norris replaced David Lammy as Lord Chancellor this week, while Ellie Reeves, jumped from Solicitor-General to Attorney General, replacing Lord Hermer.
Norris has no legal qualifications or background, although he has experience of employment law through his trade union work. He also served as Home Office minister for border security and asylum since 2025, with responsibility for the tricky brief of reducing small boat arrivals and immigration organised crime.
Born in Altrincham, he studied politics and history at Nottingham University, spending six years as a member of Nottingham City Council before entering Parliament in 2017.
Former Solicitor General Ellie Reeves, MP for Lewisham West and East Dulwich, has been appointed Attorney-General, replacing Lord Hermer. Reeves, a barrister, spent more than a decade as an employment lawyer at London firm OH Parsons and national firm Thompsons Solicitors.
Bar Council chair, Kirsty Brimelow KC congratulated Norris, immediately tweeting a photo of him visiting Nottingham Crown Court in April, noting he had ‘listened to barristers in the robing room’ and was shown the court’s disrepair.
Brimelow later called on Norris ‘to apply the evidence that reducing the Crown Court backlog does not require reducing jury trials, and to focus instead on measures that actually will deliver swifter justice.
‘Some of those measures already are having effect—such as opening up empty courtrooms and targeted listing.’
Brimelow highlighted that, after 14 years of cuts, ‘despite some modest increases, the Ministry of Justice budget is set no higher in 2025-2026 than it was 20 years ago’. She said: ‘Significant investment in supporting victims to court is undermined if they are supported to a hearing that then is adjourned due to lack of barristers, failed technology, failed delivery of people to court from custody or collapsed infrastructure.’
She also called on the Burnham government to ensure UK legal services are included in free trade agreements, particularly in relation to dispute resolution.
