Britain used to operate around a simple truth: matters of justice, order and borders are related, but they are not the same. Recently, though, we have blurred those distinctions — creating vast Whitehall departments that are asked to do too much, and therefore do nothing particularly well. The results are obvious to anyone who deals with the courts, the prisons, or the immigration system: delay, drift and a steady erosion of public confidence.
The answer is to return first principles. That means re-establishing the Ministry of Justice as a more traditional Lord Chancellor’s Office, refocused on the constitution, the courts, and the rule of law; reorganising the Home Office around its core purpose of law and order and national security, including prisons; and creating a new, dedicated department with a laser focus on legal and illegal immigration.
The Ministry of Justice, as currently constituted, is a creature not of constitutional logic but of administrative convenience. Since its creation in 2007, it has combined responsibility for courts, tribunals, legal aid, prisons, probation, constitutional affairs, and human rights. The Lord Chancellor, once the senior guardian of judicial independence and the integrity of the legal system, is now routinely overwhelmed by operational crises elsewhere in the department.
This matters. Court backlogs remain stubbornly high, judicial morale is low, the physical estate of our courts is in an alarming state, and the digital reform programme has too often been driven by cost rather than justice. Constitutional issues, meanwhile, are handled episodically, rather than as part of a coherent strategy to uphold the rule of law.
A reconstituted Lord Chancellor’s Office would restore clarity of purpose, with a central mission to safeguard the constitution, ensure the effective functioning of the courts and tribunals, and protect judicial independence. That would entail concentrating resources on court capacity, judicial recruitment and retention, and the efficient administration of justice. It would also mean giving constitutional stewardship the institutional weight it deserves, rather than treating it as an adjunct to prison management or probation reform.
Prisons, though, clearly belong in the realm of law and order. Their purpose is the enforcement of criminal justice and the protection of the public. Housing them within a justice department that is meant to be a constitutional guardian has always been dubious. The operational pressures of overcrowding, staffing shortages and safety failures inevitably dominate the agenda, crowding out the quieter but no less vital work of maintaining a functioning legal system.
This leads naturally to the second reform: reorganising the Home Office. The Home Office’s historic role was the maintenance of the King’s peace — law, order and security at home. Over time, that mission has been diluted by the sheer scale and complexity of immigration policy. The result is a department that has to try — and sometimes fail — to juggle tackling serious crime, responding to terrorism, and overseeing an immigration system under intense political and operational strain.
Refocusing the Home Office on law and order and national security would sharpen accountability. Policing, counter-terrorism, serious organised crime, prisons, and probation would sit within a single departmental framework, allowing for a more coherent approach to public protection. Decisions about prison capacity and offender management could be taken alongside, rather than in isolation from, broader crime and security considerations.
Importantly, this would also allow ministers to speak honestly to the public about trade-offs. If we want tougher sentencing, we must provide the prison places to support it. If we want safer streets, we must align policing resources, criminal law, and prison policy. A Home Office dedicated to these objectives would be better placed to deliver them than the current, overstretched settlement.
The third pillar of reform is the most politically sensitive, but perhaps the most essential: the creation of a new department for immigration. Immigration policy has become one of the defining issues of modern British politics, yet it is still treated as one portfolio among many within the Home Office. This is terribly short-sighted.
A dedicated immigration department would have one overriding objective: to design and operate an immigration system that is firm, fair and effective. That means controlling borders, tackling illegal entry and overstaying, and running a legal migration system that works for the economy and commands public consent. At present, these tasks are too often subordinated to competing Home Office priorities, or lost in a maze of internal structures.
Such a department would not operate in a vacuum. There would of course be overlap with national security, particularly where immigration routes are exploited by organised crime or hostile actors. That overlap should be managed through formal structures for cooperation, intelligence-sharing, and joint operations with the Home Office. Separation need not mean silos; indeed, clarity of responsibility often improves cooperation rather than hindering it.
Critics might argue that Whitehall reorganisation is a distraction from delivery. It would be correct to warn against cosmetic change. But this is not about moving boxes on an organogram for the sake of it. It is about aligning institutions with purpose. When departments are asked to pursue an excess of — often conflicting — objectives, failure becomes almost inevitable.
The constitutional role of the Lord Chancellor matters. Law and order matters. Border control matters. Each deserves focused leadership, clear accountability and properly aligned resources, yet we have a bleak inversion of this ideal: diffuse responsibility, blurred priorities, and a growing sense that no one is fully in charge.
The architecture of government shapes the outcomes it can deliver
Restructuring alone will not fix the courts backlog, restore confidence in sentencing or resolve the pressures on the immigration system. Yet without meaningful reorganisation, those problems will persist, however many new policies are announced. The architecture of government shapes the outcomes it can deliver.
A country that takes the rule of law seriously should have a justice department worthy of the name. A country that demands order and security should have a Home Office focused on providing it. A country that wants control of its borders should be honest enough to create a department whose sole job is to achieve that goal. This, quite simply, is constitutional common sense.
