Sir Stephen Laws

Senior Fellow, Judicial Power Project

Sir Stephen Laws KCB QC (Hon) is a Senior Research Fellow on Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power Project. He was First Parliamentary Counsel from 2006-12. As such, he was the Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office responsible for the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel (an office in which he had served as a legislative drafter since 1976), for the offices of the Government Business Managers in both Houses and for constitutional advice to the centre of Government. After he retired in 2012, he was a member of the McKay Commission on the consequences of devolution for the House of Commons and subsequently a member of the advisory panel for Lord Strathclyde’s review of secondary legislation and the primacy of the House of Commons. In 2020 he was appointed to serve on the panel of the Government commissioned Independent Human Rights Act Review (IHRAR). He writes on constitutional and legal matters. He is a Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Kent Law School.