Ministers must end their attacks on lawyers

The undersigned are practising barristers (some working for central and local government), solicitors, legal academics and retired judges.

We are all deeply concerned at recent attacks, made by the home secretary and echoed by the prime minister, on lawyers seeking to hold the government to the law.

Such attacks endanger not only the personal safety of lawyers and others working for the justice system, as has recently been vividly seen; they undermine the rule of law which ministers and lawyers alike are duty bound to uphold.

We invite both the home secretary and the prime minister to behave honourably by apologising for their display of hostility, and to refrain from such attacks in the future.

Lawrence Collins Retired justice of the supreme court, John Dyson Retired justice of the supreme court and former master of the rolls, Robert Walker Retired justice of the supreme court, Richard Buxton Retired lord justice of appeal, Anthony Hooper Retired lord justice of appeal, David Keene Retired lord justice of appeal, Alan Moses Retired lord justice of appeal, Stephen Sedley Retired lord justice of appeal, Theodore Huckle Former counsel general for Wales, Ken Macdonald Former director of public prosecutions, and warden of Wadham College, University of Oxford, Helen Mountfield Principal of Mansfield College, University of Oxford and 791 others