Email
He is the court of appeal judge who showed too much personality to advance to the very summit of the judiciary; the question is whether Sir Alan Moses can make the transition from the confines of the courtroom to the regulating of Britain's raucous press.
Since he was selected two weeks ago as inaugural chair of the new press regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), fellow judges and lawyers have queued up to speak of his urbanity and intelligence.
He is evidently blessed with less judicially stereotypical tendencies too, such as an engaging sense of humour, a maverick streak and even occasional signs of an anti-establishment spirit. Perhaps Lord Justice Hooper had these characteristics in mind when he said of Moses's Ipso chairmanship: "Some people thought this was a poisoned chalice, but if anyone can drink from it without being poisoned, it's [Moses]."
Hooper was referring to the critics of the publishing industry's creation of Ipso. They include Hacked Off, the campaigning group that represents the victims of press misbehaviour, plus MPs who believe a regulator must seek recognition under a new royal charter.
Ipso's advocates have made it clear that they will not do so. The publishers' decision to defy parliament by setting up Ipso was the culmination of years of often bitter controversy in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal and the subsequent inquiry into press standards and ethics by another senior judge, Sir Brian Leveson.
Ipso, which is to replace the discredited Press Complaints Commission (PCC) from next month, is sure to be under the media spotlight – and Moses will come under intense public scrutiny.
Judges rarely, if ever, give media interviews about their rulings. By contrast, press regulators cannot hide. So Moses will find himself in unfamiliar territory in defending Ipso decisions on the Today programme or Newsnight.
If the Guardian's soundings in the legal community about Moses are correct, however, then he appears to have the necessary qualities to deal with a challenge he is said to relish.
Lord Lester, a veteran reformer of defamation laws, welcomed his appointment as "quite brilliant," extolling him as "a fine judge" with "an engaging personality, bags of common sense and independence."
At 68, Moses is standing down from the court of appeal. The compulsory retirement age is 70. It is thought he realised that he would be unable to climb further to the supreme court. Some legal observers believe his style of delivery, his love of legal parodies and a penchant for humorous sallies may have blocked promotion.
"He was looking for a new role," said a colleague at his former chambers in Grays Inn who regards Moses as a strong-minded maverick, having often demonstrated an independence of mind.
He continued: "He's tough-minded, independent and full of enthusiasm – not a legal radical, but energetic, mercurial and clever. He is certainly not anyone else's man and not establishment-minded."
That was illustrated in an after-dinner speech last summer to the London Criminal Courts Solicitors' Association.
Moses launched a thinly disguised attack on the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, by deriding government plans to cut legal aid. He entertained the audience by claiming he had submitted an essay applying for high judicial office titled: "What I want to do when I am Lord Chief Justice, by Alan Moses, aged 67½, court 63, RCJ [Royal Courts of Justice]".
He employed irony when challenging the factual basis for Grayling's decision: "I shall not fall into the trap of trying to challenge [Grayling's] figures or pointing out that far from spiralling upwards, the costs and expense of legal aid are spiralling downwards."
Then he proposed some mischievous alternatives to legal aid cost-cutting. Sponsorship, he suggested, might save the day. "A bit of branding will not surely come amiss," he said. "L'Oréal Judges … because you're worth it, or at least worth seven years … Costa Baristas or Costa Judges … Silk Cut Judges … and what about Virgin Judges?" He concluded: "Do you know, I don't think I've got the job".
Even in court, Moses indulged in occasional bouts of wit. At the conclusion of a judgment in a case involving mobile phone and texting charges, he praised the barristers with a text-speak comment: "To them I hope it is not inappropriate 2 xpress thnx 4 all thr gr8 wrk."
Educated privately at Bryanston school in Dorset followed by University College, Oxford, Moses was called to the bar in 1968 and became a QC in 1990.
His father worked as chief solicitor for the Inland Revenue; once his father retired, Moses put an inherited knowledge of tax law to good use by becoming junior counsel to the organisation.
That expertise led to Customs and Excise selecting him as prosecuting counsel in the notorious Matrix Churchill case – over exports of technology with military potential – which collapsed in 1992. Moses told the subsequent Scott inquiry he would have abandoned the prosecution had he known at the time about damning evidence which revealed that Whitehall officials had previously encouraged exports to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime.
In 1996, Moses became a high court judge. Among the trials he presided over was that of the MI5 officer David Shayler, who was convicted of passing classified information to the press in breach of the Official Secrets Act. He was sentenced to six months in prison.
A colleague recalled Moses attending a reception some years later that was hosted by the human rights group Liberty at which Shayler was present. Moses remarked that he was glad he was short since the former spy was unlikely to spot him in the crowd.
Moses won praise for his sensitive handling of the 2003 trial of the man who murdered the Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Two years later he became Lord Justice Moses on joining the court of appeal. But a judge who sat with him in the appeal court observed: "He is not a man for tick-box exercises. He's someone who thinks laterally. If anyone is going to make this [Ipso] job a success, it will be him.
"He has a wonderful sense of humour and is very bright. Some would say he was too iconoclastic but he's very careful in drafting even his after dinner speeches."
The judge also made an oblique reference to Moses's desire to move on from the judiciary: "He will be happier doing this [Ipso] job."
Outside the law, Moses has diverse interests: he sings in a choir, likes hill-walking, spent six years on the Royal Academy council and – in an example of his sense of humour – claims membership of an Italian club, the Union Socialista La Serra.
That entry in Who's Who is, according to one of his friends, an attempt to acquire Marxist credentials. In fact, La Serra is a small fishing village in Liguria. On his first visit, accompanied by one of his wife's friends, the late Italian designer and architect, Vico Magestretti, he was told that to gain entry to the tiny outdoor restaurant overlooking the Bay of La Spezia he must join the Union Socialista.
The friend says it is the only club to which Moses has ever belonged and the only one he has been asked to join.
Now he must deal with one of the most exclusive clubs of all – the publishers and editors who have secured his services to launch Ipso.
Several reached by the Guardian, after reiterating that he has had an unblemished record as a judge, underline his reputation for independence. "Some of the press might not like it," said one editor who has met him. "He is toughly independent."
It was noticeable that Moses also used the i word in his bullish statement on accepting the Ipso chair: "To those who have voiced doubts as to the ability of Ipso to meet the demands of independent regulation, I say that I have spent over 40 years pursuing the profession of barrister and judge whose hallmarks are independent action and independent judgment. I do not intend to do away with that independence now."
Moses was subjected to what is understood to have been a rigorous interview for the Ipso post, described by one of the participants as "a robust going-over that took him somewhat by surprise."
The members of the appointments panel considered it to be a necessary test to gauge how Moses might cope with media questioning.
Their central concern was, of course, about his ability to deal with the problems of a regulation process that some of his PCC predecessors found demanding. But his former Grays Inn colleague is confident Moses will rise to the occasion: "He will listen and get the difficult balancing act."
Potted profile
Born 29 November 1945
Age 68
Career Called to the Bar in 1968. Junior counsel to Inland Revenue. Appointed QC 1990. High court judge 1996-2005. Lord Justice of Appeal 2005-2014. Chairman, Independent Press Standards Organisation, April 2014
High point Appointment to court of appeal
Low point Collapse of his Matrix Churchill prosecution in 1992
What he says "I shall speak to you at length … There will be few intervals; about once every 1∫ hours if you are lucky, or 2 hours" – parodying judges' summing up speeches
What they say "He's tough-minded, independent and full of enthusiasm – not a legal radical, but energetic, mercurial and clever," according to a former chambers colleague
;