Edward’s principle areas of practice are Defamation & Media Law; Financial Crime: Corporates; International & Human Rights Law; Public Law and Judicial Review.
Edward is a highly experienced silk in England & Wales and in Northern Ireland whose practice includes corporate advisory and financial services work, corporate crime, public law and international human rights as well as defamation, privacy, confidence, malicious falsehood, contempt and related media law cases. His extensive experience in practice is underpinned by a parallel career in politics and as one of the Government’s two Law Officers: he served as an MP from 1992 until 2017 and was HM Solicitor General from 2010 to 2012. He is now in the House of Lords. Edward advises and acts for companies and individuals whose rights have been adversely affected by foreign governments and agencies, including, for example, by asset seizures, imprisonment, extradition applications and Interpol Red Notices, as well as for overseas governments and agencies who are seeking to comply with international standards and the rule of law. He is regularly consulted by NGOs and charitable organisations. In the media law sphere, Edward acts for individual and corporate claimants, both within England & Wales and Northern Ireland and abroad, and for individual defendants and corporate defendants from the publishing, internet and broadcasting world.
Called to the Bar 1976, Middle Temple; QC 1995; Bencher 2001. MP for Harborough 1992-2017; Knighted 2012; Privy Counsellor 2015; Peerage 2018.
Solicitor General 2010-12; Shadow Attorney General 1999-2001 and 2009-10; Shadow Home Office & Justice Minister 2006-09; Shadow Minister, Lord Chancellor’s Dept 1997-99; Called to the Northern Ireland Bar 2010. Developed Deferred Prosecution Agreements (Section 45 and Schedule 17 of The Crime and Courts Act 2013) for use in cases of corporate bribery, money laundering and other economic crimes. He appeared for the Serious Fraud Office in two of the DPAs so far approved by the Court, the first one, Standard Bank, in 2014, and the then-largest, Rolls-Royce, in 2017.
Publications:
Contributing author to Lissack & Horlick on Bribery, 2nd Edition (2014) & 3rd Edition (2020); Halsbury’s Laws of England, Telecommunications and broadcasting (Vol. 45), 4th Edition (1985). Report on Abuses of Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Turkey (jointly with Lord Woolf, Sir Jeffrey Jowell QC and Sarah Palin), 2015.
Edward has written widely on defamation, media law, human rights, jury trial and other legal and related public policy issues, and been published in The Times, The Independent and the legal press. He appears regularly on television and radio.
Member of the Prosecution Counsel Panel for the Serious Fraud Office 2017-2021.
MA Hons (Oxon)