Claims the UK has two-tier justice are “disgusting” and “wrong”, the attorney general has said.
In his first major interview, Lord Hermer told the BBC that politicians using the phrase needed to think about the “dangers” they were posing to the UK’s “essential institutions”.
Lord Hermer, who is the government’s chief legal adviser, also said he was “untroubled” by criticism of his work as a barrister before entering politics.
Accusations that the UK operates a two-tier justice system emerged following the riots in the summer of 2024, with some arguing that the rioters were treated unduly harshly by police and the courts.
In an interview for a BBC Radio 4 documentary, Starmer’s Stormy Year, Lord Hermer said: “What some people were seeking to do, bringing up ‘two-tier’, was to make a comparison with the way that people were being treated for trying to kill police officers – and I want to reiterate that, kill police officers – with the response to protests on the streets of London.
“You can have views as to whether they’re right protests or wrong protests, but they were not producing violence that you could even begin legitimately to compare to what was going on [during] the riots.
“That’s where the two-tier comes from.”
He rejected the label, and said it was “frankly disgusting” to draw comparisons between police officers trying to defend themselves and communities, and protests or demonstrations.
“I think it’s offensive to our police. It’s offensive to our crown prosecutors who are trying to apply the law in the best faith. It is offensive to the courts, where independent judges are applying the law to reach the right sentences.
“We don’t have a two-tiered justice system. We have one justice system, that is an independent justice system…and I think we all need to get behind it, not seek to undermine it.”
In a way that was not immediately obvious during the riots, the claim that Britain operates “two-tier” justice has in the months since become one of the most highly-charged arguments against the prime minister from the right, adopted at times by the Conservatives as well as Reform UK.
Those levelling the accusation argue that the rioters were treated more harshly than some protesters have been, and that the government’s decisions to use tough sentences to dissuade the rioting sits uneasily alongside letting more prisoners out early to ease an overcrowding crisis.
Lord Hermer had no political or public profile before his unexpected appointment to the cabinet as attorney general last year.
He had been friends with Sir Keir Starmer since 1996 when they worked at the same barristers’ chambers.
Yet he has become one of the most controversial members of the government, in part because of the clients he represented as a human rights lawyer.
Conservative shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has urged the prime minister to sack Hermer, saying earlier this month: “Gerry Adams. Shamima Begum. Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man. Lord Hermer has spent much of his life defending those who hate Britain.”
Responding to that criticism, Lord Hermer said: “The attacks on me are based on the fact that I represented some clients – obviously over 30 years, I represented thousands of clients. But the attacks are [that] I represented some individuals with reprehensible political views.
“It’s a bit like attacking a journalist for the person that they’re interviewing or a doctor for the nature of their patient. Lawyers are professionally obliged to represent those who come to them for cases.
“You can’t say no because you don’t like someone’s politics. The whole justice system falls apart if you do that. It’s really important. So on a kind of political level, I am untroubled by attacks on that.”
He added: “Frankly, it tickles most of my family and friends that I’m being portrayed as some huge lefty, because that’s not who I am. I’m progressive, and I’m deeply pragmatic in my politics.”