Attorney General John Jeremie says that concerns raised by the president of the new Supreme Court in the United Kingdom that too much time is wasted by judges serving on the Privy Council in London on cases from Commonwealth countries, including Trinidad and Tobago, prove the need for our own final court of appeal.

Jeremie was responding to comments made by the UK Supreme Court president Lord Nicholas Phillips in an interview published by the Financial Times in London that ’in an ideal world’ former Commonwealth countries would stop using the Privy Council in England and set up their own final courts of appeal instead.

’I feel deeply embarrassed by these comments. The position of the Government is that we should move with alacrity to our own indigenous final court-the Caribbean Court of Justice. Self-respect and independence demands nothing less,’ Jeremie said in a statement issued by the Attorney General Ministry’s public relations unit that was also issued to the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) last week.

Jeremie reinforced the position of the Prime Minister Patrick Manning administration that the CCJ should be this country’s final court of appeal with regard to criminal and civil matters and not only in trade matters arising out of the Caricom Single Market (CSM), as is the situation today.

Any replacement of the Privy Council by the CCJ in this regard must be done through an act of Parliament that would amend the Constitution to allow this to occur.

Such an act would require the support of the Opposition party which has not supported the Government’s CCJ bill even though while the Basdeo Panday administration was in office from 1995 to 2001, it had signed the Caricom treaty authorising the establishment of the CCJ.

Panday is on record as saying ’ we have no confidence in the final court of appeal in our country.’