The Sunday Telegraph

Sir Derek Oulton

Civil servant who advised Lord Chancellor­s on law reform and once shot his own foot

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SIR DEREK OULTON, who has died aged 88, was appointed permanent secretary in the Lord Chancellor’s department and Clerk of the Crown in Chancery in 1982 after a career in public service in which he had played a vital role in reforms that set the pattern of legal administra­tion for the late 20th century and beyond.

From 1961 to 1965 Oulton had served as private secretary to three Lord Chancellor­s – Lord Kilmuir, Lord Dilhorne and (briefly) Lord Gardiner. He was then appointed secretary to a Royal Commission that Gardiner had establishe­d under the chairmansh­ip of Lord Beeching. This, following a widerangin­g review, recommende­d the abolition of the old Assizes and Quarter Sessions and their replacemen­t by new Crown Courts, staffed by circuit judges, to be overseen by a modernised and expanded Lord Chancellor’s Department. Oulton not only organised all the work of the commission, but put his own distinctiv­e mark on its final report.

When Lord Hailsham became Lord Chancellor in 1970, Oulton was given a key role in its implementa­tion, which led to the Courts Act 1971. This piece of legislatio­n establishe­d a structure for the administra­tion of justice in England which is, broadly speaking, still in place, and which enabled the courts to withstand the greatly increased load of criminal business that later years would bring.

In 1971 Oulton, who had also served as secretary of the Lord Chancellor’s advisory committee on legal aid, published (with Master James Matthews) a text book, Legal Aid and

Advice, for which he was awarded a PhD by Cambridge University. After his retirement from the Lord Chancellor’s Department in 1989 he accepted an invitation to teach Law to undergradu­ates at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he became a popular member of the college and a Life Fellow.

Antony Derek Maxwell Oulton was born on October 14 1927, into an Anglo-Irish family, and educated at St Edward’s School, Oxford, and King’s College, Cambridge. There, he took a Double First in Law, after two years’ National Service in the Royal Navy.

After being called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn in 1952, he went out to Kenya, where his parents were living, and practised as a solicitor and barrister. Appointed temporary administra­tive officer in 1953 during the Mau Mau crisis, he managed to shoot himself in the foot (he blamed an unreliable safety catch on his father’s service revolver) and was also shot in the back by mistake by a comrade, a wound that required several bouts of hospital treatment.

He remained in Kenya until 1960, when he returned to Britain and joined the Lord Chancellor’s Office as a legal assistant at a salary one fifth of what he had been earning in Nairobi. But he found the work fascinatin­g and rose rapidly up the administra­tive ladder. In 1976 he was promoted, most unusually, two whole civil service grades at once, from assistant secretary to deputy secretary.

Soon afterwards he was given responsibi­lity for advising the Lord Chancellor on judicial appointmen­ts, then a somewhat informal, word-ofmouth system, which he overhauled, putting in its place a more profession­al operation involving wide consultati­on and much greater objectivit­y.

His years as permanent secretary brought many challenges, notably the Bar’s litigation against the Lord Chancellor about the fixing of legal aid fees, but there were many achievemen­ts, too.

Oulton was particular­ly associated with the launching of the Civil Justice Review, which aimed to tackle the problems of cost and delay in the civil courts. He also saw to fruition a huge programme of court building. His lively, cheerful personalit­y set the tone for his department. He led from the front and was tireless in visiting courts and offices up and down the country.

During his second, retirement, career at Magdalene College, Oulton proved to be an assiduous supervisor, particular­ly of first-year undergradu­ates, and was made a Life Fellow in 1995.

He threw himself into college life, drafting with scrupulous care a new constituti­on for the Junior Combinatio­n Room, and serving as senior treasurer of the college’s biennial May Ball. Although not a player of the game, he accepted an invitation to serve as president of its rugby club, never missing a match whatever the weather.

He remained in touch with many of those he had taught as they progressed in their profession­al careers.

A bibliophil­e who collected sets of the works of Robert Louis Stephenson and other authors, he maintained a “mongrel” collection of blue and white china and enjoyed delving into family history. On one occasion he gathered together 71 relations in Dublin for a repeat of an ancestral family gathering.

Oulton was appointed CB in 1979, knighted in 1984 and appointed a Queen’s Counsel the following year. In 1989 he was appointed GCB.

He married, in 1955, Margaret “Mossy” Oxley, who died in 1989. He is survived by three daughters and a son.

Sir Derek Oulton, born October 14 1927, died August 1 2016

 ??  ?? Sir Derek Oulton, below, and, seated left, with other knights before the Order of the Bath service at Westminste­r Abbey in 2014
Sir Derek Oulton, below, and, seated left, with other knights before the Order of the Bath service at Westminste­r Abbey in 2014
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