If you thought your Sunday was a sweaty one, try being Alex Chalk. A jailbreak was never going to make for a chilled week for the man in charge of the country’s prisons, but the justice secretary and MP for Cheltenham found himself facing some particularly fierce grillings as he battled his way through the weekend media rounds.
Chalk, 47 — a qualified barrister, MP since 2015 and Solicitor General from 2021 to 2022 — was appointed as justice minister and Lord Chancellor in April after various stints in the justice and defence departments. When he took over from Dominic Raab in the spring, the Law Society warned that Chalk was inheriting a “crisis” in the British justice system, with “worsening backlogs, legal aid on the point of collapse, crumbling courts and a shortage of judges and court staff”.
