THE role of Solicitor General can be traced back almost half a millennium and is arguably the personification – along with other ancient titles like Bailiff and Jurat – of the Island’s unusual constitutional relationship.
One of four Crown Officers, the ‘SG’ is appointed not by the government, States or any other local body, but by the Sovereign him or herself, emphasising that Jersey isn’t a territory, colony or vassal of the UK but a dependency of the Crown.
It is a relationship that is poorly understood in many quarters and has been significantly tested in recent years, mainly due to the UK’s decision in 2016 to leave the European Union. The repercussions of that decision are still being felt today, as anyone with ‘settled status’ wishing to return to the Island will testify.
It is fitting, therefore, that the recently sworn-in latest SG, Victoria Bell KC, has particularly expertise in constitutional law, public international trade law, financial services, sanctions and maritime and intellectual property.
With Jersey seeking to leverage its near-sovereign status to grow its economy, particularly in financial services, it may be a case of ‘cometh the hour, cometh the woman’, with Miss Bell being only the second female to become SG.
She said: “Having been a member of the Law Officers’ Department for many years I am well-acquainted with the enormity of the role, its diverse functions and its very specific place within our community.
“I’m taking on the position mindful of that and the tremendous honour and trust being placed upon me.
“Having had the privilege of working with Law Officers past and present it is rather an understatement if I observe that I have some extremely big shoes to fill. I am, however, dedicated and very ready to learn.”
The SG is, in essence, the second-in-command at the LOD after the Attorney General. The AG is the chief legal adviser to the States and Crown, and chief prosecutor; the SG, his fellow Law Officer and deputy.
However, back in the day – as Miss Bell referenced in her acceptance speech in the Royal Court – that wasn’t always the case, with some AGs falling out in spectacular fashion with SGs, with the former’s primacy eventually settled by the Privy Council in 1749.
Despite being appointed by Royal order, Miss Bell’s selection was far from a coronation, with several candidates and a rigorous process to go through.
So, what does Victoria Bell bring to the role?
“I think I bring a genuine interest in the law,” she said. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the law but not in a dry, abstract way but seeing it as the fascinating, creative, breathing subject it is.
“A lot of law is bound up with culture, history and custom; it is very much a living picture, with our laws reflecting what sort of society we want to live in. In many ways, the law is a measure of our aspirations.”
Miss Bell joined the LOD as an assistant legal adviser in 2009, which meant that she has experienced lots of different areas of its work over the past 17 years. Rising through its ranks to SG without time spent in Jersey’s private legal sector is relatively unusual, but Miss Bell sees that as a strength.
She said: “I initially joined the LOD to focus on EU law, particularly in light of the opening of the Channel Islands Brussels Office, and the idea was that I would go to Brussels to get experience on the EU coalface., as it were.
“I did that from the end of 2010 to the summer of 2011 and I loved it. After those six months, I continued with my EU law specialism but was also involved in some particular cases that broadened my repertoire. Within a year, I was made a legal adviser and then climbed through those bands until becoming a senior legal adviser in 2024.
“Within that period, I qualified as an Advocate in 2016.”
Coinciding with the year of that considerable achievement was a seismic political and economic event beyond Jersey’s control; one that was going to have a profound influence of Miss Bell’s professional life: the decision by the UK electorate on 23 June to leave the EU.
She said: “I had spent a lot of time looking at EU law and now faced the strange prospect of that law no longer having the same foothold that it had held before. There was no clarity on what that landscape might look like for Jersey, and my work very much touched on our relationship with the UK, the EU and other trading partners.
“That is how I got into international trade law: I had gained broad experience but this focused my mind on the specifics of our interests with our neighbours, including customs and fisheries.”
Brexit – for Miss Bell, Jersey, the UK, EU, everyone – was uncharted territory. No sovereign state had ever left the union. It was time for cool heads amid the political chaos and hubris of buses, Boris, borders, Brussels and Barnier.
She said: “The start point in these situations is always international law, of which EU law is one element, and basic legal principles. You then have a set of issues which you need to unpick and, from a legal angle, work out which of those principles are going to be the most important to solve those problems.”
Miss Bell was then a senior adviser in the LOD’s advice team, which covers all branches of government, allowing her to be involved in a broad range of issues, including financial services, sanctions and probate law.
She also got to grips with customary law, working on, inter alia (an adverb which lawyers love to use), the legal position of the coin hoard, and drafting the Island’s first Heritage Law.
“Again, I think that work has given me a nice springboard for being SG, because it has taught me agility and need to pick up new things quickly,” she said. “My baseline has always been broad and in the last 17 years, I’ve dipped my toes into lots of things, including litigation.
“I think it’s fair to say that I’ve never been a certain type of lawyer.”
Addressing the constitutional side of things, she added: “Lots of things make Jersey special but the fact we are a Crown dependency is certainly one of them. That’s because our identity is so bound up with the personal relationship that we have with the Sovereign which goes back to our Norman heritage.
“There is no other spoke to it; we have a personal relationship with the King, who just happens to have his parliament in the UK.
“That relationship is obviously not codified, which is a great thing because it means it is a living relationship, and typically British at the same time.
“It can make it more difficult if people take different views on a subject but that just means that you have to work your way through the knots and talk it out. All relationships come under pressure at times.
“Of course, some things are set in stone, like our autonomy in domestic matters.”
Reflecting on career highlights up this point, Miss Bell said that getting Jersey’s position in the post-Brexit UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement over the line was a definite one, being the apex of more than five years of work.
“It was also an example of our very positive relationship with the UK shining through because it required a lot of collaboration and although it was their name on the document, Jersey and Guernsey did have some autonomy on matters important to us, such as regional fishing interests.”
Another highlight was Miss Bell’s work on the ‘Routier’ case, which focused on whether the free movement of capital applied to Jersey as a third country.
Centred on whether a gift to a Jersey-based charitable trust should be exempt from UK inheritance tax, the case went all the way to the UK Supreme Court, which ruled in favour of the appellants, with Jersey in support, and against HMRC.
The implications: it reinforced Jersey constitutional position as being separate from the UK.
Miss Bell is 45 years old and was born in St Helier, where she now lives, but brought up in St Ouen. She also has a strong attachment to St Brelade, specifically along Route des Genets, opposite to where the Silver Springs care home is now.
That was home of Miss Bell’s great-great grandfather, Thomas Charles Pullinger, a famed car engineer and manufacturer. It was also the house where her father grew up in and her grandparents lived, with the home only leaving the family’s ownership this year.
Miss Bell grew up not far from St Ouen’s border with St Peter, not too far from the Windmill, and went to Jersey College for Girls Prep, JCG and then the University of Exeter, where she read English before studying for a graduate diploma in law.
She recalls a happy education at JCG, where she was Deputy Head Girl and Deputy Head of Cavill, the same house of her grandmother when she attended the school during the Occupation. Miss Bell returns each year to watch or take part in the family prize being presented at prize giving – The Bell Prize for Belonging.
After Exeter, Miss Bell moved to the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice to complete her LPC and then spent two years on a training contract back in Devon with utility infrastructure company Pennon plc, which included a secondment at law firm Ashfords, before moving back to Jersey in 2009 and joining the LOD.
Unsurprising for someone who studied English, she is a lifelong lover of literature, although a once avid reader of novels now tends to focus more on history and theological books.
When it comes to her favourite epoch, she said: “My two go-tos would be the 19th century and probably ancient Egypt, and if we’re talking about places, then I absolutely love finding more about Jersey history too. I’m an avid reader of Jerripedia and I’m always on the lookout to add more local history books to my small library at home.”
Miss Bell’s longstanding passion for Jersey’s past extends to making an appearance on Time Team in 2010 when Tony Robinson and his colleagues visited the Island. She dug at Gorey Castle and at a German camp in St Peter and you can see various glimpses of her in the episode on YouTube.
In her spare time, Miss Bell also loves sea swimming as well as Lego, particularly building the complex models that have many thousands of pieces. Perhaps fitting for a lover of literature, her next construction project is the Elven Kingdom in Rivendell from Lord of the Rings. A genuine Lego-lass, perhaps?
She and her partner Stephen, who is a physicist at Exeter University, are both members of the congregation at St George’s Church in St Ouen, which helps maintain her strong familial links with the Island’s largest parish.
Being one of six siblings, her many nephews, nieces and godchildren are also a big part of her life.
Miss Bell is only Jersey’s second female SG in the role’s long history.
She said: “I think that is significant because it is important to give girls a sense that they can aspire to anything. Equally, it is important to have someone who is the right person for the job, whatever gender they are.”
The first female SG, Stéphanie Nicolle, retired in 2008 after 14 years in the role, leading to a perhaps obvious question: would Miss Bell like to one day become the Island’s first female Attorney General, Deputy Bailiff and, ultimately, Bailiff (even if the Sarnians are going to win that particular contest)?
She said: “Well, I’ve only just got the job as SG and, hopefully, I’ll be in the role for some time. I think all I can say is: I’ll just have to see where this takes me.”
Miss Bell said she was particularly looking forward to working closely with the new government and States Assembly, including having to provide near-instant legal advice during sittings.
“Sitting in the chamber and offering advice to Members on the hoof, as it were, is going to be a new experience for me but, equally, I’ve worked at the LOD for a long time so it’s not an alien concept; I get what I need to do.”
One of Miss Bell’s first official duties was to provide legal advice to the Royal Court during its Visite Royale to St Martin last week. With the Visite’s deep history, tradition and often reference to ancient laws, Miss Bell was clearly at home, which is perhaps unsurprising because she has family links to that parish too, a branch of her family settling there as escapees from the French Revolution.
Explaining why an 1807 case was particularly relevant to the fate of a road in Fliquet, her love of the law was clear.
Reflecting on that passion, she told the JEP: “I taught at the Institute of Law for seven years and one of the reasons I did that is because I love trying to explain things from a legal standpoint. I’m really looking forward to doing more of that, as well as continuing to work alongside my lovely colleagues.”
