The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for England and Wales is seeking to assure Jamaicans that there is no danger of the country losing access to the United Kingdom-based Privy Council as its final court of appeal.

Questions were raised last week about the future of that relationship, following a statement by the head of the Privy Council and the new UK Supreme Court Lord Nicholas Phillips. He had expressed concern about the additional burden that appeals from the Caribbean create for the British judicial system.

It is a right that goes way back into the country’s colonial relationship with the United Kingdom, having the Privy Council as its final court of appeal.