Supreme Court President's speech on end of Judicial Independence in England!

The entire speech, given by Lord Phillips last evening may be read from this link; the section presently causing the most controversy is, I believe the following:

My conclusion is that our present funding arrangements do not satisfactorily guarantee our institutional independence. We are, in reality, dependant each year upon what we can persuade the Ministry of Justice of England and Wales to give us by way of “contribution”. This is not a satisfactory situation for the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. It is already leading to a tendency on the part of the Ministry of Justice to try to gain the Supreme Court as an outlying part of its empire.

This blog repeatedly warned of exactly this end result, particularly in a posting on 17th January 2008, linked here.