Judicial Review and Courts Bill (Third sitting)

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th November 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Andy Slaughter]

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship this morning, Sir Mark. I hope that we will have some interesting debates over the next few weeks. I also welcome the Minister to the first Bill he is to take through the House. I will also mention—[Interruption.] I was going to mention my own side, but they seem to have temporarily left the room for urgent Chamber business. I will not take that personally—not at this stage. In his absence, however, I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North, who as shadow Courts Minister will lead for the Opposition on much of part 2 of the Bill. Like most Justice and Home Office Bills, this is a bit of a Christmas tree Bill—we are getting near to Christmas—so while I will lead on part 1, on coroners and employment tribunals, I am grateful for his expertise. I am also grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham East and for Liverpool, Wavertree, who are current or former members of the Select Committee on Justice, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon, who keeps us all in order.

The Conservative members of the Committee are all here, I think, except for the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings. I am wearing my intermediate glasses, which means I cannot see anything close up or far away. We did not hear a great deal from the Conservatives in the evidence sessions. Other than the right hon. Gentleman, they kept their powder fairly dry, but I will try and provoke them to more animation today.

Amendment 12 seeks to excise the most obnoxious proposal in part 1 of the Bill: prospective-only quashing orders. To give some context, the Government will present the Bill as a moderate, reasonable adjustment to the art of judicial review—no more than a rebalancing. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings gave some cover to that in his questions and comments in the evidence sessions. I do not want to put words into his mouth, but he suggested that it was a rather milk-and-water Bill and could go much further in reigning in judges to allow Parliament freer expression, if I understood him correctly. I disagree. I think that the Bill is a misreading of the purpose of judicial review and has an unhealthy focus on the constitutional periphery of its operation, rather than the practical effect it has on asserting the rights of the citizen against the state.

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

Would the hon. Member not accept, however, that in the 2019 election those of us on this side of the House stood on our manifesto that said we would look to reform judicial review? The Bill has not just been brought forward; my electorate in Burnley explicitly voted for it because they had seen the chaos in the 2017 to 2019 Parliament.

[Andy Slaughter]

I always defer to the electorate of Burnley, all of whom, I am sure, had a copy of the Conservative manifesto. I will come back to the hon. Member’s question, because I first want to give some context around the recent history of how we got to this Bill.

We took evidence from a large number of very senior experts. Even the Government-invited experts, if I may call them that, did not really agree with the Government’s view either—not even Professor Ekins, who had innumerable suggestions for other interventions by the legislature to reverse individual decisions but did not suggest codification or enshrining judicial review in statute, which this Bill does not seek to do. We disagree that the Government have been restrained or that the Bill needs more heft, either around the doctrine or individual case examples. We think it already goes too far.

We will argue today in Committee that prospective-only quashing orders strip claimants of their right to remedy and make the unlawful lawful. That presumption is in favour of suspended quashing orders, prospective-only quashing orders, fettered judicial discretion, and, in effect, a judicial process with heavy-footed statutory direction. The collateral damage caused by this interfering with a well-understood process of defining the legal limits of state actors will cause unintended victims and create more uncertainty and satellite litigation.

On clause 2, we will also argue that the use of ouster in Cart/Eba cases will not only leave very vulnerable persons in danger, but will open the door to more frequent incidents of legislation ousting the jurisdiction of the High Court, using the Bill as, in the Government’s own words, a template for further ouster clauses.

I am extremely grateful for the help and suggestions on how to structure these comments—from the Clerks for the way they group and help perfect the amendments, to the House of Commons Library for its excellent briefings and the many organisations for who sent us their thoughts. They are too numerous to name them all, but I must mention those that gave evidence on Tuesday: Liberty, Justice, Public Law Project, The Law Society and Amnesty International UK—all well known in the field of administrative law and human rights. We also received briefs from environmental, educational, equality and immigration non-governmental organisations and charities.

I mention that because the thrust of many of the arguments against the Bill are that it limits the ability of civil society in all its forms and of the individual to challenge the state. That is important because the attempt to characterise judicial review as the creature of lawyers and lefties, which to this Government appear to be two sides of the same coin, could not be further from the truth.

Judicial review is simply the modern name for the centuries-old common-law supervisory jurisdiction of the superior courts to ensure that decisions of public authorities, including statutory tribunals, respect the limits on their powers that are imposed by law. The existence of the courts’ common-law jurisdiction makes it possible for a person to go to court and argue that a decision or action of the state was unlawful. The court can rule that the decision or action was unlawful if it was illegal, irrational, tainted by procedural impropriety or a disproportionate interference with a fundamental right. It is one of the most fundamental checks and balances within the UK constitution to ensure that public authorities act fairly and in accordance with the law. It also gives individuals a route to challenge officialdom where it may have overstepped its powers.

To quote the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), as I may do on more than one occasion:

“Judicial review is a cornerstone of British democracy. It empowers everyday people to challenge decisions made by public bodies. Whether it be central government or local authorities, rule makers are held accountable by ordinary people. This is a small, but important, check on the balance of powers in our democracy.”

Some of the framework rules for judicial review are set out in the Senior Courts Act 1981, but it is important to appreciate that the courts’ power of judicial review is not something judges have been given by Parliament, but an inherent common-law jurisdiction dating back centuries to when the courts first began holding power to account. Therefore, much of the content of these rules are spread across these different cases.

If a court finds that the decision or action was unlawful, it will make a declaration to that effect if it is just and convenient to do so. It has the power to make three specific orders: a mandatory order, which orders the state to do something; a prohibiting order, which prohibits the state from doing something; or—relevant to these discussions—a quashing order, which rules that a thing done by the state is void and has no legal effect. On the other hand, a declaration is simply a formal statement setting out the legal state of affairs. We will see the importance of that when we talk about suspended quashing orders later on. A declaration is non-executory in the sense that it does not command anyone to do anything; it simply declares what the legal position is.

A quashing order is different as it is executory: it orders something concrete and has legal consequences. A quashing order rules that a decision was void and therefore has no effect. Rather than simply declaring, for example, that a planning decision was unlawful, a quashing order would quash that decision meaning it has no continuing effect and has never had any effect from the moment it was made.

The long-established default position in judicial review cases is that where unlawfulness has been established, for example because a public authority has acted beyond its powers, a declaration is insufficient and one of the specific orders must be given. According to Lord Bingham, speaking in a judicial capacity, under the rule of law

“the discretion of the court to do other than quash the relevant order or action where such excessive… power is shown is very narrow.”

The Bill is not the first time in recent years that a Conservative or coalition Government have sought to rein in judicial review. Between 2010 and 2015, various proposals were consulted on and legislated for. In particular, in 2013, changes to the civil procedural laws reduced time limits for bringing claims in planning and procurement cases, introduced new fees and denied some renewed hearings. The Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 introduced provisions on leapfrog appeals, wasted costs orders and the refusal of some remedies.

However—interestingly—the most controversial proposals on legal aid and standing originally designed to be in that Act were not pursued. It was a case of rhetoric meeting the practice of the courts and the former withering in the gaze of the latter. Perhaps that will happen again with these proceedings—in the other place if not here—because we are again in the territory of crowd-pleasing rhetoric, or Back Bencher-pleasing rhetoric, coming under scrutiny.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

I absolutely agree. It is an important part of those constitutional checks and balances, and it has become more important. In a country without a written constitution, it is totally appropriate that a common-law process such as judicial review should develop as it has. I do not mean that it is excessive or that it has grown out of control; it has simply moved with the times in a way in which our senior courts in particular are able to do. As I say, the Bill is a clear attempt to reduce proper accountability for state actions.

[Antony Higginbotham]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be putting forward a narrative whereby people listening to these proceedings, who do not know what is going on, might think that judicial review is going away somehow. Actually, that is not what will happen as a result of the Bill; it seeks to continue the evolution in ensuring that judicial review is used proportionately. Will the he confirm my understanding that judicial review will still be available for people who want to challenge Government decisions? It is really important that the general public do not think that a potential remedy is disappearing.

[Andy Slaughter]

The hon. Gentleman is being very sharp this morning, because he is always one point ahead of me. I am coming to exactly that in discussing how these provisions were formulated, and I accept entirely what he says. The Bill could have gone a lot further, and there were proposals to go further in the Government’s consultation, but that does not mean that there are not significant changes in the Bill. I do not agree that it simply tidies things up or that the changes are a logical progression, and I will try to persuade him of that slowly but surely.

Under the Bill, claimants and others affected by unlawful decisions made by the state could find that they win their case but get no proper remedy and see no real impact on their lives, or on the lives of anyone else who has been negatively affected. If I am right about that, it is a significant change. On the hon. Gentleman’s point, we were promised—I think in the same 2019 Conservative manifesto—overarching constitutional reviews of criminal law and democracy, but they have not materialised. It may be that wiser heads have prevailed, but it may also be that rather more quick and dirty results are being demanded.

The Government have opted instead for a series of reviews. In this discipline, the independent review of administrative law was established under Lord Faulks. It asked whether judicial review was being abused by creating needless delays and allowing political matters to be litigated through the courts. There was concern from many in the legal community that the review would lead to the courts being sidelined and the Executive being granted too much power without enough accountability. However, IRAL’s recommendations were mainly practical and incremental, and they did not contain the radical proposals that some had feared.

The panel was against codifying the grounds for judicial review. It thought that ouster clauses were appropriate only in limited circumstances, and it disapproved of prospective-only quashing orders. Perhaps for that reason, the then Lord Chancellor took the two IRAL recommendations that he liked—on suspended quashing orders and on reversing Cart—and conducted his own consultation. The consequences of that second bite, or some of them, are in the Bill, though it still has too little red meat for some people. The Bill proposes a range of further reforms that risk weakening the rule of law and narrowing access to justice for vulnerable people.

Clauses 1 and 2 seek to limit the vital check on Executive action and create a statutory presumption that remedies available in judicial review should be suspended or made prospective-only. Clause 1 gives judges the power to issue suspended and prospective-only quashing orders, the latter of which would prohibit future unlawful decisions without invalidating any prior actions based on that decision. The Bill undermines accountability and creates additional and unnecessary barriers to individuals seeking redress when they are affected by unlawful actions of public authorities.