Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Campbell of Surbiton and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Monday 27th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, I wish to make a couple of points in addition in support of the amendment. My personal experience in cases has been that third-party interveners in judicial review proceedings perform a vital task in enabling the judicial review court, if it so wishes, to open its windows on to a wider range of considerations. We are not dealing with a dispute between two civil parties. We are dealing, as has been said, with judicial review designed in the public interest to resolve questions of public law. One such case has been implicitly referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick—the case in which the High Commissioner for Refugees intervened in a difficult point about the proper construction of the refugee convention read with our other provisions. The court found it extremely valuable and it enabled the court, led by Lord Bingham, to give an authoritative ruling on what were novel issues about the refugee convention.

Another case was from Northern Ireland. One of the strange things about the Bill, which I hope the Minister will deal with in his reply, is that this provision does not apply to Northern Ireland or Scotland. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission had to struggle for some years to have a right of audience at all and to be able to make third-party interventions. Members of the House will remember that a couple of years ago, the Attorney-General for Northern Ireland wanted to commit Peter Hain for scandalising the judiciary by daring in his memoirs to criticise the Northern Ireland High Court judge. The Attorney-General applied to commit for contempt. I was instructed by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission to make a third-party intervention. I like to think that the result of that written submission is what caused the Attorney-General to drop the whole idea, as he did.

Unless I am completely wrong, we are now in the curious position that the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission will be able, with its very limited budget, to be a third-party intervener without this costs effect, whereas the Equality and Human Rights Commission, for example, with its limited budget, will not be in the same position. That seems arbitrary and it will make it harder for our senior judiciary to be helped by third parties, which is the whole object of the third-party intervention.

Another example from the distant past concerned privacy in relation to the disclosure of patients’ medical information in the Court of Appeal. I seem to remember that a third-party intervention in that case was absolutely crucial. It is vital that small NGOs and ordinary citizens who have something to contribute, if the court decides that it wants to hear from them or read their written submissions, should be able to do so without the threat of costs orders being made against them.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)]

My Lords, I wish to add my support for the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lord Pannick. This provision will, indeed, deter interventions from organisations with limited resources—organisations, as my noble friend Lord Low suggested, that are likely to have the best and most pertinent expertise about the more vulnerable sectors of our society: children, disabled people, elderly people. Judges have publicly recognised the value of specialist knowledge in helping them to make informed decisions, as demonstrated by my examples in Committee. I had the privilege to be involved in interventions in two landmark cases where my organisation and individual knowledge could contribute to the outcome, which everybody heralded as a great success. I know that the Government’s reforms would have deterred me and my organisation from intervening. I believe that cases will be very poor for that.

It is critical that intervention remains readily available and that we do not deter weak charities and individuals who are quite sceptical about getting involved at all. Let us face it, intervening in a High Court case is a scary prospect. I know because I remember I was terrified. Therefore, I believe that these provisions will have a devastating effect, particularly on the community that I know best, disabled people—the very people who need the most support, protection and expert advice, coming from maybe some of the people who know them best and who have themselves experienced what they might have been going through or might go through. Clause 73 cannot be allowed to stand because there will be no interventions of such knowledge and value—interventions that have literally changed the lives of some disabled individuals and interventions that will change the lives of those who come before the courts in the future.