Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Elfyn Llwyd Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is right. It is important to say that the Bill will not stop organisations being judicially reviewed where they are at fault. It does not stop organisations being judicially reviewed for constant or serious underperformance or failure to fulfil their duties. What it stops is judicial review on technicalities. It stops the system being used for purposes for which it should not be used.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Does the Lord Chancellor view as a technicality the recent consultation on changes to legal aid ignoring the Welsh language aspect altogether and allowing half the time for the consultation to go into the Welsh language issue, as opposed to the whole time? Is that something that we should just ignore?

[Chris Grayling]

In that particular case, we fulfilled the orders of the court after the first judicial review hearing. I did not agree with the judge in that initial ruling. I considered an appeal, but looking at the detail of the ruling, I decided that it was more in the interests of the system that we were trying to protect and develop to move ahead with a further period of consultation. That is what we did, and we have published our responses arising from that consultation. We took the opportunity to revisit our original decisions and to look at whether any further changes needed to be made. That was embodied in the document that we published last week.

There are three simple principles in the areas of debate covered by these motions. I challenge the Opposition to explain why they so strongly disagree with those principles. First, parties should not be able to use minor technicalities in process as an excuse to bring a judicial review in order to delay an essential decision when there is very little likelihood that the outcome would be affected by that technicality. It is a simple principle. There is an exceptional circumstances clause which still allows judicial discretion in cases where there is a particularly distinctive characteristic, but this is designed to stop organisations judicially reviewing a process on the basis of a minor flaw in process, only to have the effect of delaying a difficult change—delaying for financial reasons and trying to push a change back a few months so that the financial impact is not felt as soon.

That is the reality of what is happening, and this proviso seems a perfectly sensible means of ensuring that the Government can take decisions in a timely and necessary way. In the unhappy event that the shadow Secretary of State finds himself in my chair or his colleagues find themselves in other Ministers’ chairs, they will think that it is sensible and logical way to make sure that the wheels of government move at an appropriate pace.

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[Mr Cox]

I hear the Secretary of State, but the Bill does not refer to “minor technicalities”; as the Bill reads, the default position would be that any abuse of due process or power could be justified and defended on the basis that the decision would in any event probably have been taken. It is difficult to make “exceptional circumstances” clauses work, because the courts say, “Well, ‘exceptional circumstances’ cannot mean a lack of fairness or an abuse of power.” I have spent many years examining these kinds of clauses and arguing them in the courts, and I know that “exceptional circumstances” clauses are rarely invoked, because courts are reluctant to acknowledge them as a standard resort in such circumstances. It would take something extreme indeed for a court to be persuaded it was exceptional. On the other hand, abuses of power happen quite often, I am afraid, and the clause is likely to condone those abuses of power, whereas often where there is an abuse, it is right that the decision be taken again.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Lords amendments 97 to 102 were carried in the other place to ensure that courts maintained their discretion in determining whether to grant a judicial review by making use of the “highly likely” test. Groups such as Justice have rightly concluded that if these amendments are defeated, it will change the role of judges by inviting them to second-guess how decisions might otherwise have been taken. From his experience, the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) has detailed some very potent arguments why the amendments should be upheld. Parliament should never seek to undermine the courts’ discretion; courts should be free to determine whether to apply the “no difference” test, and to legislate otherwise would impede the integrity of our legal system. I therefore support these amendments.

Lords amendments 105 and 106 would allow the courts to consider the circumstances of individual cases in determining whether to grant an application for judicial review, even in cases where third-party information is not readily available. In clause 66, the Government have tried to find yet another means of limiting the circumstances where applications for judicial review can be heard. The amendments seek to ensure that applications can be heard in cases where third-party information is not easily available.

Judicial review is often the only means by which individuals can hold the Executive responsible for wrong -doing, yet the Government are trying to shut down that avenue for redress. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has said it sees no evidence to support the Government’s reforms, and neither does Justice, Liberty, JustRights, Human Rights Watch, the Howard League, Redress, Inquest, Mencap, Amnesty International—the list goes on. Can anyone report which groups actually support the Government in these changes? [Hon. Members: “The Whips.”] Yes, the Whips.

On clause 67, Lords amendment 107 would maintain courts’ discretion over whether to order an intervener to pay the costs of relevant parties and vice versa. As drafted, the Bill would compel the court to order interveners to pay such costs, other than in exceptional circumstances, as we have heard from the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon. The provisions in clause 67 are among the most disturbing in the Bill. Unamended, the clause would ensure that charitable organisations and individuals with expertise could no longer enrich the opinion of the courts by intervening in cases where their expertise would be of use because they could not justify the risk to their trustees, funders or members of supporting litigation. As the noble Lord Carlile asked in the other place:

“How could trustees reasonably agree to support an intervention when it could result in losing tens of thousands of pounds or more in costs, jeopardising, in some cases, the existence of small charities?”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 June 2014; Vol. 754, c. 1607.]

Yet the plans would still allow Departments and corporations with huge funds to intervene and hence play a pivotal part in the development of public law.

I ask the House to reconsider the Government’s proposals in the context of the various and—I am trying to avoid vitriol—crippling reforms to access to justice in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. As a result of the significant cuts in that Act, more individuals will be looking to charitable organisations for support in getting justice. It seems to me that clause 67 will take away this last resort. I am afraid the Government seem intent on restricting access to justice so that only those with the least to lose can gain redress. Why do they think it necessary to pursue this agenda, which will throw the baby out with the bathwater, despite the perceived misuses of the law relating to judicial review? The hon. and learned Gentleman, a far more experienced lawyer than me, has referred to the time-honoured practice of judicial review—the Wednesbury principles and so on—and the practices in place to ensure that Departments act reasonably in all circumstances. Why should we not uphold the individual’s rights to ensure that Departments act reasonably?

In conclusion, Justice said:

“Punitive and disproportionate, these measures are designed to deter any organisation with limited funds acting as an intervener. In practice, this means that – even in important cases with a constitutional impact which reaches far beyond the immediate interests of the parties - the court will no longer benefit from expert advice and information provided from cash-poor and experience rich charities and NGOs.”

I think that says it all. As we heard earlier, senior judges themselves are on the record as saying that the courts are enriched by the interventions of these people, who know exactly what they are talking about.

[Robert Neill]

I commend to this House the words of the former Lord Chancellor, the noble Lord Mackay of Clashfern, in the other House. He supported the Bill and set out a sensible balance, as did the Minister, Lord Faulks, himself no slouch as a Minister. It is right that those who come to the Queen’s courts in a public hearing should not shield their true identity or who truly funds them. The Government are right to insist on that point.

It is legitimate for Parliament to set the parameters within which the undoubtedly important system of judicial review works. That is what the Bill seeks to do: it strives to strike a fair balance. I hope the House will support the proposals of my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor. It is absolutely critical that we have a comprehensible and credible system of judicial review. I want to see that as much as anyone else, but the mission creep of some areas of judicial review, very often for politically motivated purposes, undermines the true purpose of judicial review as a legitimate and important remedy for the individual. I believe that the Government’s proposal, despite the rather hyperbolic—

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[Andrew Selous]

As the hon. Lady may know, we are going to run a competition, which I will describe shortly, to find an education provider. But we are committed to increasing the amount of time in education and we want innovative responses to raise standards further because, as she will know, the results at the moment are simply not good enough.

As I have said, at this stage the Government have plans only for a single secure college pathfinder that will open in 2017, and it has been designed so that it is capable of housing about 300 young offenders aged 12 to 17. It is true that the majority of the young people in this first secure college will be boys aged 15 to 17, but that does not mean that girls and under-15s could not be safely accommodated on the same site and provided with the tailored services required to rehabilitate and educate them. Girls and boys aged 12 to 17 are already safely accommodated together in secure training centres, as well as in secure children’s homes.

Our designs for the secure college pathfinder have been specifically developed to ensure that if girls and under-15s were to be placed there, they would be accommodated in separate and smaller living units, entirely distinct from the accommodation for the majority of older boys. In our consultation on our plans for secure college rules, we also proposed a rule that girls must be separately accommodated from boys.

[Mr Llwyd]

The Minister has more or less taken my speech away from me, because to a large extent my concerns have been allayed and it is good that he is running a pilot for boys to see how that works. But how long does he think an individual youngster has to spend in that set-up in order to gain education. In other words: is there a minimum time?

[Andrew Selous]

Obviously, how long children spend in these institutions is not up to us but up to the courts. What I say to the right hon. Gentleman is that significant improvements can be made in a short period. I have seen huge advances in a child’s reading within an eight-week period, so significant advances in education can be made in relatively short periods and, of course, many children are sentenced for considerably longer than that, as he will well know.