Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I am not sure whether you would agree, Mr Speaker. I take the hon. Lady’s point, but I do not think that she follows it through logically. It comes back to this: the basic tests of Wednesbury reasonableness remain. The opportunity for judicial review remains and putting some balance or check in the process to say, “Before you intervene, you have to consider the costs” is not unreasonable.

Any decision maker can, of course, get things wrong, which is why we have judicial review. That remains. But equally, it is not unreasonable to say that when a challenge is brought, those who litigate ought to bear in mind the costs of their doing so. I understand the hon. Lady’s points, which she made eloquently in Committee. I have some sympathy with her, but the Bill does not do what she believes it does. I do not believe it undermines the scope for meritorious judicial review. It is not in the interests of anyone that the courts be clogged up with unmeritorious judicial review cases. There is no doubt that there have been a number of those.

On local government, let me suggest two instances of such cases. It is suggested that those who bring judicial review are often the aggrieved small people. That is not always so. When I was a Minister at the Department for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I suffered at the hands of CALA Homes in a very famous judicial review decision when we were attempting to carry out the will of the House and, clearly, of the electorate and remove the regional spatial strategies, which were discredited. A judicial review was brought against the Secretary of State and against the democratically elected planning authority, Winchester city council, which had gone through the process of standing up for its residents who did not wish to have a particular piece of land developed. What happened was that judicial review was used by, in effect, a predatory developer. There are many cases around the country where it is the big battalions who will use judicial review against elected local authorities. Redressing the balance is fair in that instance, too.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s giving way on this point. In Northern Ireland, we have the ludicrous situation whereby one Minister, namely the Attorney-General for Northern Ireland, will take on other Departments to prevent them from implementing decisions that have been taken democratically. Does he agree that we are now in a terrible situation, whereby before a Department takes a decision, it seems to need to have lined up behind it the right person to fight the judicial review, which will inevitably come in any case once the decision is taken?