Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sorry I missed the beginning of the noble Lord’s introduction of this amendment but I got called out. I simply want to speak on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Our latest report says:

“We remain of the view expressed in our Report on judicial review that restricting the availability of costs-capping orders to cases in which permission has been granted would be a disincentive to meritorious public interest challenges being brought”—

that argument has been made—

“and we maintain our recommendation that the Bill be amended to remove this restriction”,

and that we explicitly support,

“Lord Pannick’s amendment … which would preserve the court’s current power to make a costs-capping order at any stage of judicial review proceedings, including before permission is granted”.

I hope that your Lordships’ House will feel able to support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment. By the same token that the House approved the earlier amendments, logically this amendment must be allowed as well. The vice of the proposed legislation is once again the narrowing of the courts’ discretion and the chilling of the judicial review. In this case, in the most important area of public interest litigation, it is really imperative that this amendment succeeds.