Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (LD)]

My Lords, my name is added to a number of these amendments, and I will not repeat everything that has already been said, most especially by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and my noble friend Lord Marks. However, I cannot let this debate pass without making three comments about the unusual speech made by my noble friend Lord Horam.

First, his speech was inaccurate. He blamed judicial review for delays in infrastructure development and for making infrastructure development more expensive. Had my noble friend taken the trouble to read the successful judicial reviews of infrastructure development, he would have found that in 95% of the cases—and I may be underestimating that—the judicial review was granted because of the incompetence and sloppiness of officialdom ranging from government departments through to local authorities and other statutory organisations. The answer to that is for those public authorities to prepare their cases properly, to make their planning applications in due form and for Ministers, in appropriate cases, to call in major planning issues so that they can be decided more quickly.

Secondly, my noble friend’s speech was unusually statist. In his career he has, in a very distinguished way, exercised his principles repeatedly, having been a member of three political parties. As I understand it, he left his first party—the old Labour Party—because he regarded it as too statist, yet nothing could sound more statist than what he said just a few minutes ago. I am personally in favour of HS2, fracking and the Severn barrage.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

Hear, hear.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

My thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas. However, I would be the last person to deny those who are opposed to those sometimes controversial schemes the opportunity to question them, if appropriate, by way of judicial review. Taking the contrary view is statism of the most extraordinary kind.

Thirdly, my noble friend’s speech was unjust because it seemed to remove the notion that there should be issues of principle about which people can take dramatic action. He has done it himself twice by changing parties as he moved from old Labour towards the party which he now represents with distinction in your Lordships’ House. However, that is the sort of exercise of principle, on more than one occasion, which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, was talking about in moving the amendment. These are not pragmatic actions over small sums of damages; they are actions over great issues of principle. Even if some claimants would not actually win their personal actions for judicial review, we know, from the cases which we have all read and in which some in your Lordships’ House have appeared, that enormously important issues of principle for the future arise from them.

I will stray into future amendments, as others have done. Some of those points of principle have been made extremely successfully by interveners—NGOs that have chosen to put in submissions. Some have done so so effectively that their written submissions have changed the course of a case. Surely we should not inhibit justice by these rather mean provisions, which, in my view, my party—the Liberal Democrats—should never have given a single piece of powder or a single piece of shot to support.