Tom Hunt
Main Page: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)Judicial Review and Courts Bill (First sitting)
Tom Hunt Excerpts
The Chair
A few Members have indicated they wish to ask questions, so I will take them in order.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
Q There has been lots of debate about whether these reforms are necessary or good for parliamentary democracy. It is important to reflect on the fact that of course it was in the Government’s manifesto that they would propose significant reform to the way in which judicial review works. To what extent do the witnesses see the mandate of an election as important to the functioning of our democracy?
The Chair
Who wants to take that one? Is it a googly?
Professor Ekins: I will start. Clearly the mandate on which the Government campaign and secure a majority is significant. It is true that page 48 of the Conservative party manifesto makes a commitment to look again at the constitution and to take measures to ensure that judicial review does not become “politics by another means”—a phrase Lord Sumption used in his Reith lectures and also used by the High Court and the Court of Appeal in judgments in 2019. It is also true that the commitment does not spell out what it will involve, and that is partly what the Committee is considering and the Government have been thinking through—as has the independent review of administrative law.
There should be no constitutional question about the entitlement of Parliament to legislate on judicial review. The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Burnett, has made that crystal clear in various public statements. The question, of course, is the merits of the proposals—the devil may be in the detail. It would be wrong, as we have discussed, to overhaul judicial review. It would be a mistake—not improper, but a mistake—to try to put it on a statutory footing at large, but changes can be made where problems have arisen.
The political salience of judicial review has clearly risen in the last five years—indeed in the last decade or two. If one can identify the problematic trends and respond to them in a targeted and careful way, one would be acting properly and in accordance with the manifesto, even if I would be cautious myself in connecting any particular proposal to the manifesto because it was not quite that specific.
Sir Stephen Laws: I have nothing particular to add to that, as it all seems right. In my submission to the independent review of administrative law I drew attention to what I thought were the beginnings of a breakdown in trust between the political world and the judiciary, and the political salience of the issues around judicial review is evidence of that. Plainly, there can be no question about Parliament’s right to legislate, and the need to do so has been demonstrated.
Professor Varuhas: I would add that the concerns reflected in the manifesto around the judicial review and whether the courts had in certain contexts overreached were vindicated in the IRAL report, which did pinpoint at multiple times areas of concern. This set of reforms, regarding remedies and the Cart ouster, have been through an incredibly thorough process. An expert independent panel was constituted, the Independent Review of Administrative Law, with five distinguished academic lawyers and others drawn from the profession, chaired by Lord Faulks. The reforms in the Bill derive from that panel’s recommendations.
The panel stressed the need for reforms to emphasise remedial flexibility and it recommended the ouster of Cart judicial reviews. Those recommendations were then put out to general consultation—a Government consultation. At each stage there were a lot of consultation responses, so the reforms we see before us are the product of an incredibly thorough, expert-led process. To my mind it is not a surprise that the reforms are well justified in the end.
The Chair
Thank you. Are you happy with that, Tom?
The Chair
Sir John Hayes.