Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 28th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

My Lords, I wish to make three short points in support of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. I do not know how long this debate is going to continue. We heard that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is unable to be here at the moment. I hope I will be excused for being absent for about half an hour from 5 pm.

The three points I wish to make are these. First, it seems that there is a belief that it is very easy to obtain permission to move for judicial review. For those of your Lordships who are not lawyers—and happily there are many here—I want to lay that belief to rest. Like myself and, in a much more distinguished way, other noble and learned Lords, anybody who has faced the challenge of a list of cases requesting permission for judicial review will know that a vast percentage of those applications are refused at the paper application stage.

I shall give your Lordships what might be a useful insight. The typical High Court judge or deputy High Court judge—and it is in that latter capacity that I have sat and continue to sit—is faced on any given day with about a dozen paper and oral applications for judicial review. My estimate, based on my own experience and on talking to others—there may be more formal statistics—is that at most one or two of those applications move on to the next stage, and the other 10 or 11 are refused. Nobody should, therefore, get the idea that it is very easy to challenge the Government or public bodies by way of judicial review.

The second point is about the phrase “highly likely”, which appears in Clause 64. I think the use of this phrase confuses especially the lawyers on the standard of proof which is required in judicial review applications. Does “highly likely” mean “more probable than not” or less than “beyond reasonable doubt” or what? Why do we need to add this almost tautologous standard of proof to a well honed system in which judges—who are, believe it or not, trained in these matters, and many of whom have great experience—know exactly what to do without an artifice being added for reasons which are not clear?

The third point which is of real concern to me is that the test in new subsection (2A) that Clause 64(1) seeks to insert in Section 31 of the Senior Courts Act 1981, which refers to the outcome not being,

“substantially different if the conduct complained of had not occurred”,

is a licence for vestigial consultation. Many cases that come before the High Court on applications for judicial review are cases in which the Government and other public authorities that are devolved parts of government have failed to carry out proper consultation with the public. Sometimes the failure to carry out consultation is a very serious matter indeed, because it is a denial of the right of the public not only to be told that they are being consulted, but to express their views in that consultation and to have them considered in a full and proper way.

There have been many cases in which judicial review has been granted because of the failure of consultation, and in many of those cases the outcome is eventually exactly the same as that which the Government would have wished before the failure of consultation. Therefore it may be thought by the judge highly likely that the outcome would not have been substantially different if the conduct complained of had not occurred. Sometimes that failure of consultation is—or borders on—the contumelious by the public authority concerned. I suggest that we should not license that kind of failure by governmental authorities which would thereby deprive the public of the right to have proper consultation. I hope that those three points are useful to your Lordships. I do not want to add anything else, because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has given a very full exegesis of the concerns.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I apologise that I have not spoken on the Bill before, but I wanted to intervene on Part 4. At Second Reading, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, observed that Part 4 raises “citizens’ issues”. I hope that noble Lords will agree that it is therefore important that non-lawyers—who were referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—add their voice in support of the highly expert advice from the great legal minds in your Lordships’ House. Not only are those citizens’ issues, but they affect in particular poor and marginalised citizens, including, in the words of the Bar Council,

“some of the weakest and most vulnerable in society”.

Here I declare an interest as an honorary president of the Child Poverty Action Group, and a former director and legal research officer—believe it or not, although I am not a lawyer—of that group back in the 1970s, when the group spear-headed what came to be known as the social security law test case strategy, under the late Sir Henry Hodge, or the plain Henry Hodge as he was then, as CPAG’s solicitor. According to an evaluation of that strategy, Henry Hodge saw it as having an,

“independent value in obtaining substantive improvements in the law and in producing a higher standard of behaviour from administrators”.

Those are still two important functions of judicial review that are now under threat.

I fear that CPAG may be one of the organisations that the Government had in their sights, given that Mr Iain Duncan Smith accused it of “ridiculous and irresponsible behaviour” and “an ill-judged PR stunt” when the High Court dismissed a challenge to the housing benefit cap, for which it had been granted a cost protection order and permission on the basis that the case was arguable and raised issues of public importance. In contrast, Sir Stephen Sedley, in oral evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member—I have a feeling that the Minister was himself a highly valued member at that point—said that,

“not all public interest litigation is hostile; it can be creatively used, and has been in the past. The Child Poverty Action Group was a pioneer in this respect, to elucidate the law to the benefit of everybody who is involved. Social security is a very good example, because it is an arcane and hideously complex area of law, where it is easy to get things wrong and a mistake can affect millions of people. It is very much to the advantage of everybody if the Government collaborates with challengers like the CPAG in getting the issue to the core”.

I speak today not so much as an honorary president of CPAG but as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which recommended that this clause be deleted from the Bill. I therefore support the contention that it should not stand part of the Bill, as well as supporting those amendments that would revert to the status quo. I will not rehearse at any length the arguments of the JCHR, some of which were quoted on Second Reading; there are arguments of both principle and practice, including that we should not be condoning unlawful decision-making, and the danger that it would mean that the permission stage became a full dress rehearsal and therefore could be more rather than less costly. However I would like to emphasise what is perhaps a key human rights point, when we said that it may give rise to breaches of the right of access to court in ECHR Article 6(1),

“a right which, in order to be practical and effective rather than theoretical and illusory, includes the right of access to a legally enforceable remedy”.

On this argument alone I believe that the clause should not stand part of the Bill. But as we have heard today, and earlier at Second Reading, there are also other persuasive arguments.

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

My Lords, I support all the detailed amendments in this group but, more fundamentally, I support the root and branch opposition raised by all those who have put their names to Clauses 64 to 67 not standing part of the Bill. It is with regard to that basic question that I want to say a few words today. Whether the thinking which underlies these provisions is, as some would suggest, positively and consciously mischievous, or merely misconceived and mistaken, I do not know. However, it would be a grave misjudgment if we were to allow them to pass into law. If they are persisted in, I hope that on Report this House will reject them.

What the Government are proposing here is a heresy. With regard to Clause 64, it is a double heresy. Without repeating all that I said at Second Reading, I will try to explain what I mean. The basic heresy here is to treat judicial review—which of course is the title of the whole of this part of the Bill—as a matter generally suitable for legislation at all. Essentially, I suggest that it is not. I seriously wonder if those who are behind these proposals understand the intrinsic nature of this supervisory jurisdiction. Judicial review is no more and no less than the exercise of the courts’ inherent jurisdiction to ensure that the decision-making of the Government, their executive action, remains within the bounds of legal propriety. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, explained today, it is judge-made law par excellence; it has been and should remain, essentially, a matter for development and control by the judges themselves. If ever there was an area of the law that for the most part should remain free from legislative interference, it is this. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to think of any field of law less suitable for legislation, for government diktat as to its future development. Most obviously this is so with regard to provisions which, as here, are designed to essentially cramp and narrow down judges’ powers and discretions. In this field of inherent control of administrative action, it is intended to discourage those who seek to question the legality of governmental decision-making.

In truth, these provisions would make serious inroads into the separation of powers; they would represent a significant shift in the constitutional balance between the judiciary and the Executive. That is the basic heresy that underlies the entirety of Part 4—the supposition that Parliament rather than the judges should decide how the court’s supervisory jurisdiction should be exercised, and its development and control, which are essentially matters of procedure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Faulks]

The case is George v Secretary of State for the Environment. I omitted one or two pages of my speech in order not to weary the Committee but I am most grateful for the offer of an autographed copy of De Smith.

I reiterate that, where there is any significant doubt over whether the flaw complained of was highly likely to have made a substantial difference, permission can be granted, and judges will continue to perform their established role. I remind the Committee of a significant judicial discretion which will remain under the clause. Crucially and properly, this discretion will extend to whether it is highly likely that the procedural defect would have resulted in a different outcome for the applicant in any given case and whether any difference would have been substantial.

Amendments 72D and 73E are intended to replace the requirement to refuse to grant permission where it is highly likely that there would have been no substantial difference with an option to refuse permission. It is worth examining that. It postulates the position where the judge says, “I think it is highly likely that it would have made no difference at all, but still I should allow this to progress”. Similarly, Amendments 70, 70A and 71 are intended to replace the requirement to refuse to grant a remedy, including a financial remedy, where this is the case. The Government’s view is that these amendments would significantly weaken the utility of the clause in dealing with minor technicalities in a proportionate manner.

Under Clause 64 as currently drafted, the High Court and the Upper Tribunal will retain significant discretion over the application of this clause. Crucially and properly, this discretion will extend to whether it is highly likely that the procedural defect would have resulted in a different outcome for the applicant in any given case and whether any difference would have been substantial. Indeed, the term “highly likely” will, as I have said, be interpreted by the courts. Where the court comes to the conclusion that it is highly likely that the outcome would not have been substantially different, the Government’s view is that the court should not grant a remedy. I can see no merit in continuing a case where there is no real prospect of a difference in outcome and a remedy such as a quashing order would be futile.

In conclusion, I trust that I have reassured the Committee that the Government absolutely understand the importance of judicial review and do not wish inappropriately to interfere with the exercise of the discretion by the courts, nor substantially to disturb the approach that the courts have taken in this very important area of the law. In fact, I submit to your Lordships that Clause 64 is modest in ambition and beneficial in effect. I hope that, with that reassurance, the noble and learned Lord will withdraw the amendment and I urge the Committee to agree to Clause 64 standing part of the Bill.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

The noble Lord has not responded to a very specific question from my noble friend Lord Beecham, which was: how many of the Bingham centre’s recommendations have the Government accepted? This is very relevant to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Horam, about delay. He quoted the Joint Committee on Human Rights, making great play of the word “perennial”, but I think that he rather quoted out of context. Perhaps I may read what the Joint Committee said:

“We welcome the Bingham Centre Report as an important contribution to the debate about possible reform of judicial review, demonstrating that the perennial problem of reducing the cost and delay of judicial review proceedings can be addressed in ways which are compatible with effective access to justice”—

that is, it is saying that these reforms are not so compatible.