Andy Slaughter
MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick · Labour · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Bill, and thank the Government for introducing it and bringing it back to the House before the summer recess. It is the result of years of committed campaigning, led by the families of the victims and survivors of Hillsborough.”
“I know that case means a huge amount to the hon. Lady as a constituency MP, and I thank her for all the work she does on the Justice Committee. I think we have only begun to scratch the surface. This Bill will be a transforming piece of legislation. I will make one final comment.”
“This would be a new, independent public body that collated, analysed and followed up on the conclusions and recommendations made after official investigations into deaths and state failings, in order to improve oversight and implementation of them.”
“I think I have taken enough time, but I thank the Member for that intervention. This afternoon, the Justice Committee signed off a new major report on legal aid, which will be published on Friday. Those who are interested can read more there.”
“In the time that I have, I will focus my remarks on clauses 1 to 16, which create a new appeals body for immigration and asylum cases known as the independent immigration appeals authority.”
“From that visit, our diagnosis was that these are operational problems. There are two key questions for the House: will the IIAA fix the problems with the current system, and will it be truly independent from the Home Office?”
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“The result of nullifying the regulations involved a very large amount of money being paid not to the people who were deterred from bringing their cases to employment tribunals, but either to the people who did bring them and lost, or to employers in those litigations who lost and had to pay the fees of the people who had been successful. That was a ridiculous remedy for a mischief that harmed people other than those who got their money back. Professor Ekins: I agree with my colleagues that clause 1 increases remedial discretion and focuses it to some extent, although one can argue about how it does that. Much of the response to these two clauses has been overstated. We have not yet spoken about clause 2 and the limitation of review of the relevant decisions of the upper tribunal.”
“I think these are very moderate reforms seeking to give the courts greater remedial flexibility to tailor remedial responses to the particular context of the case, in the light of the range of interests implicated. Sir Stephen Laws: I am sympathetic to people who have a view about what remedies should be granted to litigants in the case in question, but I am not sympathetic to the idea that judicial review should be an extra step in the political debate about whether a piece of legislation should exist or continue to exist. The Unison case provides a startling example of the sort of absurd consequence that you would get from the nullity remedy. In that case, the courts overturned fees to be charged to people who wanted to take their employment cases to hearing.”
“In that sort of case, a suspended order allowing the Government time to respond to the finding of unlawfulness and make relevant provisions to accommodate that finding, or a prospective order that holds that what has gone before remains good and that the nullification takes effect only prospectively, can play an important role in protecting very important public interests, interests of good administration and the interests of third parties who might interact with Government. Indeed, if something like a large infrastructure project were invalidated, it could undermine the confidence of market players in contracting or working with Government, because the rug could be pulled out from the project at some later point once a lot of money and time has been sunk into it.”
“For example, a large infrastructure project may be started and there might be a slight technical or procedural error at the outset. If the project proceeds and is then nullified as if it never existed, that will have very negative effects on the people who had contracted with the Government and, by being critically disruptive, on the national economic interest, and could lead to significant economic waste.”
“I think these remedies are welcome, because they provide for a greater remedial flexibility for courts—for courts to tailor remedies in their discretion, to the exigencies of the particular facts of the case. It is important to bear in mind that these remedies will be discretionary and the courts will take into account a range of relevant considerations in exercising that discretion. Courts are well versed in exercising remedial discretion—courts can be expected to respond to the justice of the particular case. What the Bill does is to give the courts more options. The most common consequence of a finding of unlawfulness is that the impugned administrative measure is a nullity, which means it never existed. That will suffice in many cases, but in some cases it will be an overly blunt measure that can have very drastic effects.”
“Q You are talking on a fairly high level here—I think Professor Ekins mentioned “heart of the constitution” cases, which are obviously very sexy to talk about—whereas most of the submissions we have had are from non-governmental organisations, environmental groups or people dealing with special educational needs, who are concerned that some of the provisions in the Bill may limit the opportunity because either a suspended or a prospective-only order will mean that, for some reason or other, they are unable to get their case before the court. Are you sympathetic to that at all? Professor Varuhas: These remedies will not prevent anyone from getting in the court door, because they are remedies, which apply after a finding of unlawfulness has been found by a court.”
“Q I have just one more question on clause 2, although not on Cart per se. You will be aware, because it has been quoted quite widely, that the press release that accompanied the introduction of the Bill stated that “it is expected that the legal text that removes the Cart judgment will serve as a framework that can be replicated in other legislation.” That appears to signal an intent on the Government’s part to use the ouster more commonly in future. Is that how you read it? Do you think that that is a good or bad way of going about things?”
“2) suggests that it is just not possible to suspend a quashing order. In my view, that is unfortunate, because judicial review remedies are in every other respect discretionary, so why not here? In the debate on IRAL in the House of Lords, Lord Hope said that he was dismayed to be in a “minority of one” when he dissented in Ahmed on postponing it. He certainly approves of clause 1. It is at least a doubtful point, and sufficiently doubtful that the legislation is worth it.”
“Q May I clarify whether, at present, a judge can make a quashing order limiting or eliminating its retrospective effects, or suspend the effect of a quashing order? There has been some debate around that, given the proposals in the Bill. Dr Morgan: I wrote an article about that in 2019 before IRAL was even thought of. It is not like me to be ahead of the trend. In it, I analysed in particular the Supreme Court’s decision in Ahmed and others v. HM Treasury—the freezing orders case. Ahmed causes enough doubt on the question that legislating to put it beyond question is a worthwhile use of Parliament’s time. There are some precedents the other way—in a case called Liberty, the divisional court suspended a declaration—but on quashing orders, the reasoning of the Supreme Court in Ahmed (No.”
“Q You are saying there are two separate issues: whether it is a sensible proviso, and whether there is certainty at the moment. Dr Morgan: Yes. My position is that it is a sensible remedy, and at the moment, it is certainly not clear whether the courts can do it. Clause 1 will, beneficially, clarify that.”
“But a court might attempt to impose— Dr Morgan: For a court below the Supreme Court, the obvious precedent that the applicant would cite would be Ahmed, and it would be very hard for a lower court to get round that, I think.”
“The language of clause 1, under which proposed new section 29A(4) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 would state, “if the impugned act is…upheld” is very odd. Subsection (5) says, “it is to be treated for all purposes as if its validity and force were, and always had been, unimpaired by the relevant defect.” That makes it quite difficult to see why one should give a remedy to people who are deemed in that case not to have suffered a legal wrong. I think it is quite a problem, unless the clause is amended to expressly allow a judge to give a remedy to someone who has obtained a prospective-only order, despite the fact that the law and treatment were to be treated as entirely lawful.”
“Some way would have to be found of protecting the claimant, and other people in the position of the claimant, if one did not want to be stuck in the position of saying, “These people were treated unlawfully, but they are not going to have a remedy.” In clause 1, there is nothing that makes it explicitly clear that a court could say, “I am going to give you a prospective-only remedy, except that it would be retrospective for the purpose of protecting you.” The court might be able to do that, but then you also have the problem of other people in the same position as the claimant—all those people would have been treated unlawfully. It seems strange to me that they should have to suffer unlawfully because the remedy is only prospective.”
“Q Clause 1 gives the courts a discretionary power to grant a full remedy to a claimant, but to limit the retrospective effects of the judgment for any other individual who has not issued a claim before the date of judgment. Is that right? If so, are you concerned that it could lead to unjust outcomes for those already impacted by unlawful decisions? Professor Feldman: One of the difficulties of having a prospective-only remedy is that it is only prospective, and by definition a remedy of this kind would take effect only if the court had already decided that the claimant had been treated unlawfully. To say to a claimant, “This is going to be prospective only” strongly implies it is not going to protect the claimant himself or herself.”
“It is also true, as Dr Morgan said, that the administrative law of the English system does not treat financial compensation as a readily available remedy. Therefore, some express permission would have to be made to allow the courts to do it.”
“If one is about to be deported as a result of having one’s unlawful decision treated as lawful, for example, compensation is unlikely to be an effective and adequate remedy. There are lots of other types of administrative wrong that lead to people suffering loss or injury that cannot readily be financially compensated. Secondly, if one is going to compensate, one has to consider all the other people who have been treated unlawfully, who are in a similar position to the claimant, but who are not before the court, so the court cannot order compensation for them. Perhaps one needs to consider whether a court should be empowered to require the provision of a compensation scheme for all those in a similar position to the claimant. That could be a lawful step.”
“Q Do I take that to mean that the way the proposed new section is drafted could dissuade individuals from initiating judicial review proceedings, because they may not obtain a remedy? Dr Morgan: Yes. That point was made by many Members on Second Reading. It could be a real problem, in particular if it became the norm and the court ordinarily postponed orders. In my view, the court should not ordinarily do that; it should be in exceptional cases only. That takes us on to the presumption in subsection (9) —but perhaps we will come back to that at a separate point. There are two problems with it: first, the presumption; secondly, the absence of a compensation power. Professor Feldman: May I add two things to what Dr Morgan has said? I agree with what he says in principle. First, the compensation remedy may not be useful to all claimants.”
“I think the courts will be very reluctant to find that there is an adequate redress, because they will say, “The claimant is not going to get anything, so that is not adequate redress.” I think if the court does find that it is satisfied, they will say, “There is a good reason to make the quashing order immediate and retrospective, because that is what we ordinarily do. It is important to do that to keep the Government within the limits of its powers.” I think that subsection (9) is not going to do anything other than generate needless litigation about this; it will become a question that has to be considered in every case, whether it is really relevant to the facts or not. Therefore, I suggest that subsection (9) should go.”
“I also think, if subsection (9) is taken out, subsection (8) could be taken out as well. At the moment there is a need to try and direct the court what to take into account; the drafting is already getting very complicated. I think that probably everyone who has written you a paper has suggested more paragraphs that could be put in subsection (8); I think it is going to end up very long indeed. We are talking here about High Court judges; it is very senior judges who will be making these decisions, and in my view, they can simply be trusted to make the appropriate decision based on the facts. That is my first point—I would take it out. If we are going to keep it in, it is virtually doing nothing at all.”
“Q I do have one other question on ouster but, Dr Morgan, just before we leave clause 1, you mentioned a presumption. Do I take it from what you have said already that you are concerned about that provision in clause 1? Is that because of the way that it is drafted, or because of the inclusion of a presumption per se, in this context? Dr Morgan: I would take the presumption out altogether. I think what this clause is doing—certainly what it should be doing—is enlarging the power of the courts to tailor relief in a way that they see fit, and removing the obstacle that the Supreme Court laid in their path in Ahmed v . HM Treasury (No. 2). Thus, I just do not see why it is there. The Government say that it is to encourage the courts to use this remedy, but I do not see why we should try and push the courts in a particular direction.”
“Professor Feldman, do you agree with that? Professor Feldman: I do. Subsections (8) and (9) have twin disadvantages. First, they try to create a presumption that something will happen regularly, when we know that it will not, for the reasons that Dr Morgan has given. Secondly, they are unnecessary because the courts are quite capable of making judgements for themselves. Look at subsection (8)(f): “any other matter that appears to the court to be relevant.” This opens up the field very nicely; I do not see anything there that is necessary.”
“Q Finally, I will ask the same question that I asked the previous panel about ouster, and the Government’s comment in a press release that the “text that removes the Cart judgment will serve as a framework that can be replicated in other legislation.” Do you think that is a sensible way to go about legislating? Professor Feldman: Is that for me?”
“For example, I note that in another Bill before the House, the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill, there is an attempt to exclude judicial review of decisions concerned with Dissolution of Parliament and purported decisions. Clause 3 of that Bill does not go into any such elaborate provision as are provided here. Presumably, the drafter of that considers that it will work, because of the nature of the decision that is being considered. Dr Morgan: My position—”
“Bearing in mind the need to use judicial time as efficiently as possible, it may be that this is not a proportionate use of judicial time, in which case one might say—although I say this with great disquiet—that the ouster is justified. Does it work? Yes, I think it does, for roughly those reasons. Courts will not kick against it, given that the claimant will have had two bites at the cherry already before a judicial tribunal. Is it a template? I am not sure that it will be either necessary or perhaps effective to use this sort of thing in situations in which someone is getting review of other types of decision by other types of agency in different circumstances.”
“That is quite apart from the importance of access to courts for the rule of law. I approach this by asking whether this sort of exclusion of review is justifiable. On balance, I think it is, for a combination of reasons. First, because it excludes review of judicial bodies, not of administrative or executive agencies. Secondly, because the number of people who will suffer, although we can never be quite sure, looks as if it will be relatively small compared with the number of people who would suffer generally if we cut off all judicial review. Somewhere around 3.4% of these cases end up being successful, the Government estimate, compared with 30% to 50% in most other judicial review situations.”
“For either, or both. Professor Feldman: I will start then, if I may. I think there is a real difficulty about a provision of this kind being used as a template, because there are two questions that arise. First, is this a situation in which it is justifiable to exclude the High Court supervisory jurisdiction? Secondly, have we drafted a provision that will work and have that effect? In relation to the first, I think it is important to note that parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law generally require that people should have access to courts to determine the lawfulness of action. There is a functional inconsistency between Parliament’s saying that there are limits to the powers of a body or person and, on the other hand, saying that that person or body can decide for themselves, effectively, what those limits are.”
“Members on behalf of their constituents around the country, and in which people, often in extremis, are left to their own devices to try to represent the interests of their loved ones when they should be getting assistance from the state.”
“How do we get a high standard of consistency in the decisions being taken in coroners’ districts around the country? Secondly, and more immediately, can the Minister say when the response to the bishop’s report will be published, when the legal aid guidance will become clear and whether he will meet the ask in the Select Committee report on that, and whether he will consider bringing forward in the Bill some of the issues that the Government have not currently ruled out—appeals, inspection, and an independent office or national oversight mechanism? If we can go that far, that will address many of the Committee’s concerns. If we do not, and we are left with the Government’s response as it is, they will have singularly failed again to address a service in which problems are being highlighted every day and every week by hon.”
“Indeed, he may want to look at the responses from the Royal College of Pathologists, a series of bodies representing victims and, indeed, from Tom Luce himself about the opportunity presented in the Bill to make some of these changes. I do not want to exceed the 10 minutes I have been given, Sir George, so I will conclude with this: in responding today, in the time available, I am sure the Minister cannot cover every recommendation in detail, but perhaps he could at least do two things. First, perhaps he could articulate more clearly the Government’s response to us and what the Government’s policy is towards coroner services. There is a common theme of consistency in the report, whether we are talking about appeals, the independent office, the inspectorate or the national coroner service: consistency.”
“I also think that the Government should look again at the idea of a national coroner service. I know the Government will be concerned about cost in some of these areas, but at least they should investigate the price and decide whether there is merit in some of the recommendations here. The recommendations should not be just left to rest. I mentioned the Bill that is coming up, which includes provisions for discontinuance of investigations, inquests in writing and remote attendance inquest hearings. I will be interested to hear how the Minister defends those changes, but none of them are about the fundamental reforms we have suggested.”
“I have done a lot of work on fire safety over the past few years, and there have been a number of inquests around the country into situations where people have sadly died because of electrical fires and other fires that have occurred, but the dots have not been joined up. There may have been an individual report, but it has not been sufficient to carry it through into national policy. The conduct of coroners is rather dismissed out of hand in the Government response, but it is a serious issue. I have taken part in a Westminster Hall debate with representatives from across west London about the west London coroner service. There have been allegations of appalling conduct, but there is no real mechanism for addressing them, which needs to be examined.”
“However, I have certainly been at an inquest where there were at least six state bodies and a family who either did not have representation or had pro bono representation, and neither of those is sufficient, frankly. I hope we can get an answer to when we will see the proposals coming through and when we will have a response to the bishop’s report. On the issue of appeals, I cannot understand why this is probably the only area of law where there is no right of appeal. That seems an anomaly. The prevention of future deaths reports have been significant in many cases and are a welcome innovation in the process, but they do not do the job that the independent office would do—what INQUEST calls in the report the national oversight mechanism. Again, I have personal experience of this.”
“It is right that the Government appear to be shifting some way on the issue of legal aid, but they are looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope. What is clearly needed is not to make some adjustments to exceptional funding and early help, but to state the situation categorically in situations where there are unrepresented families—they are almost always families—in proceedings where there are state actors who are well funded and represented. In my time at the Bar, I appeared at many inquests, but I do not think I ever appeared in one where 18 state bodies were represented, as the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham told us about.”
“One is the national coroner service, which the report recommends. One is the inspectorate, which the report recommends. One is a complaints procedure. The last is the independent office. Some of those are rejected out of hand, such as higher fees for pathologists and the national coroner service. With others, we are told that the Government will consider them—not now, but they are not saying not ever—or simply that they are not responding at present. It is quite unusual that we had a response along the lines of, “Why are you bothering us with this report now? Don’t you know we’ve got a Ministry of Justice to run?” I do not think that is an adequate response. I do not have time to go through all the issues in detail, but let me mention one or two of which I have had personal experience.”
“Unfortunately, the current proposals in the Bill are pretty minimalist and, if they do anything, they tend to restrict transparency and accessibility rather than the other way round, which is certainly not what the Select Committee was looking for. However, let us not let this be a missed opportunity. There is time to get it right, and whether it is in this House or in the Lords, there is an opportunity for the Government to bring forward some of their responses to the Committee that they said were delayed. I counted at least seven major omissions from the Government’s response, and many of them have been mentioned already by the contributors. One is the provision of non-means-tested legal aid, which might be the most central of them. One is appeals on coroners’ decisions. One is the issue of pathologists’ fees.”
“It is clear that proceedings grind slowly in relation to reform of the coronial courts. The legislation recommended by Tom was not passed for six years and did not take effect for four years after that. We then had the review, which was six years ago, and it has not yet been published. That is not a terribly good start, but we now have the happy coincidence that the Judicial Review and Courts Bill is going through its proceedings in this House. It had its Second Reading this week and will begin its Committee stage, which the Minister and I will take part in, next week. A whole chapter of that Bill is to do with the coroner system, which provides an opportunity to address some of these issues.”
“We must get the policy right, and that is not happening, sadly, in all cases at the moment. If the Chair of the Committee had not already outed me, as part of my duty of candour I was going to say that I was a member of Justice Committee when it heard the evidence for and approved this report. It comes as no surprise that I think very highly of the report. It deserves this debate on its merits but, as the Chair of the Committee made clear, this debate is a mark of the displeasure of the Justice Committee. The Government’s response to what has been set out is wholly inadequate. The report is the first since Tom Luce’s 2003 report almost 20 years ago that has comprehensively looked at the faults and issues in the coroner system. We might have expected something better in response.”
“It is a pleasure to see you chairing our proceedings, Sir George. I thank the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), for his comprehensive and clear setting out of the recommendations of the report and for not pulling his punches in dealing with the Government’s response. The contributions of the hon. Members for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) and for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) were much appreciated. The examples they gave were not typical of the inquest system, but the system needs to stand up to all eventualities. They talked about particularly harrowing circumstances and personal recollections from their own constituencies, which show how important it is, not just for the many people affected by coroner proceedings, but for the general public.”
“We can try to salvage the administrative good from the political bad as the Bill progresses through both Houses, but there is no way that any Member of this House who cares about the rule of law or the checks and balances of our constitution should be supporting this Bill on Second Reading tonight.”
“The peremptory response and dismissal of many of the Committee’s major recommendations is something that the Government should look at again. It is another example of why this Bill is not fit for purpose. There is too much focus on areas where the law works well, and too little where it is failing. Above all, it is an unforgiveable distraction at a time when all focus should be on getting the justice system back on an even keel. The Bill seeks to undermine the rights of the individual against the state and it looks like another attempt by this Government to stoke a political war with the judiciary—something that would be more recognisable in Hungary or Poland.”
“The last major area of concern we have is in the provisions relating to coroners’ courts. Again, there is a danger that, in a rush to reduce unnecessary procedures and facilitate greater online participation, people who are less capable of navigating the new system will be excluded. There is nothing to address existing problems with the coroners’ service and, on Thursday, we be will debating the Justice Committee’s excellent report—I was a member of the Committee at the time—which raises a number of serious issues, including, in particular, the inequality of arms, as we have heard from many Members today, faced by many bereaved families who are not entitled to legal aid at inquests where the state is representing. We can discuss that in Committee and we can discuss it on Thursday.”
“We must make sure that this drive to digitisation leaves no one behind. Justice must never be sacrificed for efficiency. If there is sufficient opportunity, for example, for taking advice on pleas to be heard before a tribunal for open justice, are corners being cut in the interests of rapid and economical disposal of cases? All those questions arise in revisions currently in part 2 of the Bill. We also have concerns around plans to set up an online procedure rules Committee. The Committee itself makes sense, but why, given that it is supposed to be a practical aid to practitioners, is it a creature of the Lord Chancellor, who merely has a duty to consult the Lord Chief Justice and the senior president of tribunals before making amendments to the rules?”
“Perhaps with an eye on this latest legislative attempt to rein in our independent judiciary, he added that judicial review “is what ensures that the executive arm of government keeps to the law and that individual rights are protected.” Perhaps also the Conservative party is no longer a party of individual rights. Part 2 contains a number of measures to increase the use of technology and online justice procedures, some of which, as I have said, have been rehashed from earlier legislation. The justice system has to adapt to new technologies, just as the rest of us do—some with more success than others—but technological change does not affect everyone in society equally. We cannot have a justice system where people are locked out because they do not have the means or the knowhow to navigate the digital frontier.”
“The Government’s statements on matters going beyond Cart suggest that the use of an ouster cause will serve as a template to abolish other types of judicial review in future. The press release announcing the Bill stated that “the legal text that removes the Cart judgment will serve as a framework that can be replicated in other legislation.” That is quite chilling in itself. The Government would do better to heed the words of Lord Neuberger, former president of the Supreme Court, who said last week: “Ouster clauses…which are intended to ensure a particular class of decision cannot be judicially reviewed, carry with them the inevitable implication that whoever has the protection of the ouster clause has the right to break the law with impunity”.”
“The Court found that the tribunal had made a series of errors leading to “elementary and serious breaches of the principles of procedural fairness” and that, as such, its decision could not stand. The High Court ruled that G’s case was not only arguable and should have proceeded, but that it was “bound to succeed” based on the strength of her claim. Without that ruling, the tribunal’s original “fundamentally flawed” ruling would have been put into effect, putting G and her child in the greatest danger imaginable. It is difficult to see why such a case should be refused the opportunity of legal remedy. That is certainly the opinion that the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and others have impressed on us in briefings, right up to and including today.”
“G was trafficked into the UK from her home country of Nigeria. Traffickers in both countries had brutally mistreated her and subjected her to serious physical and sexual abuse. While she was in the UK, she gave birth to a child, whom she looked after alone. The Government did not dispute that G was a victim of trafficking, but a tribunal convened to decide what support and protection she ought to receive went beyond the statements of the parties and decided that she was not, in fact, a victim of any trafficking or exploitation. This meant that she could be removed from the UK and would have resulted in her falling back into her trafficker’s hands. The Cart procedure was used to re-evaluate the decision before the High Court.”
“The Bill’s impact assessment concedes that, saying: “The majority of Cart cases relate to Immigration and Asylum, therefore those who lose out…are more likely to have particular protected characteristics, for example in respect of race and/or religion or belief.” Cart reviews are an important safeguard and there is already a high threshold for bringing them. Moreover, the original proposal was based on wrong data, as I have said. I agree that the estimate of the percentage varied from the clearly wrong 0.22%, to the 3% that the Government now maintain, to the nearly 6%—30 times the originally cited figure—on which a number of learned and informed sources have made submissions to us. Let me give just one example—there will be time in Committee to give a lot more—of the type of case affected.”
“It also goes further than the independent panel recommended: it saw no need for prospective-only orders and dismissed the idea of presumptions in favour of them. As we have heard, the Bill will also abolish Cart judicial reviews, which are most often used in serious asylum and human rights cases but have also been used in welfare cases when someone was on the brink of being made destitute or homeless. That is the answer to the point about the fact that the success rate may not be among the highest—albeit it is still higher than the Government previously said it was—and the reason why there is a special reason for retaining such reviews. Those points have been made but they are, with respect, not good points, because Cart reviews are a last-gasp defence for some of the most vulnerable people in the most desperate situations.”
“An unbiased observer—I offer myself for this role—might say that the Government want to mute every avenue of accountability, from the BBC to the Freedom of Information Act and now the courts. Specifically, the removal of the retrospective effect of a quashing order will have a chilling effect on judicial review. What is the point of the seeking of a remedy without redress? Victims of past unlawful state actions might not be compensated. Litigants who are similarly impacted before and after a judgment will be treated differently. Legal aid may be refused on the grounds that a remedy for past loss is not available. All in all, the Bill goes much further than the dry terminology of the statute suggests.”
“The false dichotomy that the Government wish to argue, as in the recent speech by the Attorney General, is that democracy and the rule of law are two opposing forces that need to be brought more into balance by weakening the latter. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are two sides of the same coin, or rather one provides the tracks on which the other can smoothly run. This Government’s true motive is to escape accountability for malpractice. It is one of the defining features of this Government that they simply do not believe the same rules should apply to them as apply to everyone else, and that starts with the Prime Minister and works its way down.”