Senior judges in the United Kingdom have criticised new plans by the Ministry of Justice to restrict judicial review challenges. The Criminal Justice and Courts Bill is currently before Parliament. If passed, the bill will make it more expensive for non-governmental organisations to bring legal challenges against Government or local authority decisions. Lady Hale, Deputy President of the Supreme Court, told a House of Lords Select Committee that she did not think that this was an issue of public resources. She claimed that the motivation behind the bill is that government departments are unhappy with the courts overturning their decisions.
The Supreme Court’s President, Lord Neuberger, also voiced concerns to the Select Committee about the bill’s potential impact. “If you don't have a healthy and accessible judicial review function for the courts then you don't have a satisfactory modern democratic society,” he said. Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, has emphatically stated his opposition to charities who “target the legal system as a way of trying to get their policies accepted” by bringing judicial reviews. In one case he described a challenge brought by the Plantaganet Alliance over the burial place of Richard III as a “complete waste of taxpayers' money”. Lord Neuberger accepted that some unmeritorious applications were inevitable but said that this inconvenience had to be accepted due to the importance of judicial review to a democratic society.
In relation to another issue raised in the committee session, Lord Neuberger said that British Judges were becoming more “self-confident” in departing from the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg. He said that it was the “duty” of judges to sometimes say to Strasbourg “think again”. He said this was a change from ten years ago when judges would have been very reluctant to depart from an ECtHR ruling.
Click here to read an article in The Guardian about the proposals.