Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Whatever the statistics, the essence of the point is that the threat of and culture created by judicial review has had a distinct impact. Before becoming a Member of Parliament, in my previous life as chief executive of Localis, the local government think-tank, I spoke to many local authority leaders and chief executives about the way the judicial review culture that now surrounds local authorities was impacting on their decision making. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst pointed out, it has created to some degree a culture of risk-aversion in local authorities. A bureaucratic layer has been added to the taking of often very important decisions that have big impacts on local communities, resulting in long delays. One example is the politically controversial decisions taken on the potential closure of care homes in many different local authorities. The impact of the threat of judicial review is now being perceived as part of the decision-making process, and that has had a detrimental impact on the quality of some community services.