Although it is some two and a half years since I last spoke on a series of Lords defeats of Ministry of Justice legislation, I have an acute feeling of déjà vu. On 17 April 2012, this House considered the 11 defeats that their lordships had inflicted on the infamous Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. Today, we examine the four considerable dents that have been put in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill. The three that we are considering in this group of amendments substantially amend part 4 of the Bill, which seeks to hobble the administrative law remedy of judicial review.
LASPO is fresh in my mind today for two reasons. First, those 11 defeats were whittled down, in the course of ping-pong, to some important but narrow wins. Secondly, the Government have spent the past 30 months trying to squirm their way out of even those concessions. The MOJ is still deciding what to do about the High Court decision that its review of costs rules for mesothelioma cases was unlawful. Let us remember that it is trying to enforce, against the will of Parliament, the payment by sufferers of that terrible disease of up to 25% of their damages in legal fees. Further proceedings are pending on the evidential requirement for obtaining legal aid in domestic violence cases—another defeat for the Government.
Both Houses may wish to note how the Government have sought to dodge the undertakings that were given to two of the most vulnerable groups in society—terminally ill cancer sufferers and domestic violence victims—when they look at any purported concessions in the Bill. Of course, the fact that a Government who go back on their commitments to Parliament and let people down are held to account by the courts is at the root of this attack on judicial review. The Lord Chancellor has lost six judicial review actions in the past year and there are several strong cases in the pipeline. Might that have any bearing on his current attack on judicial review?
For once, notwithstanding the truncated nature of the debate, I feel that we have enough time to debate an issue that the Government find very uncomfortable. That is not because there is a lack of arguments to put against part 4, but because they have already been put many times and have not been rebutted. On Second Reading, in Committee, on Report and on Third Reading in both Houses, there have been long debates on the dangers and inequities of this attack on the rule of law and the rights of the citizen against the state.
An unprecedented alliance of charities, the legal professions, the judiciary and victims of Government injustice has come together to support the Lords amendments. On the “Today” programme this morning, the noble Lord Woolf, who was a sponsor of the Government’s defeats, said that the Bill undermined the independence of the judiciary and, thereby, the rule of law. All the arguments are on one side. Against the clear voice of the experts, which says that this attack on judicial review is a constitutional provocation, we have the childish statements from the Lord Chancellor, who says that judicial review is a left-wing conspiracy. He should tell that to those who are reliant on the independent living fund, the Gurkhas and the victims of care home abuse, or indeed the Countryside Alliance and Stop HS2, all of which are successful challengers of his Government’s arbitrary exercise of power.
The only thing going for the Government is the majority that they hold in this House. The real issue today is whether they can use it to batter the other place into submission. Sadly, there are too few supporters of individual freedom on the Tory Benches. Tory Members either support the big corporation over the little man or have swallowed the Lord Chancellor’s infantile line that judicial review is all about subversive left-wing groups stopping the wheels of commerce turning. We are left to hope—I find it difficult even to say this—that the Lib Dems will wake from their comfortable ministerial sleeps to remember the time when they claimed to be the party of civil liberties. To wait is to hope, Madam Deputy Speaker, but as only one Liberal Democrat MP has bothered to attend this important debate on civil liberties and the rights of the individual, I do not think that we can have much hope.