UK Parliament / Open data

Judicial Review and Courts Bill

My Lords, I open by noting that my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti said that Amendment 14, to which I have my name, is a probing amendment and I think that she rightly said it is less preferable to Amendment 13 if we can clear up the element of new Section 29A(1)(b) about removing retrospective quashing. I agree with her point on that.

I want to address a different point. It was actually raised in the House of Commons by the government Minister at the time when he talked about unintended consequences. I will read out the briefing I have on this.

In Committee, the Minister suggested that limiting the retrospective effect of remedies could mitigate the potential negative and unintended consequences that some public interest judicial reviews could have. For example, if a statutory instrument concerning social security is quashed, immediately it could remove all the social security protections provided for in that statutory instrument because they would no longer have any legal effect. But the argument is not convincing. The mere fact that some judicial reviews could potentially produce unintended consequences does nothing to argue in favour of a presumption. I was amused by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, picking up that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, referred to a so-called quashing order. In the vast majority of cases, a court will not issue a quashing order in any event. In most cases, a court merely declares a statutory instrument to be unlawful and leaves it to the Government to amend the instrument in a way thought necessary by the Government. Indeed, even where human rights were violated between 2014 and 2020, the courts have quashed only four statutory instruments out of 14 successful challenges.

So we are not talking about very many cases and the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and in support of his amendment, I think, are absolutely right. I shall listen with interest to the Minister’s response.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
819 cc91-2 
Session
2021-22
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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