Prime Minister Declares War On Judicial Review

Today's entry reports on the announcements to make judicial review more difficult yesterday.

At a speech at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) annual conference yesterday, the Prime Minister David Cameron invoked the second world war spirit as a justification for cutting back on regulation. He said that four areas would be addressed:

cutting back on judicial reviews, reducing government consultations, streamlining European legislation, and stopping the gold-plating of legislation at home. Judicial review

Judicial review (or JR) is the ability to challenge the legal process taken to reach a decision, rather than the merits of a decision (which would be an appeal). The statistics of JRs increasing from 160 in 1975 to 4,500 in 1998 to 11,200 in 2011 are mainly immigration JRs rather than planning ones (8649 in 2011). The figure for 'other' JRs (including planning) has actually gone down from 2228 in 2006 to 2213 in 2011.

At the moment in most cases JR must be launched promptly and in any event within three months of the decision (or failure to take a decision) that it relates to. In the Planning Act 2008 the limited ability to launch JR is already restricted to six weeks from the decision.

The PM said that three curbs would be introduced. Each of these is amplified a little on the Ministry of Justice website:

PM: Reduce the time limit when people can bring cases; MoJ: Shortening the length of time following an initial decision that an application for a judicial review can be made in some cases - and stopping people from using tactical delays PM: Charge more for reviews so people think twice about time-wasting; MoJ: Reforming the current fees so that they cover the costs of providing judicial review proceedings. PM: instead of giving hopeless cases up to four bites of the cherry to appeal a decision, we will halve that to two; MoJ: Halving the number of opportunities currently available to challenge the refusal of permission for a judicial review, from up to four currently, to two Nothing has been announced in detail yet - according to the MoJ website 'we will announce our proposals shortly'. I would guess that the time limit reduction will be to six weeks in all cases, but I'm not sure how 'tactical delays' will be stopped. The cryptic reference to four bites at the cherry is probably to do with seeking permission to launch JR...