“Communities minister Eric Pickles is facing a legal challenge over his decision
to allow Tesco to build a huge superstore in ‘Portas Pilot’ Margate.”
Daily Telegraph, 20th June 2013
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
“According to the President of the Supreme Court, the judiciary not only has a right but an obligation ‘to speak out on matters concerning the rule of law.’ In recent months, it is a duty from which Lord Neuberger has not shirked, and last night’s lecture to the Institute of Government was no exception. Its focus was the importance of legal aid, which Neuberger described through the prism of the UK’s constitutional set-up and the respective roles of the legislature, executive and judiciary within it.”
UK Human Rights Blog, 19th June 2013
Source: www.ukhumanrightsblog.com
“A judicial review is sought over plans for a tower block that critics say will harm views of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.”
BBC News, 19th June 2013
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
Judges and Policy: A Delicate Balance (PDF)
Speech by Lord Neuberger
Institute for Government, 18th June 2013
Source: www.supremecourt.gov.uk
“A fundamental shift in the relationship between the government and the governed is taking place: by restricting access to the law, the state is handing itself an alarming immunity from legal scrutiny. There are several aspects to this: the partial or total withdrawal of state financial support for people who lack the means to pay for legal advice and representation; and for those who can pay, a restriction on which kinds of decision by public bodies can be challenged. In the area in which I work, criminal law, defendants who receive legal aid will lose the right to choose who represents them in court. Meanwhile, the misleadingly named Justice and Security Act, passed earlier this year, enables the government to conceal evidence from litigants by using national security as a trump card. All this is accompanied by an unbending hostility to human rights law, tainted by its association with Europe, even though this legislation at least offers the weak the possibility of redress for abuses by public authorities.”
London Review of Books, 6th June 2013
Source: www.lrb.co.uk
“The former finance director of Bradford & Bingley has failed in his attempt to have the courts overturn a £100,000 fine issued by the financial services regulator.”
OUT-LAW.com, 18th June 2013
Source: www.out-law.com
“Reforms may not produce significant savings as it would result in more unrepresented litigants and longer hearings, says Lord Neuberger.”
The Guardian, 18th June 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“Court staff are being called out on strike on Monday amid growing opposition to the Ministry of Justice’s proposals to contract out services, cut legal aid and limit the use of judicial review.”
The Guardian, 13th June 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“The Ministry of Justice has confirmed that new rules in relation to Judicial Review of planning decisions will come into force on 1 July.”
OUT-LAW.com, 13th June 2013
Source: www.out-law.com
“There is a new independent Assessor (Stephen Shaw) for non-legal complaints made about the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) but not for the legal ones – how very odd! It was recently reported that victims of crime will be able to ‘win the right’ to appeal against decisions by the CPS not to charge suspects and there is a consultation which is open until the 5th of September 2013. It has a mnemonic ‘VRR’ which stands for a ‘Victim’s Right to Review’.”
Halsbury’s Law Exchange, 12th June 2013
Source: www.halsburyslawexchange.co.uk
“Iain Duncan Smith and parliament have conspired to undermine the basic rights of hundreds of thousands of jobseekers by enacting retrospective emergency legislation, according to the contents of a legal filing sent to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).”
The Guardian, 11th June 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“Even the government’s own lawyers are horrified by these reforms.”
The Independent, 7th June 2013
Source: www.independent.co.uk
“The concept of fairness embodied in the different strands of natural justice have to be seen as flexible and as not requiring the courts to lay down over rigid rules, so that where it had been agreed that a tribunal member could be temporarily absent for part of the hearing, there had been no breach of the rules of natural justice.”
UK Human Rights Blog, 5th June 2013
Source: www.ukhumanrightsblog.com
“Reporting restrictions on proceedings concerning a life prisoner should be discharged since the public interest in allowing media organisations to publish reports outweighed the prisoner’s human rights.”
UK Human Rights Blog, 3rd June 2013
Source: www.ukhumanrightsblog.com
Regina (Gray and another) v Crown Court at Aylesbury [2013] EWHC 500 (Admin); [2013] WLR (D) 204
“The court ought not to record a separate conviction under section 9 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 where a person had been found guilty of an offence under section 4 and the neglect proved under section 9 was no wider than the conduct which caused the unnecessary suffering for which there was guilt under section 4.”
WLR Daily, 12th March 2013
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“In Australia as in England, courts began ‘reading down’ legislative grants of broad and seemingly unfettered discretionary power long before the currently fashionable ‘principle of legality’ entered the public lawyer’s lexicon. Judges typically explained themselves as merely engaging in an exercise of statutory interpretation, saying that in the absence of express words or an absolutely necessary implication to the contrary, they could not believe that Parliament intended to override fundamental principles, rights, or freedoms. Legislative drafters, they reasoned, were well aware of this interpretive approach, and could always respond with clearer language.”
UK Constitutional Law Group, 3rd June 2013
Source: www.ukconstitutionallaw.org
“Three local authorities who were told in February that the Government was withdrawing previously-awarded financial support for waste management projects have launched legal challenges to the decision.”
OUT-LAW.com, 30th May 2013
Source: www.out-law.com
“Ninety leading barristers have urged the government to withdraw ‘unjust proposals’ to restrict legal aid for people demanding judicial reviews.”
BBC News, 29th May 2013
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
“A protest group is to appeal against a High Court ruling that effectively gave the go ahead to the London-Birmingham section of the HS2 high-speed railway.”
BBC News, 29th May 2013
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
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