.
New JR changes
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s plans for a second major overhaul of the rules governing judicial review, which include further limitations to legal aid, were published last month: Judicial review – proposals for further reform: the government response. Many of the principal changes are in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, which had its second reading at the end of February; however, other changes will be implemented soon through secondary legislation. A joint briefing note from the Legal Aid Practitioners Group (LAPG) and Young Legal Aid Lawyers (YLAL) to the All Party Group on Legal Aid summed up the government’s plans:
•Restricting the availability of legal aid for judicial review so that providers will only be paid for the work carried out subsequent to the issuing of proceedings where permission is granted.
•Protective costs orders in nonenvironmental cases should be reserved for ‘serious issues of the highest public interest in cases granted permission …’
•Where parties apply to intervene in proceedings they will be liable to pay the costs arising from their intervention.
•Lowering the current threshold under which the court may refuse to grant a remedy in cases where the decision would ‘inevitably’ have been the same had it been made lawfully, so that a remedy may be refused if it is ‘highly unlikely’ that the outcome would have been substantially different.
•Where a claimant is refused permission at an oral permission hearing, the default position will be that a defendant can recover their costs at this stage.
LAPG and YLAL concluded that ‘the changes will have a chilling effect in deterring claimants from enforcing their rights or challenging abuse by the state …’. The bill has now been sent to the House of Commons Public Bill Committee for scrutiny, which has called for written evidence by 1 April.