Meanwhile, Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs have reversed a series of defeats inflicted by peers on government plans to restrict access to judicial review. There had been a concession by coalition ministers on one of the areas of dispute: allowing judges discretion about whether or not to impose punitive charges on organisations that intervene in legal challenges. Only one Liberal Democrat MP, Sarah Teather, voted against the government. Labour, which dismissed the concessions as insignificant, opposed the judicial review clauses in the criminal justice and courts bill. The House of Lords is now due to vote again on the revised legislation next week in a parliamentary process known as ping-pong. Andy Slaughter MP, Labour’s shadow justice minister, said: “David Cameron’s government has repeatedly ignored the warnings of almost every independent expert that its attacks on judicial review would undermine our constitution. In rejecting the Lords amendments, the Tory-led government is savagely attacking the rights of the individual citizen to take on the state in court, opening the door for unlawful governments to avoid scrutiny. “All of this has been done without even a whimper from the Liberal Democrats, who have lost any remaining vestige of credibility on civil liberties.”
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 11:52:32 +0000
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