The Government’s judicial review reforms and the Judicial Review and Courts Bill

The Judicial Review and Courts Bill 2021-22 is currently progressing through Parliament. Among other things, it would implement recommendations of the Independent Review of Administrative Law (IRAL), commissioned by the (then) Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland in 2020 and chaired by the former Justice Minister, Lord Faulks.

In some respects, the Bill as originally passed by the House of Commons would have gone further than IRAL had recommended in early 2021. For example, the Government’s proposals included “prospective-only” quashing orders and a “presumption” in favour of special quashing order powers being used.

The House of Lords has amended the Bill (PDF). These amendments will be considered by the House of Commons on Tuesday 26 April 2022.

It will be useful to read this briefing alongside the Library’s paper:

• Judicial Review and Courts Bill: Lords Stages and Amendments

That paper provides a high-level overview of all the changes the House of Lords made to the Bill, including the non-judicial-review provisions.

This paper provides a more detailed look at the debate on Part 1 of the Bill, concerned with judicial review. It explains what the key amendments made by the House of Lords would do, the debates that took place on them, and how they fit into the Government’s wider policy proposals to reform judicial review.

Lords Amendments

The House of Lords has made substantial amendments to clause 1 and completely replaced clause 2 of the Bill. Specifically, it proposes:

• to remove “prospective-only” quashing orders from clause 1;
• to remove “the presumption” in favour of making suspended or limited quashing orders from clause 1; and
• to retain Cart/Eba judicial reviews, but to restrict the availability of onward appeals in an alternative clause 2.

The Government has previously indicated that it intends to go further on judicial review reform, perhaps through further legislation, in the next parliamentary session.