Posts Tagged ‘constitutional principle’
Covid 19 and the English Legal System (5): Parliamentary inquiries (revised)
Those interested in how key actors in the legal world are trying to cope with the implications for the English Legal System of Covid-19 might care to follow the work – currently on-going – of two Parliamentary Select Committees.
The House of Commons Justice Committee launched an inquiry into Coronavirus (COVID-19) on 31 March 2020. It is examining the impact on prisons, the probation service and the court systems. They have held three evidence gathering sessions in which they heard from a number of key witnesses, including the Lord Chief Justice, the Minister of State, key officials from Prisons and Probation, the Chair of the Magistrates Association. It is likely that the Committee will publish a relatively short report in the course of the next few weeks.
At the same time on 13 May 2020, the House of Lords Constitution Committee opened an inquiry into the Constitutional implications of Covid 19. This will be a more wide-ranging inquiry than that being held by the Commons Justice Committee.
The announcement of the inquiry states:
The Covid-19 pandemic and the Government’s measures to respond to it have significant constitutional implications, as well as health, social and economic ones. These include:
- The ability of Parliament to hold the Government to account
- Scrutiny of emergency powers
- The operation of the courts
The Constitution Committee will consider these issues and other related matters as part of an umbrella inquiry into the constitutional implications of Covid-19. The Committee will initially explore questions such as:
- What can Parliament do to maximise its scrutiny of the emergency regulations and to hold the Government to account effectively during lockdown? How are adjustments to procedures and processes working in the House of Lords?
- What are the consequences for different ways of Parliament working on effectiveness, accessibility, fairness and transparency?
- What emergency powers has the Government sought during the pandemic and what powers has it used and how?
- What lessons are there for future uses of emergency powers, their safeguards and the processes for scrutinising them?
- How has the Government used both law and guidance to implement the lockdown and what have been the consequences of its approach? How has this varied across the constituent parts of the United Kingdom?
- What liberties has Parliament loaned the Government during lockdown? What are the processes for reviewing and returning them? Are the sunset provisions in the Acts and regulations sufficient?
- How is the court system operating during the pandemic? What has been the impact of virtual proceedings on access to justice, participation in proceedings, transparency and media reporting?
- How will the justice system manage the increasing backlog of criminal cases? Is it appropriate to rethink the jury system during the pandemic, and beyond, and if so how?
To date, the Committee has issued a call for evidence and has had a number of hearings at which oral evidence has been presented. Among the witnesses who have already given evidence is the ‘guru’ of the use of IT in the delivery of legal services, Prof Richard Susskind and the leading researcher on the justice system, Prof Dame Hazel Genn.
I suspect this report will take somewhat longer to appear than that of the Commons Committee.
In addition to these two inquiries which cover many aspects of the working of the legal and justice systems, in mid-May 2020, the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee also launched an inquiry: Responding to Covid-19 and the Coronavirus Act 2020. The aim of this inquiry is set out as follows:
The Coronavirus Act 2020 was emergency legislation passed by Parliament on 25 March, to provide the Government with the powers it wanted to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK.
Under section 98 of the Act 2020, every six months there is “parliamentary review” which means that the Government must, so far as is practicable, make arrangements for the following motion to be debated and voted on: “That the temporary provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020 should not yet expire.”
PACAC is launching an inquiry to scrutinise the constitutional and public administration aspects of the Act, with the goal of supporting and informing that debate.
It has issued a call for evidence but has not to date arranged for any meetings or hearings.
For links to all these inquiries see:
The Justice inquiry is at https://committees.parliament.uk/work/254/coronavirus-covid19-the-impact-on-prison-probation-and-court-systems/
The House of Lords Constitution Committee is at https://committees.parliament.uk/work/298/constitutional-implications-of-covid19/
The evidence of Profs Susskind and Genn is at https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/0f0810d1-9489-4506-9108-139f6d4f221e
The PACAC inquiry is at https://committees.parliament.uk/work/310/responding-to-covid19-and-the-coronavirus-act-2020/
All evidence sessions held by Parliamentary Committees can be accessed at https://parliamentlive.tv/Commons.
A big day in the Supreme Court: R (on the application of Miller) (Appellant) v The Prime Minister (Respondent)
Major cases raising fundamental constitutional issues are rare, which is why 24 Sept 2019 is a significant day. The supreme court ruled that the Prime Minister’s decision to prorogue Parliament for 5 weeks was unlawful.
For the Prime Minister, it was argued, in essence, that the prorogation of Parliament is an act which falls within the scope of the Prerogative (acts formerly taken by the monarch in person, now taken by Ministers). As an essentially political decision, it should not be capable of review by a court – in the technical language it was not ‘justiciable’.
The Supreme Court – sitting with 11 justices – ruled unanimously that it was possible for the courts to judicially review the exercise of prerogative power – to determine whether such exercise fell within the accepted boundaries for the use of such powers. In short, the review of the power to prorogue was a justiciable matter.
That alone did not mean that the Government had acted unlawfully. Prorogation is an important part of the Parliamentary calendar. It brings one Parliamentary session to a close. Ministers then prepare a Queen’s Speech which sets out the Government’s legislative priorities for the coming 12 months. Members of the Supreme Court accepted that a prorogation for a short period was necessary, even though Parliament could not function during that period.
However, the justices accepted evidence (including evidence from the former Prime Minister Sir John Major) that in recent years prorogations tended to be for between 4 and 6 days. That was the average amount of time needed to sort out the Queen’s Speech.
The key point about a prorogation is that it brings all the work that can be carried on in Parliament to a complete standstill. No Committees can work, no Parliamentary Questions can be answered. Prorogation is distinct from recess when Parliament does not sit (e.g. in holiday periods) but other Parliamentary business does continue.
Employment Tribunal fees: back to the drawing board
(i) Financial: to transfer a proportion of the costs of the ETs to users (where they
can afford to pay);
(ii) Behavioural: to encourage people to use alternative services to help resolve
their disputes; and
(iii) Justice: to protect access to justice.getting a better balance between what the taxpayer funds and what the litigant funds.
An official review of the impact of the fee changes, published in January 2017 concluded that, broadly, these objectives had been achieved. (See this blog, February 2017)
The Supreme Court has, however, come to a quite different conclusion. In R (on the application of UNISON) (Appellant) v Lord Chancellor (Respondent) [2017] UKSC 51, the Court concluded unanimously that the Fees Order was ultra vires (that is to say that the Lord Chancellor did not have the power to make the order) and so quashed it.
There are at least three reasons why the judgements in this case are particularly interesting.
First, in most cases where the validity of a Statutory Instrument is challenged in the courts, the argument turns on fairly precise questions of statutory interpretation – were the rule-making powers in an Act of Parliament sufficient to give the relevant Minister the power to make the order being challenged?
In this case a much broader, constitutional approach was adopted. The essence of the argument was that the impact of the Order was so dramatic (the numbers of cases coming to both the ET and the EAT had fallen dramatically since the introduction of the fees) that they had the effect of denying potential claimants access to justice.Lord Reed, in the principal judgement, refers back to a number of historic legal texts, including Magna Carta, to conclude that it is a constitutional principle recognised in common law, that people should have access to justice.
Second, the judgement relies heavily on a number of empirical studies to show that the effect of impact of the fees rules was quite disproportionate. Using hypothetical examples, the Justices conclude that ordinary people on average earnings would have to forgo weeks if not months of expenditure on anything other than the most basic necessities to save the money needed to pay the relevant fees. The Court decided that the fees thus imposed a quite disproportionate burden on those who might have an arguable case to take to the ET or EAT. Certainly the cosy conclusions of the impact review, mentioned at the start of this note, were totally rejected by the Supreme Court
Finally, Lord Reed makes a number of interesting and important observations about the rule of law and the functions of courts and tribunals in supporting the rule of law. (See in particular paras 66-85 of the judgement). Here I set out brief extracts from the judgement:
The importance of the rule of law is not always understood. Indications of a lackof understanding include the assumption that the administration of justice is merely a public service like any other, that courts and tribunals are providers of services tothe “users” who appear before them, and that the provision of those services is ofvalue only to the users themselves and to those who are remunerated for theirparticipation in the proceedings. [There is an] assumption that the consumption of ET and EAT services without full cost recovery results in a loss to society, since “ET and EAT use does not lead to gains to society that exceed the sum of the gains toconsumers and producers of these services”.
[However] …the idea that bringing a claim before a court or a tribunal is a purely private activity, and the related idea that such claims provide no broader social benefit, are demonstrably untenable….
Courts exist in order to ensure that the laws made by Parliament, and the common law created by the courts themselves, are applied and enforced. That role includes ensuring that the executive branch of government carries out its functions in accordance with the law. In order for the courts to perform that role, people must in principle have unimpeded access to them. Without such access, laws are liable to become a dead letter, the work done by Parliament may be rendered nugatory, and the democratic election of Members of Parliament may become a meaningless charade. That is why the courts do not merely provide a public service like any other.
Every day in the courts and tribunals of this country, the names of people who brought cases in the past live on as shorthand for the legal rules and principles which their cases established. Their cases form the basis of the advice given to those whose cases are now before the courts, or who need to be advised as to the basis on which their claim might fairly be settled, or who need to be advised that their case is hopeless. The written case lodged on behalf of the Lord Chancellor in this appeal itself cites over 60 cases, each of which bears the name of the individual involved, and each of which is relied on as establishing a legal proposition. The Lord Chancellor’s own use of these materials refutes the idea that taxpayers derive no benefit from the cases brought by other people….
But the value to society of the right of access to the courts is not confined to cases in which the courts decide questions of general importance. People and businesses need to know, on the one hand, that they will be able to enforce their rights if they have to do so, and, on the other hand, that if they fail to meet their obligations, there is likely to be a remedy against them. It is that knowledge which underpins everyday economic and social relations….
When Parliament passes laws creating employment rights, for example, it does so not merely in order to confer benefits on individual employees, but because it has decided that it is in the public interest that those rights should be given effect. It does not envisage that every case of a breach of those rights will result in a claim before an ET. But the possibility of claims being brought by employees whose rights are infringed must exist, if employment relationships are to be based on respect for those rights. Equally, although it is often desirable that claims arising out of allegedbreaches of employment rights should be resolved by negotiation or mediation,those procedures can only work fairly and properly if they are backed up by theknowledge on both sides that a fair and just system of adjudication will be availableif they fail. Otherwise, the party in the stronger bargaining position will always prevail….
Martin Partington: Introduction to the English Legal System 15th ed 2021
Oxford University Press Learning Link Resources
Martin Partington: Spotlight on the Justice System 