The government and Parliament can be confident that the courts will respect institutional limits in exercising their inherent powers to review the legality of government action. Politicians, in turn, should give the judiciary the respect it undoubtedly deserves when exercising these powers (p. 132). Another example of this situation concerned the excessive stretching of the judiciary and the reluctance of the judiciary to give reasons for control and justice (pp. 57-66). In particular, the Panel concluded that the best solution to a possible overstepping of the judiciary is judicial coercion and not legislative measures (p. 61). Indeed, the Committee`s conclusion reads in fact as an appeal to the courts to be cautious when it comes to extending their powers of control to areas unsuited to their jurisdiction (p. 61).
The UK judicial system is part of the national system of administrative jurisdiction with courts classified as non-ministerial public bodies (NDPB) of judges. In light of the Panel`s recommendations, the Department of Justice has launched a six-week consultation that will end on April 29, 2021. The consultation addresses whether there should be legal clarification of the effect of predatory clauses; whether the suspension of rescission orders should be mandatory or discretionary; whether the remedies should only apply in the future, in particular with regard to legal instruments; the circumstances in which an unlawful decision may be considered null and void; and other procedural reforms. In many ways, this consultation is more important and controversial than the IRAL report, as Lord Anderson of Ipswich noted in The Guardian, Professor Paul Craig commented on the UKCLA and Lord Faulks himself commented on Joshua Rozenberg. I am not commenting on that at this point, except to say that it is obvious that public and administrative lawyers want to provide reliable evidence and experience for consultation and closely monitor their final results, particularly those that go far beyond the issues identified by the committee. Applications for judicial review are generally divided into allegations about the “content” of a public body`s decision and allegations about the “procedure” of a decision, although the two overlap and there is not yet a codified set of reasons found in other countries or in other areas of law. [12] First, an applicant may argue that a public body`s decision was outside the “letter and spirit of the law”: that an act was ultra vires or did not correspond to the “actual purpose” for which the powers were delegated to the public body. For example, in R (McCarthy and Stone Ltd) v.
Richmond Council, the House of Lords found that Richmond Council did not have the legal authority to charge residents a fee of £25 to consult its planning officials because the building permit decision was a legal obligation and no fee can be charged by a public body without clear legal authority. [13] Similarly, in Hazell v Hammersmith and Fulham LBC, the House of Lords found that the Council had acted beyond its powers under the Local Government Act 1972 by entering into interest rate swaps, a functional equivalent of borrowing money, which was limited by law. [14] In particular, the courts protect themselves against the executive`s attempt to exceed its power. In Ahmed v. Her Majesty`s Treasury, the Supreme Court ruled that section 1 of the United Nations Act 1946 does not grant the Prime Minister the right to issue two orders that have frozen or seized funds from persons designated by the UN Security Council as suspected terrorists without the possibility of verification. The law could not have left the definition of what was “necessary” or “expedient” to the uncontrolled judgment of the Prime Minister, which compromised citizens` rights without the clear authority of Parliament. [15] A public sector body may also act unlawfully by misinterpreting its own powers. In Anisminic Ltd v Foreign Compensation Commission, the House of Lords found that the Foreign Compensation Commission (a body responsible for compensating British persons who lost property when Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal during the 1956 Suez Crisis) erred in law in interpreting its powers restrictively. The FCC considered that an order of the Council on its powers, which excluded claims by any person whose “legal successor” was not a British company, applied to Anisminic Ltd, whose assets had been acquired by an Egyptian company after 1956.