Have your say on the Judicial Review and Courts Bill

Aims of the Bill

The Bill includes a range of measures, most of which were headlined in the Queen’s Speech earlier in the year, and some of which are provisions reintroduced from bills that fell in previous parliaments.

The Bill subdivides into two substantive parts.

Part 1 makes reforms to the law of judicial review throughout the United Kingdom, but with a primary focus on England and Wales. In 2020, the Government commissioned the Independent Review of Administrative Law (IRAL), which was chaired by Lord Faulks and reported earlier this year.

The reforms in the Bill implement IRAL’s recommendations to abolish so-called Cart judicial reviews (through a legal provision known as an “ouster clause”) and to provide an explicit statutory basis for courts to make suspended quashing orders (delaying the legal effects of their judgments). The Bill goes further and makes provision about prospective-only judicial remedies (which partially or wholly treat historic illegal acts as though they were valid), for which IRAL made no recommendation.

Part 2 of the Bill covers a wide range of court and tribunal reforms, most of which have either been revived from bills that fell in previous parliaments, or which were otherwise flagged in the 2021 Queen’s Speech.

• Chapter 1 introduces reforms to criminal procedure, including making provision about automatic online convictions for certain offences and new written procedures;
• Chapter 2 reintroduces proposals from the Court and Tribunals (Online Procedure) Bill 2017-19 to establish a new Online Procedure Rule Committee to regulate electronic court and tribunal proceedings;
• Chapter 3 reforms the governing structure of the employment tribunals system, integrating it more closely with the unified two-tier tribunals and relieving the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of responsibility for overseeing relevant statutory arrangements;
• Chapter 4 introduces a range of reforms to the coroner system;
• Chapter 5 makes miscellaneous changes to the justice system, including abolishing local justice areas (a proposal originally trailed in the Prison and Courts Bill 2016-17) and some updates to legislation enabling certain courts to be closed when replacement facilities are ready for use.

Follow the progress of the Judicial Review and Courts Bill

The Judicial Review and Courts Bill 2021–22 was introduced to the House of Commons on 21 July 2021. This Bill was debated at second reading on Tuesday 26 October 2021 and has now been sent to a Public Bill Committee which will scrutinise the Bill line by line and is expected to report to the House by Tuesday 23 November 2021.

• Bills before Parliament: Judicial Review and Courts Bill 2021–22
• Read Explanatory Notes: Judicial Review and Courts Bill 2021–22
• House of Commons Library Briefing Paper

Oral evidence sessions are expected to be held on Tuesday 2 November.

Guidance on submitting written evidence

Deadline for written evidence submissions

The first sitting of the Public Bill Committee is expected to be on Tuesday 2 November. Written evidence can now be sent in to the Public Bill Committee. The sooner you send in your submission, the more time the Committee will have to take it into consideration and possibly reflect it in an amendment. The order in which amendments are taken in Committee will be available in due course under Selection of Amendments on the Bill documents pages. Once the Committee has dealt with an amendment it will not revisit it.

The first sitting of the Public Bill Committee is expected to be Tuesday 2 November and the Committee is scheduled to report by Tuesday 23 November. However, please note that when the Committee concludes its consideration of the Bill it is no longer able to receive written evidence and it can conclude earlier than the expected deadline of 5.00pm on Tuesday 23 November. You are strongly advised to submit your written evidence as soon as possible.

Your submission should be emailed to scrutiny@parliament.uk

Further guidance on submitting written evidence can be found here.

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