Crime and courts bill to allow judicial reviews to be heard in the Upper Tribunals

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The Ministry of Justice has admitted that increase in judicial review cases were because of increasing numbers of asylum and immigration cases.

In its consultation paper, on reducing the number of judicial reviews, published last week, the MoJ said that since October 2011 courts could transfer a limited amount of these cases to the Upper Tribunal.

Officials said that measures contained in the crime and courts bill lying before the parliament would allow for all immigration, asylum or nationality judicial reviews to be heard in the Upper Tribunal, and allow the Lord Chief Justice to deploy judges more flexibility to respond more quickly to changes in demand.

The number of judicial reviews has grown from 160 in 1974 to 4,250 in 2000 and over 11,000 in 2011. Of the 7,600 applications for permission considered in 2011, only around one in six was granted.

Justice secretary Chris Grayling said that UK had seen a huge surge of judicial review cases in recent years. But the MoJ’s announcement on the consultation had not mentioned immigration cases at all.

The minister added that the system was being slowed down due to large numbers of applications which were found short of merit, they were taking a lot of judicial time, costing the court system money and leaving the bodies involved in them frustrated.

The justice secretary said that he was worried that judicial review was being used mainly by organisations for public relation purposes as mere starting up of a judicial review generated a headline.

He stressed the need for taking back to a system where judicial review was available for genuine claims, which provided people with access to judicial review where they needed it but at the same time weeds out cases that should have never be there in the first place.

Among the measures in the consultation paper was cutting the time limits for bringing judicial reviews, from three months to six weeks in planning cases and three months to one month in public procurement cases.

Oral renewals were to be scrapped for cases already heard or ‘totally without merit’ and fees would rise, from £60 to £235 for applications in the High Court.