Author Archives: Sara Ogilvie

The Independent View: Why Liberal Democrat MPs should reject Government’s power-grabbing judicial review proposals

Undemocratic, unnecessary and unfair, over the past eleven months the Government’s crude attempts to curtail judicial review have been the subject of intense parliamentary debate. And yet today, as MPs are once again called to vote on the proposals, the government is attempting to pull off an unusual parliamentary feat: disregarding fierce cross-party criticism to make its proposals worse, rather than better.

Judicial review is the legal mechanism by which individuals and organisations can ask a court to check whether a public authority has acted lawfully. The powers of the court in a judicial review are limited, but in a modern democracy, where great power is concentrated in the hands of the executive, it is one of the great and vital levelers. 

Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | 16 Comments
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    @Mick Taylor, I agree we must be concerned about income inequality in current circumstances, though overcoming this is about taxing the rich, better public serv...
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    @Mick Taylor, you are right to focus on strategy since we have plenty of policy, but i think we also need a vision and better messaging. It is easy to have stro...
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    The New Deal graphic is very helpful but of course not perfect. As to preventing Reform from winning, we need to be an anti-establishment party as Chris Bowers ...
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    It is certainly true that community politics is insufficient for long term gain. That was my experience in 13 yrs as a councillor and still active locally; at o...
  • Katharine Pindar
    Splendid stuff, well done Yorkists! 'The New Deal' seems a great idea in itself. Your graphic shows, however, how much work will need to be done to assert ourse...