Our place to talk – an independent website for supporters of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK.

The most-read independent website by and for Lib Dem supporters. Not paid for by trade unions or millionaires.

Advert

Author Archives: Sara Ogilvie

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

By Sara Ogilvie | Mon 1st December 2014 - 10:25 am

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.

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | 16 Comments

Most Read

Op-eds

Getting ready for Conference – Directory now out (Caron Lindsay)
Tom Arms’ World Review (Tom Arms)
Observations of an Expat: The Mecca Agreement (Tom Arms)
Politics at School (Geoff Reid)
Zack Polanski on the Fringe (Caron Lindsay)

Advert

Recent Comments

Jana
“ Trump’s approval rating has never topped 50 percent.” Sorry but most opinion polls in January and February 2025 had Trump over 50% approval with a Yo...
Judy Abel
@Tristan I am sorry but while privatisation may not automatically lead to poor water quality it certainly has in the UK. I’ve been to Italy and Denmark recent...
Tristan Ward
@Judy Abel The suggestion that privatisation automatically leads to poor water quality is not supported by the facts. Most of continental Europe has poor ...
Judy Abel
@John Indeed. At the very least we need to develop policies/guardrails on foreign investment in essential UK utilities to protect consumers and the viability of...
John Hann
Foreign investment in the utilities like the water companies may mean that their interests do not correspond with UK consumers' interests. Foreign takeover o...