Steve Reed – 2021 Comments on Government Plans to Bypass Judicial Review Rulings

The comments made by Steve Reed, the Shadow Justice Secretary, on 6 December 2021.

After a week when No. 10 has behaved as though they are above the law when it comes to Covid regulations, we are now told they want to grant themselves the right to ignore the courts altogether.

From the bedroom tax to the bombing of Yemen, the judicial review process exists so the public can challenge the Government and other public bodies when it suspects they have broken the law.

Incredibly, the Government plans to subvert that process by taking on even more arbitrary powers, and in future change the law to comply with their decisions, rather than change their decisions to comply with the law.

This is nothing to do with the sovereignty of Parliament, but all about the Henry VIII fantasies of a Prime Minister who thinks none of the rules the rest of us have to live by should ever be applied to him.