An explosion in judicial review and public law has made it harder for governments to implement policy in areas such as immigration and asylum, Jack Straw has said.
Straw, who served as Tony Blair’s foreign and home secretary, has endorsed a report by the ThinkLabour think-tank which says Andy Burnham must rein in judicial review and seize back powers from the courts and quangos to push through his agenda on everything from immigration to infrastructure projects.
The report, which was written by a member of Burnham’s transition team, points to how judicial reviews related to immigration have “soared” and says that legal challenges are getting in the way of removing foreign offenders.
In recent years, both Conservative and Labour home secretaries have voiced frustration at the legal system being used to frustrate attempts to remove people from the country.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has vowed to “end vexatious, last-minute claims” and has promised changes to the way the European Convention of Human Rights and Modern Slavery Act are applied to make it easier to remove failed asylum seekers.
In a foreword to the ThinkLabour report, Straw claims there has been an “astonishing explosion in the practice of public law” since the 70s, covering “employment and equalities law, asylum and immigration law, human rights and all kinds of applications for judicial review in which the courts are invited to intervene to stop or delay a wide variety of decisions of public authorities”.
According to Straw, this has “undermined effective and timely decision-making in one area of public administration after another, from immigration and asylum decisions, through to major infrastructure projects”.
He goes on: “This over-obsession with procedure is now actively undermining our democracy. Little wonder that public frustration with our system of government is as high as it is.”
The solution, Straw says, is to shift “political decision-making away from the courts”, to democratic bodies like Parliament.
Jack Straw says an ‘explosion in the practice of public law’ has frustrated asylum policy (Photo: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty)The ThinkLabour report was authored by Amelia Wood, who provided policy support to Burnham’s transition team.
It calls for reform of judicial review to “speed up the process” and “clarify the grounds on which judicial review can be sought and won”. “Should the government lose, we should give the courts better tools to advise on the way forward where the loss was on a procedural basis,” the report says.
The report recommends ditching all statutory requirements to consult, saying that “if policies need more feedback, let it come from elections”.
It also argues that the Government should “prioritise core delivery in public services”, rather than secondary goals such giving the NHS more ambitious net-zero targets than the rest of the public sector or mandating that new prisons should promote biodiversity.
The report welcomes recent comments by the Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster, Louise Haigh, who has criticised the procurement process as a “tick-box exercise” and said it must be refocused on jobs and skills.
ThinkLabour was previously known as Labour Together. It was highly influential with Sir Keir Starmer’s government, but rebranded in April after it was reported that it had commissioned investigators to look into journalists’ backgrounds.
At the time of the reports in February, Labour Together said it had hired PR and lobbying firm APCO Worldwide to investigate a potential hack and that the company had gone beyond what was asked of them. APCO said it would carry out a “detailed internal review of the project”.
ThinkLabour already looks set to wield influence with Burnham’s Government. The think-tank donated £22,186 to the Burnham campaign, covering much of the policy team working on transition.
A number of former staff have also joined No 10, such as ex-chief executive Alison Phillips, who is now deputy chief of staff in Downing Street, and JP Spencer, ThinkLabour’s former director of devolution policy, who is now leading much of the work on No 10 North.
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