House of Lords votes against GraylinG4s plans to restrict judicial review access
Ex-Tory cabinet ministers defy party to keep judges’ discretion as Labour says defeat is ‘humiliating slapdown’ for justice secretary
The justice secretary, Chris Grayling, has suffered a defeat in a key House of Lords vote on his plans to curtail access to judicial review, which would have made it harder to challenge government decisions in court.
Peers voted by 247 to 181, a majority of 66, to ensure that the judges keep their discretion over whether they can hear judicial review applications after a warning from a former lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, that the alternative amounted to an ‘elective dictatorship’.