The IRAL, which looked at the potential for reform of judicial review, reported that out of 5,502 Cart judicial reviews brought between 2012 and 2019, only 12 (0.22%) were successful. The Lord Chancellor, Robert Buckland, later told Parliament this was ‘an astonishingly low rate’.
However, law firm Public Law Project (PLP) said the statistics were misleading―a more accurate figure would be 12 successes out of 45 cases brought (representing a 26% success rate), since the results of only 45 cases were known. It said it was misleading to portray all 5,502 unreported cases as unsuccessful because it was not known whether they were or not.
PLP asked the OSR to investigate. In its response, dated 10 June, Ed Humpherson, the OSR’s director general for regulation, said: ‘We agree that the main assumption that underpins the analysis―that all unreported Cart cases are failures―is overly simplistic, because we know that some unreported cases have successful outcomes’.
Humpherson added: ‘MoJ agreed with our view that the reported cases figure used by the panel was too limited. MoJ has agreed to review how the data are presented in its publications and the associated caveats. It also said it would examine the possibility of collecting improved data in the longer term.’
Joe Tomlinson, research director at PLP, said: ‘The claim about Cart JRs was deeply misleading.
‘The IRAL report is an otherwise thorough piece of work despite the limited time it had to do its job, but this was a poor conclusion drawn from inadequate data which was then unfortunately relayed to Parliament and the media… This presented parliamentarians and the public with a distorted view of judicial review.’
An MoJ spokesperson said: ‘We are grateful for the Panel’s analysis and for the work of others in evaluating their findings.
‘A huge range of data continues to be assessed as part of our public consultation on Judicial Review, which will report back in due course.’
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