R. v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs ex p. Rees-Mogg

(Computer Aided Transcript of the Stenograph Notes of John Larking, Chancery House, Chancery Lane, London WC2 Telephone No: 071 404 7464 Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)

MR D PANNICK QC, MR K LINDBLOM, MR R THOMPSON and MR J CALLMAN (instructed by Gouldens, London EC4) appeared on behalf of the Applicant. MR S KENTRIDGE QC, MR S RICHARDS and MR D ANDERSON (instructed by Treasury Solicitors) appeared on behalf of the Respondent. ____________________

With the great increase in the number of applications for judicial review, the judges who sit in the Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench are all conscious of the need to confine judicial review within its proper sphere. As Sir John Donaldson MR said in R v H.M. Treasury ex parte Smedley 1985 1 QB 657 at 666

If there were ever any doubts as to the nature of what we were being asked to decide, those doubts were removed when Mr Pannick told us that he did not intend to refer to ____________________

any of the lengthy extracts from Hansard contained in Lord Rees�Mogg's affidavit. There are passages in that affidavit, and in Form 86A itself, which refer to the "deliberate" amendment by Parliament of the Bill as originally presented, and the "conscious" and "deliberate" exclusion of the Protocol on Social Policy from section 1(1) of the Act. But Mr Pannick has not relied on those passages. Indeed he has not referred to the affidavit at all. The case thus wears a very different aspect from what it did when leave was granted.