Are activist judges undermining Parliament? A growing case for legal reform
18 February 2025, 15:48 | Updated: 18 February 2025, 15:58
After a week of increasingly bizarre decisions from immigration judges that rocked public confidence in the judiciary, it was an incredibly strange moment for the Lady Chief Justice to make a major intervention into current affairs.
The incident stemmed from an exchange at last week's Prime Minister’s Questions, where Kemi Badenoch raised the issue of a judge allowing a Palestinian family to settle in the UK - but on the Ukrainian resettlement scheme.
Judge Hugo Norton-Taylor ruled that the absence of any kind of resettlement scheme as decreed by Parliament was “irrelevant” and instead it was about their rights to a family life under the ECHR.
This case has come to prominence alongside other eye-opening cases.
We have seen
* The Jamaican drug dealer who avoided deportation despite telling the judge he would continue smoking cannabis
* The Albanian criminal who avoided deportation because his son didn’t like chicken nuggets
* A Grenadian criminal who avoided deportation because her Latvian husband wouldn’t like the spicy food in the Caribbean.
Given such obvious abuses of both the rules set by Parliament and any sense of common sense about these people coming and staying in Britain, it was - at best a - very poor time to make such a pointed intervention.
Much, much worse than this, though, is the arrogance and superciliousness with which the judiciary now operates. Judicial independence means that judges are free to make determinations and rulings free from political interference in them – it does not mean that they are to be free from criticism.
The worst offence though, is on the primacy of Parliament itself, a trend that has been increasing in recent years. Spurred on by America-brain, many commentators and even politicians seem to think that Britain has some kind of separation of powers.
We don’t! Turn off The West Wing and realise that in Britain – Parliament is sovereign.
If Parliament doesn’t like a ruling of a judge, it is perfectly within its rights to legislate to change the law. In all of the cases mentioned above, it should do so.
If Parliament wanted to abolish the Supreme Court, remove the Lady Chief Justice, or ban foreign chicken nuggets, it is perfectly entitled to.
Heaven knows I am no fan of Keir Starmer, but he is completely within his rights to declare that he wanted to close loopholes being exploited by activist judges who are acting against the interests of the British people.
The problem facing the PM, and the Government more broadly, is the way successive Parliaments have given away its power bit by bit, either by enshrining ECHR principles across the statue book, or else empowering QUANGOs, regulators and other bodies at the expense of ministers of the crown.
Until we have a Parliament that is willing and able to accept the awesome powers and responsibilities that are their right and their inheritance, though, more and more unelected figures, from bureaucrats to judges, will continue to muscle in.
In the name of democracy and sovereignty, this should be opposed.
James Price is a former Conservative Senior Special Adviser and Chief of Staff to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He tweets at @jamespriceglos
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