Supreme Court throws out discriminatory legal aid residence test in minutes in humiliation for Gove
updated on 20 April 2016
The government’s attempt to introduce a discriminatory residence test for legal aid claimants, which sought to limit the availability of services for people born outside the United Kingdom, but living here for "one year or more", has been unanimously thrown out by the Supreme Court.
The court ruled that the former justice secretary, Chris Grayling, had acted beyond his powers when attempting to introduce the test as secondary legislation in the Legal Aid Act. In order to cut government spending, the residence test would have denied access to justice for UK residents, thus undermining the fundamental principles of equal protection under the law and accountability in the courts on which the UK justice system is based. This was challenged in the courts by the Public Law Project, which fought the case on the basis that no politician should have the power to discriminate so heavily in the justice system.
Supreme Court judgments are usually handed down months after a hearing, but on this occasion the seven Supreme Court judges abruptly halted proceedings halfway through and threw out the government’s plan after just a few minutes’ recess, on the grounds that it would contravene both common law and the Human Rights Act. As reported by the Guardian, the ruling is humiliating for justice secretary Michael Gove, who will not be able to introduce the residence test this summer as planned. If the government still wants to press ahead with the residence test, a new bill will have to be subject to another full debate in parliament.
In a statement, the Supreme Court said: “The issues in this appeal were whether the proposed civil legal aid residence test in the draft Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act…is ultra vires [beyond the powers of the legislation] and unjustifiably discriminatory and so in breach of common law and the Human Rights Act 1998.”
The government has said that it will wait to consider the full judgment before deciding how to proceed.
