CROWN OFFICE LIST REVIEW

7th Floor, Millbank Tower Millbank
London SW1P 4QU

From : Sir Jeffery Bowman

Chairman: Crown Office List Review

Telephone (Direct line) 0171-217 4615

(Secretariat) 0171-217 4614/4623

Fax 0171-217 4616

The Right Honourable The Lord Irvine of Lairg

The Lord Chancellor

21 March, 2000

Dear Lord Chancellor,

I was invited on your behalf to be Chairman of a Review of the Crown Office at the end of February, 1999. I accepted and my formal appointment was from 15 March, 1999. The full Review Team, which was completed the same month, was:

Sir Jeffery Bowman (Chairman)

Lord Justice Simon Brown

Alan Cogbill ⁽¹⁾

Professor Jeffrey Jowell Q.C.

Mr Justice Keene

Bernadette Kenny* ⁽²⁾

Anne Owers ⁽³⁾

[* Bernadette Kenny replaced Nick Smedley in June, 1999]

Our terms of reference were as follows:

"To carry out a full review of the Crown Office List. The Review will take into account -

• the need to achieve an early and significant reduction in the waiting times for applications for judicial review in asylum cases;
• the additional pressures on judicial review that will be created when the Human Rights Act comes into force;
• the recommendations made by the Law Commission in its 1994 Report, Administrative Law: Judicial Review and Statutory Appeals, and by Lord Woolf in his Access to Justice Reports; and
• the civil justice reforms and new Civil Procedure Rules and Practice Directions;

The Review will examine:

1. the rules and procedures which apply to work in the Crown Office List;
2. the resources, procedures and working methods of the Crown Office;
3. the appropriateness of the jurisdictions within the Crown Office List and in particular, the most appropriate manner in which to deal with appeals from Statutory Tribunals; and
4. the constitution and organisation of the courts handling the Crown Office List.

The Review will put forward costed recommendations for improving the efficiency of the Crown Office List and will take into account the impact of its recommendations on other areas of business within the Court system. The recommendations must not compromise the fairness or probity of proceedings, the quality of decisions, or the independence of the judiciary."

We had the help of a Secretariat supplied by the Lord Chancellor's Department consisting of Stephen Gocke (Secretary), Jane Storrar (Assistant Secretary) and Dr. Adrian Yeo. In addition, a summer student, (Shofna Begum), helped us with our case studies.

At our first meeting, we decided to co-opt Lynne Knapman, Head of the Crown Office, to our team as an adviser; her knowledge and experience proved invaluable to us.

The expectation was that we would complete our Report by 31st December 1999.

We started by identifying our aims and objectives and by setting out a list of "Fundamental Questions" to which we hoped to get the answers in carrying out our Review. We were keen to consult as widely as possible. To that end, we sent copies of our terms of reference and of the "Fundamental Questions" not only to the judges who sit on the Crown Office List but also to a number of other senior judges and bodies interested in the workings of the Crown Office, inviting their views and comments.

We wanted to ensure, as far as possible, that we took into account the views of the Crown Office judges and gained their support for our proposals. I therefore attended two of their start of term meetings to keep them informed of our thinking and to get their reactions. In addition, I met several of them and we sent them all a questionnaire. They were all extremely helpful and constructive.

I also met other senior judges and users of the Crown Office and addressed meetings of the Administrative Law Bar Association and of the Crown Office Users' Committee. We held a seminar, attended largely but not exclusively by practitioners, at which we explained our thinking and emerging conclusions.

A full list of those to whom we wrote, of those who wrote to us and of those with whom we had meetings is set out in Appendix D. We are very grateful to them all for the time and effort they spent and for their most helpful comments.

It would not have been possible to complete our Report in the time we had available without the help and support of our Secretariat. They had to prepare papers for our consideration, summarise our discussions and organise our timetable. There was a great deal of paper for them to deal with and they had to follow up many detailed points with meticulous care; in doing so they worked long hours. We are indebted to them.

Last but not least, I would like to express my personal appreciation to the other members of the Review Team. They are all very busy people. They had to read the papers and to absorb a substantial amount of detail, often at fairly short notice. There were a total of 23 meetings for them to attend, mostly lasting half a day but some for a full day. Their contributions to the consideration of what were often difficult issues were made after careful thought and with an eye to the practical consequences. Their energy, enthusiasm and good humour made an important task both stimulating and enjoyable.

Our detailed conclusions and recommendations are set out in the attached report. Our main recommendations can be summarised as follows:

• There is a continuing need for a specialised court as part of the High Court to deal with public and administrative law cases.
• To reflect the fact that this is the principal work of the Crown Office List, the Crown Office List should be renamed "The Administrative Court".

• The judges in the Crown Office List should sit for longer periods in the jurisdiction during each term and it should become a more specialised court like the Commercial Court.

• Steps will need to be taken to alleviate the pressure on the Crown Office judges if they are to sit for longer periods, including allowing them one reading day a week.

• Apart from certain cases involving interim housing orders, there is little scope at present for any of the types of case at present heard in the Crown Office List to be heard elsewhere.

• Immigration and asylum cases should remain in the Crown Office List; it is not possible to ‘fast track' them when they represent such a large proportion of the caseload.

• Consideration should be given to changing rules and procedures in the immigration and asylum system as a whole and to extending the jurisdiction of the asylum support appellate system so as to reduce opportunities for judicial review.

• There should be a comprehensive study of the structure, jurisdiction, procedures, remedies and routes of appeal of tribunals.

• The nature of cases in the Crown Office List makes it necessary to retain special procedures in addition to those in the present Civil Procedure Rules.

• The requirement for permission to proceed should be retained in judicial review cases but the claim should in future be served on the defendant.

• Additional judicial and administrative support will be necessary to deal with the additional work expected in the Crown Office.

• There is scope for substantially more judicial case management and a lead judge should be appointed annually from the nominated judges to have overall responsibility for the work of the Crown Office.

• There should be a "blitz" to clear as far as possible the backlog of work in the Crown Office before the Human Rights Act comes fully into force.

Yours sincerely,