The Good Law Project told it does not have ‘carte blanche’ to sue the Government

The legal campaign group has brought several high-profile cases against the Government, including over the procurement of PPE

The legal campaign group is run by the activist lawyer Jolyon Maugham
The legal campaign group is run by the activist lawyer Jolyon Maugham

A legal campaign group that has challenged the Government on its handling of the pandemic may have its ability to appeal ministerial decisions curbed after a court judgment said it should not have “carte blanche” to sue.

The Good Law Project has brought several high-profile cases against the Government, including over the procurement of PPE and the employment of a Tory-linked PR agency to work on Covid-19 communications at the height of the pandemic.

The group, which is funded by donations, lost a ruling in the High Court yesterday after it claimed the appointment of Dido Harding as interim chair of the National Institute for Health Protection was the result of nepotism.

Lord Justice Singh and Mr Justice Swift found against the claim, ruling that “the evidence provides no support for this at all”.

They added that the Good Law Project, run by the activist lawyer Jolyon Maugham, did not have “carte blanche” to bring more judicial reviews on any subject in the future because it does not have “standing” on all issues.

Equality laws

“No individual, even with a sincere interest in public law issues, would be regarded as having standing in all cases,” they said.

“It also cannot be right as a matter of principle that an organisation could in effect confer standing upon itself by drafting its objects clause so widely that just about any conceivable public law error by any public authority falls within its remit.

“It cannot be supposed that the GLP now has carte blanche to bring any claim for judicial review no matter what the issues and no matter what the circumstances.”

A separate claim brought by the Runnymede Trust, an equalities think tank, and the Good Law Project found that the Government had broken equalities law in the appointment of Ms Harding because it had not complied with “the public sector equality duty” by running an “open” process.

Mr Maugham told The Telegraph that the judgment’s paragraphs on the project’s standing would “add a layer of complexity” to its challenges but “interfere with our work no more than that”.

“We are genuinely struggling to unpack what the Divisional Court meant, and we will seek clarity of the standing position at an appellate level,” he said.

A Whitehall source said: “There has been a historical trend of judges liberalising the standing test and the Good Law Project might find it harder to argue in future that they can bring a claim simply because there is a general public interest in doing so.”

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