Criminal Justice and Courts Bill — Clause 67 — Interveners and Costs — 1 Dec 2014 at 19:00

The majority of MPs voted in favour of a presumption that interveners in judicial review cases will be required to pay any costs incurred by other parties as a result of their intervention.

The majority of MPs voted against giving the court discretion over when to order an intervenor in a judicial review case to pay a party's costs; or to order a party to pay an intervenor's costs.

The majority of MPs voted to require an intervenor to pay the costs of a party in a case when those costs have been incurred as a result of the intervenor's involvement and to forbid courts ordering parties to a case to pay the costs of an intervenor.

Interveners are not parties to a case, but they can put additional information and perspectives before the court. During a previous debate on the Bill it was said[1]:

  • The role of interveners is most often to assist the court, and the most frequent interveners are organisations such as Liberty and Justice, whose expertise has proven invaluable in many cases

MPs were considering the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill[2]. The motion supported by the majority of MPs in this vote was:

  • That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 107.

The rejected Lords amendment 107[3] related to Clause 67 of the Bill[4] and stated:

  • Page 67, line 25, leave out subsections (2) to (6) and insert—
  • “( ) The High Court and the Court of Appeal shall have a discretion whether to order an intervener to pay the costs of a relevant party to the proceedings, and shall have a discretion whether to order a relevant party to the proceedings to pay the intervener’s costs.

The subsections retained as a result of this vote and which would have been be deleted by the rejected Lords amendment 107 stated:

  • (2) A relevant party to the proceedings may not be ordered by the High Court or the Court of Appeal to pay the intervener’s costs in connection with the proceedings.
  • (3) Subsection (2) does not prevent the court making an order if it considers that there are exceptional circumstances that make it appropriate to do so.
  • (4) On an application to the High Court or the Court of Appeal by a relevant party to the proceedings, the court must order the intervener to pay any costs specified in the application that the court considers have been incurred by that party as a result of the intervener’s involvement in the proceedings.
  • (5) Subsection (4) does not require the court to make an order if it considers that there are exceptional circumstances that make it inappropriate to do so.
  • (6) In determining whether there are exceptional circumstances that are relevant for the purposes of subsection (3) or (5), the court must have regard to criteria specified in rules of court.

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Debate in Parliament | Source |

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Party Summary

Votes by party, red entries are votes against the majority for that party.

What is Tell? '+1 tell' means that in addition one member of that party was a teller for that division lobby.

What are Boths? An MP can vote both aye and no in the same division. The boths page explains this.

What is Turnout? This is measured against the total membership of the party at the time of the vote.

PartyMajority (Aye)Minority (No)BothTurnout
Con267 (+1 tell) 2089.1%
DUP1 0012.5%
Green0 10100.0%
Independent1 10100.0%
Lab0 190 (+2 tell)074.4%
LDem41 (+1 tell) 0075.0%
PC0 30100.0%
Respect0 10100.0%
SDLP0 2066.7%
UKIP2 00100.0%
Total:312 200081.0%

Rebel Voters - sorted by party

MPs for which their vote in this division differed from the majority vote of their party. You can see all votes in this division, or every eligible MP who could have voted in this division

Sort by: Name | Constituency | Party | Vote

NameConstituencyPartyVote
David DavisHaltemprice and HowdenConno
Zac GoldsmithRichmond ParkCon (front bench)no

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