---

Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill

My Lords, as the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General indicated, I put my name to the amendment. I would like first to say how grateful I am to him for having seen me, among others, to discuss the reasons for it. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which I serve, will, I am sure, be very glad that the matter has been clarified in this way. I entirely agree with what he has said about the need to avoid opportunistic judicial reviews going into the merits of the kind of cases that he describes. I welcomed the fact that in Grand Committee the noble and learned Lord said—and I am not sure that one knew about this before—that he would not have approved of an ouster clause of the kind that was to be found in the Asylum and Immigration Bill. I am sure that that approach shows a proper respect for the rule of law. Like him, we believe that the courts of Northern Ireland have exercised their discretion in this and other areas admirably well. The advantage of the amendment is that it makes it quite clear that judicial review will be exceptional but will be fully available in cases involving not only dishonesty or bad faith. The reference to ““exceptional circumstances”” includes, as indeed one would expect, cases where there is a lack of jurisdiction or other significant error of law. For that reason, I very much support the amendment, and I am sure that the noble and learned Lord is right to say that there will be widespread support for it.