PM says many judical reviews are "completely pointless" and outlines changes to be made: they will cost more, less time to apply and fewer chances to appeal
Prime Minister David Cameron has said in a speech at the CBI conference that the government intends to "get a grip" of the issue of judicial reviews.
You can read the relevant section of Cameron's speech below:
"First, judicial reviews.
This is a massive growth industry in Britain today.
Back in 1998 there were four and a half thousand applications for review and that number almost tripled in a decade.
Of course some are well-founded – as we saw with the West Coast mainline decision.
But let's face it: so many are completely pointless.
Last year, an application was around 5 times more likely to be refused than granted.
We urgently needed to get a grip on this.
So here's what we're going to do.
Reduce the time limit when people can bring cases.
Charge more for reviews – so people think twice about time-wasting.
And instead of giving hopeless cases up to four bites of the cherry to appeal a decision, we will halve that to two."
BBC News has more on what it calls Cameron's proposed "crack down" on "time-wasting" caused by the "massive growth industry" in legal challenges to government policy here.
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling explains more on YouTube: