R (HS2 Action Alliance Ltd) v Secretary of State for Transport

R (HS2 Action Alliance Ltd) v SS for Transport
Court	Supreme Court
Citation(s)	[2014] UKSC 3
Keywords
Constitution

R (HS2 Action Alliance Ltd) v Secretary of State for Transport [2014] UKSC 3 is a UK constitutional law case, concerning the conflict of law between a national legal system and European Union law.

Facts

The claimants brought a claim for judicial review of the safeguarding directions made by the defendant Secretary of State for phase one of the proposed HS2 railway. In the present proceedings, there was no dispute that the claimants' claim was under the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters 1998 (the Aarhus Convention). The claim was dismissed, as was their appeal (see[2014] All ER (D) 112 (Dec)). The judge ordered the claimants to pay the Secretary of State's costs. The judge ordered order that the claimants were entitled to costs protection and capped their respective liabilities at £10,000 each, under CPR 45.41 and Practice Direction 45.5.1 (PD 45.5.1) (for the provisions, see [4], [5] of the judgment). The Secretary of State cross-appealed against the orders insofar as they conferred costs protection on the second claimant local planning authority. The first claimant played no part in the cross-appeal.

Judgment

The Supreme Court held that the UK has constitutional instruments that the courts would not interpret to be abrogated without close scrutiny.

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207. The United Kingdom has no written constitution, but we have a number of constitutional instruments. They include Magna Carta, the Petition of Right 1628, the Bill of Rights and (in Scotland) the Claim of Rights Act 1689, the Act of Settlement 1701 and the Act of Union 1707. The European Communities Act 1972, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 may now be added to this list. The common law itself also recognises certain principles as fundamental to the rule of law. It is, putting the point at its lowest, certainly arguable (and it is for United Kingdom law and courts to determine) that there may be fundamental principles, whether contained in other constitutional instruments or recognised at common law, of which Parliament when it enacted the European Communities Act 1972 did not either contemplate or authorise the abrogation.

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See also

• European Union law

References