Judicial Review and Courts Bill

The Lord Chancellor will be aware—I am sure that this will be covered in other speeches—that the evidential basis for this law change in England has been questioned, but the Law Society of Scotland has said that there is no evidence of any such problem in Scotland. On the contrary, there is good recent evidence of a Cart—or Eba judicial review as we call them in Scotland—in which the first tier tribunal and the upper tier judge misunderstood the petitioners’ evidence, and the Appeal Court intervened to reduce the upper tribunal’s decision, refusing it permission to appeal. Does he accept that there is absolutely no evidential basis, north or south of the border, for the need for these kind of procedures to be withdrawn, and can he tell me why he is forcing a restriction on the Scottish legal system for which there is no evidential basis?