On 17 October 2012, the UK Supreme Court, in the case of Walton v The Scottish Ministers, upheld the applicant’s right to challenge the Scottish authorities’ decision to construct a bypass near Aberdeen in Scotland. Although the appeal was ultimately unsuccessful, the Court took the opportunity to clarify a number of issues relating to standing.
Bulletin readers will remember that last year the Scottish law on standing was changed following the ruling in AXA General Insurance and the restrictive legal test of ‘title and interest’ was removed. The Supreme Court in Walton, clarified certain points of this earlier ruling and confirmed that ‘title and interest' had no place in public interest litigation. The Court held that in order to raise a challenge here the applicant must be a “person aggrieved under the provision of Schedule 2 of the 1984 Act”. The Court held it would be inconsistent with the principles of environmental law to require that his private interests must be affected in order to meet this criteria.
Lord Reed cited the Court in Axa and said that it is “necessary for a person to demonstrate some particular interest in order to demonstrate that he is not a mere busybody ......but there may be cases where any individual, simply as a citizen, will have sufficient interest to bring a public authority’s violation of the law to the attention of the Court, without having to demonstrate any greater impact upon himself than upon other members of the public. The rule of law would not be maintained if, because everyone was equally affected by an unlawful act, no-one was able to bring proceedings to challenge it”
Lord Hope considered the effect of the challenged decision on local wildlife noting that they have no means of standing on their own behalf and as such someone has to be allowed speak on its behalf. The UKHR blog says that once the requirement of standing has been satisfied, it may also influence the Court when exercising its discretion as to the remedy. Lord Carnwath in his judgment said that discretion was a necessary counterbalance to widening the rules of standing.
Click here to read an article from the UK Human Rights Blog.