Nobody likes to be told that they are wrong but we all make mistakes that sometimes need correcting. That is the essence of judicial review whereby mistakes made by the government can be challenged and rectified. However this government has got so used to being in power after almost 11 years that it has decided it doesn’t want to be told it is wrong anymore.

The Independent Review of Administrative Law was measured in its approach and offered up some mild options for reform but the government has typically done its own thing by ignoring the so-called experts and pushing forward with its own ideas for reform, consequences be damned.

Professor Mark Elliott from the University of Cambridge has described the changes as a form of “constitutional gaslighting” because of the way that the government uses the rather nebulous concept of the ‘rule of law’ to justify the sledgehammer it is taking to a procedure that has a long and proud history.

In particular the reforms would limit the ability of the courts to declare administrative acts to be unlawful from the very outset (void ab initio). This seemingly basic principle (that if an action is wrong then it has always been wrong) is problematic in the eyes of the government because retrospective quashing can bring up “additional issues” that need to be rectified. The argument follows that not having to sort out this mess would enhance legal certainty and therefore the rule of law too.

Of course this ignores the rather disturbing fact that this would enable the government to legislate by secondary legislation in any way that it sees fit and then for any governmental action taken under that law to be effectively untouchable even after a judicial review has been brought by a claimant.

If the rule of law is about holding the government to account then it is an insult to anyone with the slightest degree of critical thinking skills when that same principle is used to justify the mutilation of judicial review.