So your recent ancestors were forcibly removed from their Indian Ocean islands in what everyone admits was a disgraceful episode in British colonial history. Your community has never got over the hurt and is still seeking redress or repatriation or both, and you were disappointed that last year’s consultation failed to include an option of financial compensation. Should the Courts now require the British Government to add this to the options it published for consultation last year? That is the question being mulled over by the Judges who started to hear arguments in a case that began last Thursday.

The options offered in a public consultation is a hot subject in the Law of Consultation right now; it was also incredibly important because it affects thousands of civil servants, local government officers, NHS Managers – or indeed anyone who organises public consultations. Ever since the Supreme Court found in favour of the claimants in the Haringey Council Tax case in 2014, the pendulum has moved significantly against single-option consultations. In practice it means that organisations must include alternative solutions in the options offered to the public. Ergo, the Chagosians say “If you can’t let us go back to our islands, how about some money instead …?”

Unfortunately, few things are more likely to bring consultation into disrepute than the wholesale inclusion of unviable options that decision-makers have absolutely no intention of ever implementing. Whether that applies in this particular case is of course for the Court to decide, but the general principle is of  considerable public policy interest. In effect, should a Court tell a public body. “You have got to consider this!”

The traditional judicial stance was to avoid this issue. Courts would not go there. Attempts to force the NHS to include a status quo option failed, and when, famously, the Vale of Glamorgan Council tried to claim that the Lord Chancellor’s office should have considered closing Caerphilly Magistrates Court instead of its beloved and restored Court in Barry, it got short shrift from the Judge.

However, our legal system is quite adept at picking up the vibes of a community feeling a sense of injustice and the last decade’s avalanche of Judicial Reviews on public consultations have made Judges more aware than ever that the choice of options is critical to their integrity.

At the Institute, we will watch closely to see if the Chagos islanders advance the interventionist tendency of the Court – or will they lose this as they have lost a whole string of previous legal challenges?