Wednesday’s Supreme Court Judgement in the case of R (ex parte UNISON) v The Lord Chancellor is arguably one of the most important for years … or maybe decades.

In some ways it is quite sensational – for it takes a concept which most of us take for granted in a mature democracy – namely our access to justice and shows the extent Judges will go to defend such rights against a Government keen to curtail them. UNISON argued that the introduction of fees for taking cases to Employment Tribunals negated the practical value of having a range of employment rights, and discriminated against those who could not afford the sums involved.

What the Supreme Court says is that the administration of justice is not like any other public service where Governments can manipulate access such as by introducing fees. It is a constitutional right dating back to Magna Carta and enforceable through the common law. Upholding this principle made it unnecessary to decide definitively whether, as UNISON claimed, women in the workplace were discriminated against, but the tenor of the judgements suggest that it was.

Access to our Courts is already a major issue in the UK. The Aarhus Convention – to which we are signatories – requires that, for major infrastructure projects, those who feel their rights to information and consultation/involvement have been denied must have access to courts that is ‘free of charge or inexpensive.’ The UK has been out of compliance for years – despite having put in place an Aarhus costs capping order that enables environmental pressure groups and others to bring forward cases to challenge project promoters or developers. It has helped ensure that Judicial Reviews questioning the adequacy of public consultations can be heard in our Courts.

But access to justice is an issue outside planning. The Coalition Government, working to the same agenda as the raising of Tribunal fees, sought to curb the ability of claimants to seek Judicial Reviews. One proposal was to stop one public body from taking another to Court; that got nowhere. Another was to force claimants to disclose their sources of funding. Another was to increase the fees. In all these, the stated aim was to avoid wasting time on frivolous or vexatious grievances. In the UNISON case, the deterrent effect of high fees was clear enough, but the evidence is that claimants with good cases or poor cases were equally deterred. It did not work. But it did undermine the principle that justice must be reasonably accessible to all.

One of the drawbacks of the current situation is that if someone believes a consultation is inadequate, their only recourse is to raise money to mount a judicial review. Yesterday’s Judgement may just open the door for more accessible access to our Courts.

The issue will be discussed in forthcoming sessions of the Law of Consultation