Attorney general: 'Plainly wrong' for only judges to balance public interest matters

Jeremy Wright QC has argued that the courts are not always best placed to make decisions involving matters of public interest.

In a speech at the University College London, the senior law officer to the government outlined both the constitutional and practical reasons why politicians were in a better position than judges to decide what is in the interest of the public.

'It is sometimes said that only judges are sufficiently detached to be able to take decisions which truly balance competing public interests. But the reality is more complex than that.

'There are circumstances where it is clearly right that decisions on matters of public interest should be taken by an elected, accountable politician, rather than by a court,' said the attorney general.

Wright also argued that the government's power to 'veto' the release of sensitive material was an appropriate 'measure of last resort' that has only been used seven times since 2005.

In 2015 the Supreme Court held that letters sent by the Prince of Wales to seven government departments between September 2004 and March 2005 should be disclosed to the press. This followed a freedom of information appeal brought by the Guardian journalist Rob Evans.

The court's decision came after the former attorney general, Dominic Grieve QC, issued a certificate under section 53(2) of Freedom of Information Act blocking an order to disclose elements of the letters.

Referring to the case, Wright said: 'The key issue in the case was the constitutional one: who in the end decides what is in the public interest.

'The Supreme Court held that the Act could not have been read as permitting the executive to take a different view of the public interest to that of a tribunal.'

Though the government complied with the court's decision and released the letters, Wright believes parliament intended that the veto should be an 'executive function with democratic accountability'.

'It constitutes a rare, but… far from unprecedented, recognition that the courts cannot constitutionally be the sole guardians of the public interest, and that there are important exceptions to the principle that courts' views are final,' said the attorney general.

'A proposition that complex balances of the public interest - which are after all the daily business of modern government - can only be done by courts is plainly wrong.'