UK spy tribunal not immune to legal probes into mass data hacking, Supreme Court finds
The Government has lost a five-year battle to keep British intelligence agencies from being dragged before UK courts, setting the stage for a major review into whether GCHQ hacking is legal.
The Supreme Court today ruled that the UK spying tribunal, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal’s (IPT), should be subject to judicial review, dismissing an argument by the Government that its decisions could not be challenged.
The Government had pointed to a clause in the law which stated that "determinations, awards, orders and other decisions of the tribunal (including decisions as to whether they have jurisdiction) shall not be subject to appeal or be liable to be questioned in any court".
However, in the ruling on Wednesday, Lord Robert Carnwath said there was a "need to ensure that the law applied by the specialist tribunal is not developed in isolation, but conforms to the general law of the land".
"I see a strong case for holding that, consistently with the rule of law, binding effect cannot be given to a clause which purports wholly to exclude the supervisory jurisdiction of the High Court to review a decision of an inferior court or tribunal, whether for excess or abuse of jurisdiction, or error of law," he said.
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