Greater Manchester police debate raises legal eyebrows
Posted on | July 6, 2011
“We can change the law more quickly than you can.” That seemed to be the message to parliament from the supreme court at the end of last week. A spokesman told the Press Association news agency that the court would consider a belated application by Greater Manchester police to “stay“, or suspend, the high court ruling on bail that has caused such consternation during the past week.
That raised legal eyebrows. “I didn’t know the supreme court had the power to stay a ruling ahead of an appeal” one criminal lawyer told me. I immediately asked the court’s spokesman whether it did.
There was no reply until Tuesday, when the spokesman – not the court – admitted that it was “questionable whether it would be open to the court to grant this relief”
It turned out that one or more unnamed judges, sitting in private, had dismissed the police application for a stay. Whether this was because the court had no power to suspend the judgment pending an appeal scheduled for 25 July or whether it was because the court did not want to pre-empt the government’s fast-track legislation was far from clear.”
Joshua Rozenberg, The Guardian, 6 July 2011