UK Supreme Court (10/07/13)



I really enjoyed my visit to the UK Supreme Court on Monday for the long awaited FOI appeal involving South Lanarkshire Council.

I've been contacted by lots of readers who watched the proceedings live on Court TV and one of them summed things up rather well I thought - with the following comment by email:

 Hi Mark 

I watched the appeal yesterday on the live feed and thought that SLC took a kicking.

KF

Now I would say that's a very fair comment because I certainly felt that the Council's case was terribly weak - and took a bit of a mauling from some of the judges - one of whom, Lord Wilson if I remember correctly, compared the Council's defence to 'dancing on the head of a pin' and like something out of 'Alice in Wonderland'.

The judges also asked some rather uncomfortable questions about the Council's case such as:

What exactly are you exempting them from?

What are we getting at?

Where does this take you?

That's not correct, is it?  

So while you can never take these things for granted I certainly felt that the hearing went very well - with Richard Keen QC living up to his 'Rottweiller' billing by  delivering a masterful performance and compelling arguments as to why South Lanarkshire's appeal should be rejected.

Now we await the Court's written decision which may take a bit of time to produce given the time of year - but as soon as I hear anything I will share the news on the blog site.

Until then - fingers crossed.  

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