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Public access to information about court cases has improved in a significant victory for open justice.

Previously, court staff were routinely refusing journalists access to judicial review papers filed in court.

But the head of the Administrative Court, Mr Justice Collins, this month ruled that public access to judicial review papers must be equivalent to the easy access generally granted in private law suits.

The ruling is significant because it will now be easier to report judicial review cases, which often involve challenges to public bodies’ controversial decisions that affect large parts of the community.

The victory is all the more sweet because defamatory reports based on papers released by the courts are protected by qualified privilege under the Defamation Act.

The ruling resulted from a claim brought by pressure groups Corner House Research and Campaign Against Arms Trade against the Director of the Serious Fraud Office.

Since a rule change in October 2006, the media and other members of the public have been entitled to obtain from court records a copy of a “statement of case”, if the litigation has reached a certain stage. (This right is set out in Rule 5.4C of the Civil Procedure Rules.)

The rules define “statements of case” to include a claim form and a defence. Such papers often contain information of great media interest.

However, an anomaly arose between judicial review cases and private law suits because in judicial review there is no “defence” – the equivalent papers are instead called the acknowledgment of service, and detailed grounds.

This semantic difference enabled the Ministry of Justice to claim that since the acknowledgment of service and detailed grounds did not strictly speaking fall within the definition of “statements of case”, court staff need not release them automatically to reporters or the public.

But Mr Justice Collins said there was “no logic” in the Ministry’s stance. It was trying to rely purely on a technical, as opposed to a purposive, reading of the rules.

He said: “The whole purpose behind the change in the rules to give access by third parties to the statements of claim and defences was in the interests of public justice to enable the media, and any member of the public, to be able to see why claims have been brought; why they have been rejected; why they were being allowed to proceed.

“It seems to me that it is, if anything, more important that there be public access to judicial review claims. They are the more likely to be matters of genuine public concern than litigation between individuals…”

He refused to grant the Ministry permission to appeal.

The decision is also a victory for common sense over an excessively legalistic approach. To all intents and purposes, the acknowledgment of service and detailed grounds in judicial review cases perform the same role as the defence in other types of litigation, and the media will welcome the new, consistent approach to accessing them.

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To contact Tony Jaffa or Nigel Hanson telephone 0800 0731 411 or e-mail [email protected] or [email protected]