Thread by @GoodLawProject

At 11am today our Serious Shortage Protocols Judicial Review returns to the High Court for an oral hearing.

The issue is whether the Government's 'Serious Shortage Protocols,' which enable pharmacists to substitute what your doctor prescribed with a different drug or dosage or delivery mechanism to cope with serious shortages on No Deal, are lawful. More here. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

The issue is of profound concern to many who rely on prescription drugs or treatments to stay alive. (For scale almost half of us regularly take prescription medicines although mostly to deal with conditions that are not life threatening.)

We think the use of SSPs, which were rushed in to achieve cost savings without proper consultation, pose serious risks to patients. But there is another issue too.

If we get permission today, the Court will be accepting that there are serious doubts over the lawfulness of what the Government says is a key plank of its post No Deal planning for medicine shortages.

Could any responsible Government 'No Deal' against such a background?

Will we get permission today? The case is very strong. We believe we are quite clearly right and the Government's conduct is quite clearly unlawful. But it is not as simple as that...

We were refused permission "on the papers" by Judge Jonathan Swift who was the Government's main lawyer before he became a judge and has a reputation for being very Government minded.

And the oral hearing today - essentially an appeal - has been listed before Judge Michael Supperstone who is the only Judge so far as we are aware whose reputation for being pro-Government rivals that of Judge Jonathan Swift.

There's a kind of unwritten rule in the legal profession that lawyers don't say this stuff in public. But we do say it to our clients, we do believe it to be true, and it is highly regrettable that the outcome of your case can depend so much on which judge you get.

Perhaps Judge Supperstone will defy his reputation and do what seems to us (and our lawyers) to be quite clearly the right thing. We will, of course, let you know as soon as we have news.

(Tweets in this thread, by JMQC.)