Commentary on Sections: Part 1
Section 13: Right to appeal to Court of Appeal etc
114.Section 13 provides the basis on which appeals can be made to the Court of Appeal in England and Wales or Northern Ireland or the Court of Session in Scotland. Appeals may be made on any point of law with permission either from the Upper Tribunal or the relevant appellate court (see subsection (11)). Certain decisions are excluded and the Lord Chancellor can under subsection (8)(f) add to the list, but subject to the same constraints as in section 11.
115.Those constraints are set out in subsection (9). As a result, the power to add to the list of excluded decisions can be used for two purposes only. The first purpose is the preservation of existing appeal rights where those rights are, or include, something other than a right of appeal on a point of law. The second purpose is the preservation, in cases where there is currently no appeal right, of the existing position.
116.Under subsection (6) the Lord Chancellor may by order restrict appeals to the Court of Appeal to cases where the court or the Upper Tribunal considers that the proposed appeal would raise some important point of principle or practice or that there is some other compelling reason for the appeal to be heard. The intention is to restrict second appeals on the same point unless there is wider public interest, i.e. where a prospective appellant has had their case considered by both the First-tier Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal. The criteria set out in this subsection are the same as the criteria applied by the Court of Appeal in considering second appeals from the High Court or county court (see the Access to Justice Act 1999, section 55(1)).
117.The exercise of the power under the subsection is subject to the affirmative resolution procedure (see section 49). Subsection (6) does not apply to appeals to the Court of Session.
118.Subsections (11) to (13) require the Upper Tribunal to specify the relevant appellate court (see subsection (11)). This provision is intended to deal with situations where it is not obvious which is the appropriate appellate court, e.g. where an appellant has moved from Scotland to England or vice versa, or in order that linked cases can be dealt with in the same court.
119.Subsection (14) empowers the Lord Chancellor to specify who may or may not be treated as being a party to a case for the purposes of making an appeal from the First-tier Tribunal to the Upper Tribunal (see the note above on section 11(8)).
120.Subsection (15) enables rules of court to specify the time within which an application for permission (or leave) may be made for a proposed appeal from the Upper Tribunal to the relevant appeal court. Any such rules for England and Wales will be made by the Civil Procedure Rules Committee.
