Dr. Peter Doran:

I will take that last point first. I have looked at some of the legal deliberations in the run-up to the adoption of the UK legislation and the consensus within the legal community which offered advice was that it was most unlikely that a court would consider, for example, a judicial review around the question of duties or targets, that they would be regarded as political and that the court would be most likely to defer to Parliament. That is one of the understandings of these targets, that they are really political tools that enhance the accountability of the Executive and the ability to scrutinise, especially in forums such as this. They are an instrument to enhance the scrutiny function rather than to haul the Minister before a court. That was the consensus and I have a number of quotes in the document-----