Singh LJ upheld the more detailed reasons of Bourne J in the High Court – reported here.

The reasoning of the Court of Appeal included:
-       That the decision of the Supreme Court in R (SC) v SSWP [2021] UKSC 26 prevents reliance upon unincorporated international treaties such as the Paris Agreement to define the scope of domestic human rights obligations.
-       That any positive obligation under the HRA was satisfied by the mechanisms in the Climate Change Act 2008, that the Government and Parliament consider to be sufficient.  Disagreement is “very much a matter for debate in the democratic forum and is not for the courts.”
-       That wider family ties and cultural connections with regions of the world that will be affected by climate change does not fall within the concept of “family life” under ECHR, Article 8.
-       That the Claimants were not “victims” for the purposes of the HRA, for the reasons given by Bourne J.
-       That the High Court did not err in finding that the claim went beyond the competence of the Court in the sense of its jurisdiction:
 “the Court must keep well in mind its relative competence as compared with other branches of the state, in particular Parliament.  This is for both institutional reasons and democratic reasons”

Richard Honey QC and Ned Westaway acted for the Defendants instructed by the Government Legal Department. Flora Curtis assisted at an earlier stage of the litigation.