"It seems to me entirely appropriate that responsibility for deciding whether to initiatepreventive proceedings for injunction or declaration in the public interest should be vested in a public officer, and for historical reasons that officer is the Attorney General. it is well established that he is not bound to prosecute in every case where there is sufficient evidence, but that when a question of public policy may be involved the Attorney General has the duty of deciding whether prosecution would be in the public interest ....."

Then a little later between C and D, he said this:

"If the Attorney General were to commit a serious error of judgment by withholding consent to relator proceedings in a case where he ought to have given it, the remedy must in my opinion lie in the political field by enforcing his responsibility to Parliament and not in the legal field through the courts. That is appropriate because his error would not be an error of law but would be one of political judgment, using the expression of course not in a party sense but in the sense of weighing the relative importance of different aspects of the public interest. Such matters are not appropriate for decision in the courts."

Finally, there is the decision of Mr Justice Popplewell in R v Attorney General ex parte Ferrante, (Unreported) (Transcript: John Larking) . The Applicant sought judicial review of a decision of the Attorney General refusing to give his authority for an application to the High Court under s 13 of the Coroners Act 1988. After reviewing the authorities to which I have referred and also R v the Inland Revenue Commission ex parte National Federation of Self Employed [1982] AC 617, [1981] 2All ER 93, Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service [1985] AC 364,[1993] 4All ER 442, and R v Secretary of State for the Home Department ex parte Bentley [1994] QB 349, 11993] 4All ER 442, to which we have been referred by Mr Robinson QC. Mr Justice Popplewell derived the following propositions: