Administrative - 1980- 1984

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This page lists 23 cases, and was prepared on 04 October 2008.

Regina -v- Inland Revenue Commissioners ex parte Rossminster Ltd [1980] AC 952
1980 HL Lord Wilberforce	Administrative, Taxes Management	Casemap 1 Citers
	The House invoked a 'presumption of regularity'. In the absence of evidence to the contrary it was assumed that the judicial officer who issued warrants conscientiously carried out his duty, and so it could be assumed he had before him sufficient information to establish the necessary grounds. Lord Wilberforce: "The courts have the duty to supervise, I would say critically, even jealously, the legality of any purported exercise of these powers [powers of entry conferred on the Revenue]. They are the guardians of the citizen's right to privacy. But they must do this in the context of the times, i.e. of increasing Parliamentary intervention, and of the modern power of judicial review. ... [W]hile the courts may look critically at legislation which impairs the rights of citizens and should resolve any doubt in interpretation in their favour, it is no part of their duty, or power, to restrict or impede the working of legislation, even of unpopular legislation; to do so would be to weaken rather than to advance the democratic process."

Calvin -v- Carr [1980] AC 574
1980 PC Lord Wilberforce	Administrative, Employment	Casemap 1 Cites 1 Citers
	The Board considered a ruling by the committee of the Jockey Club of Australia. Held: The stewards were entitled to use the evidence of their eyes and their experience. The appeal process was an essentially domestic proceeding "in which experience and opinion as to what is in the interest of racing as a whole playa large part, and in which the standards are those which have come to be accepted over the history of this sporting activity." Following the Leary case: "In their Lordships' judgment, such intermediate cases exist. In them, it is for the court, ….. to decide whether at the end of the day, there has been a fair result reached by fair methods…… Naturally there may be instances when the defect is so flagrant, the consequences so severe, that the most perfect appeals or rehearings will not be sufficient to produce a just result. …. There may also be cases when the appeal process itself is less than perfect: it may be vitiated by the same defect as the original proceedings: or short of that there may be doubts whether the appeal body embarked on its task without predisposition or whether it had the means to make a full and fair enquiry, for example where it has no material but a transcript of what was before the original body. In such cases it would no doubt be right to quash the original decision." and "What is important is the recognition that such cases exist, and that it is undesirable in many cases of domestic disputes, particularly in which an inquiry and appeal process has been established, to introduce too great a measure of formal judicialisation." Lord Wilberforce: ". . . those who have joined in an organisation or contract, should be taken to have agreed to accept what in the end is a fair decision, notwithstanding some initial defect". The Board considered whether there was a general rule that internal appellate proceedings could cure a defect caused by a failure of natural justice in the original proceedings: ". . . their Lordships recognise and indeed assert that no clear and absolute rule can be laid down on the question whether defects in natural justice appearing at the original hearing, whether administrative or quasi-judicial, can be 'cured' through appeal proceedings. The situations in which this issue arises are too diverse, and the rules by which they are governed so various, that this must be so."

De Falco -v- Crawley Borough Council [1980] QB 460
1980 Lord Denning MR	Administrative	Casemap 1 Citers
	The court discussed the effect of statutory guidance in the form of a code: "the council of course had to have regard to the code: see section 12 of the statute; but, having done so, they could depart from it if they thought fit".

Bushell -v- Secretary of State for the Environment [1981] AC 75; [1980] UKHL 1
7 Feb 1980 HL Lord Diplock, Viscount Dilhorne, Lord Edmund-Davies, Lord Fraser of Tullybelton, Lord Lane	Administrative	Casemap 1 Citers
	Lord Diplock: " What is fair procedure is to be judged not in the light of constitutional fictions as to the relationship between the minister and the other servants of the Crown who serve in the government department of which he is the head, but in the light of the practical realities as to the way in which administrative decisions involving forming judgments based on technical considerations are reached. To treat the minister in his decision-making capacity as someone separate and distinct from the department of government of which he is the political head and for whose actions he alone in constitutional theory is accountable to Parliament is to ignore not only practical realities but also Parliament's intention. Ministers come and go; departments, though their names may change from time to time, remain. Discretion in making administrative decisions is conferred upon a minister not as an individual but as the holder of an office in which he will have available to him in arriving at his decision the collective knowledge, experience and expertise of all those who serve the Crown in the department of which, for the time being, he is the political head. The collective knowledge, technical as well as factual, of the civil servants in the department and their collective expertise is to be treated as the minister's own knowledge, his own expertise."
	Link[s] omitted

Wicks -v- Firth (Inspector of Taxes); Johnson -v- Firth [1982] 2 WLR 208; [1982] 2 All R 9
1981 CA	Administrative, Income Tax
	ICI set up a trust fund to make discretionary payments to its employees to assist meeting the costs of further education. Payments made to children were treated as scholarship income and exempt under the 1970 Act. The revenue claimed it to be an employment benefit. Held: The benefit was paid to the taxpayer's son 'by reason of [the taxpayer's] employmnt within s61". The exemption given under s375 did not exclude the charge to tax under s61.
	Statute References omitted

Western Fish Products Ltd -v- Penwith District Council [1981] 2 All ER 204
1981 CA Megaw LJ	Administrative, Estoppel	Casemap 1 Citers
	The court tried to reconcile invocations of estoppel with the general principle that for a public authority: "an estoppel cannot be raised to prevent the exercise of a statutory discretion or to prevent or excuse the performance of a statutory duty."

Webb -v- Anglian Water Authority [1981] ICR 811
1981	Administrative	Casemap
	If reference needs to be made to the evidence for the purposes of a statutory appeal, the ordinary resort is to as much of the documentation and notes of evidence as will help to determine what material basis there was for the impugned part of the decision.

Crake -v- Supplementary Benefits Commission [1982] 1 All ER 498
1982 CA Woolf LJ	Administrative
	The court considered whether inadequacy of reasons given by a tribunal for it's decision was a legal error. Held: There will be few cases where it will not be possible, where the reasons are inadequate, to say one way or another whether the tribunal has gone wrong in law. In some cases the absence of any reasons would indicate that the tribunal had never properly considered the matter (and it must be part of the obligation in law to consider the matter properly) and that the proper thought processes have not been gone through. The failure to give reasons was itself an error in law.

O'Reilly -v- Mackman [1983] 2 AC 237; [1982] 3 WLR 1096; [1982] 3 All ER 1124; [1983] UKHL 1
1982 HL Lord Diplock	Litigation Practice, Administrative, Prisons	1 Cites 1 Citers
	The plaintiffs had begun their action, to challenge their loss of remission as prisoners, by means of a writ, rather than by an action for judicial review, and so had sidestepped the requirement for the action to be brought within strict time limits. Held: The forfeiture of remission for a prisoner was, as a matter of law, not a loss of liberty but a loss of a privilege, the loss of right protected bu public law. Any proceedings to enforce a public duty should not be by way of ordinary action: "it would in my view as a general rule be contrary to public policy, and as such an abuse of the process of the court, to permit a person seeking to establish that a decision of a public authority infringed rights to which he was entitled to protection under public law to proceed by way of an ordinary action and by this means to evade the provisions of Order 53 for the protection of such authorities." The purpose of the requirement was to protect the public administration against false, frivolous or tardy challenges to official action: "The public interest in good administration requires that public authorities and third parties should not be kept in suspense as to the legal validity of a decision the authority has reached in purported exercise of decision-making powers for any longer period than is absolutely necessary in fairness to the person affected by the decision". An advantage of O.53 was that the court had an opportunity to exercise its discretion at the outset of the proceedings rather than would have happened at that time in proceedings begun by originating summons at the end of the proceedings. This was an important protection in the interests of good administration and for third parties who may be indirectly affected by the proceedings: "Unless such an action can be struck out summarily at the outset as an abuse of the process of the court the whole purpose of the public policy to which the change in O.53 was directed would be defeated." Though a respondent should not normally be cross examined as to its affidavit, nevertheless, "… leave to cross-examination should be granted where the interests of justice so require." The grant of leave to cross-examine deponents is goverened by the same principles in applications for judicial review as in actions commenced by originating summonses.
	Statute References omitted
	Link[s] omitted

Ross -v- Costigan [1982] 41 ALR 319
1982 Ellicott J	Commonwealth, Administrative	Casemap 1 Citers
	(Australia) "In determining what is relevant to a Royal Commission inquiry, regard must be had to its investigatory character. Where broad terms of reference are given to it, as in this case, the commission is not determining issues between parties but conducting a thorough investigation into the subject matter. It may have to follow leads. It is not bound by rules of evidence. There is no set order in which evidence must be adduced before it. The links in a chain of evidence will usually be dealt with separately. Expecting to prove all the links in a suspected chain of events, the commission or counsel assisting, may nevertheless fail to do so. But if the commission bona fide seeks to establish a relevant connection between certain facts and the subject matter of the inquiry, it should not be regarded as outside its terms of reference by doing so. This flows from the very nature of the inquiry being undertaken." and "This does not mean, of course, that a commission can go off on a frolic of its own. However, I think a court if it has power to do so, should be very slow to restrain a commission from pursuing a particular line of questioning and should not do so unless it is satisfied, in effect, that the commission is going off on a frolic of its own. If there is a real as distinct from a fanciful possibility that a line of questioning may provide information directly or even indirectly relevant to the matters which the commission is required to investigate under its letters patent, such a line of questioning should, in my opinion, be treated as relevant to the Inquiry."

Thomas -v- Attorney-General of Trinidad and Tobago [1982] AC 113
1982 PC Lord Diplock	Commonwealth, Crime, Administrative	1 Citers
	The court deprecated the 'spoils' system which operated within the post office.

Chief Constable of the North Wales Police -v- Evans [1982] 1 WLR 1155; (1982) 3 All ER 141
1982 HL Lord Brightman	Police, Administrative, Costs	Casemap 1 Cites 1 Citers
	The Court found the probationer police constable to have been unlawfully induced to resign, but the court could not order his reinstatement. A power must be exercised by the precise person or body stated in the statute. Though courts may review the way in which decisions are reached, they will respect the margin of appreciation or discretion which a Chief Constable has. He knows through his officers the local situation, the availability of officers and his financial resources, and the other demands on the police in the area at different times. The House granted instead a declaration: "... affirming that, by reason of his unlawfully induced resignation, he had thereby become entitled to the same rights and remedies, not including reinstatement, as he would have had if the chief constable had not unlawfully dispensed with his services under regulation 16(1)." "My Lords I must address myself later to the question of remedy. All that I would say at this moment is that it would, to my mind, be regrettable if a litigant who establishes that he has been legally wronged, and particularly in so important a matter as a pursuit of his chosen profession, has to be sent away from a court of justice empty handed save for an order for the recoupment of the expense to which he has been put in establishing a barren victory." and "An unsuccessful applicant whose challenge has nevertheless performed a public service may escape the usual costs burden." Lord Brightman: “Judicial review is concerned, not with the decision, but with the decision-making process. Unless that restriction on the power of the court is observed, the court will in my view, under the guise of preventing the abuse of power, be itself guilty of usurping power.... Judicial review, as the words imply, is not an appeal from a decision, but a review of the manner in which the decision was made.”

Regina -v- Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall, Ex parte Central Electricity Generating Board [1982] QB 458; [1981] 3 WLR 967; [1981] 3 All ER 826
1982 CA	Administrative, Police	Casemap 1 Citers
	The CEGB wanted to undertake a survey using its statutory powers to check whether land might be suitable for a nuclear power station, and wanted the police to prevent demonstrators from preventing the survey. It now requested an order of mandamus to oblige the chief constable to provide the level of support requested. Held: The appeal against refusal of mandamus was rejected. Such a decision was not one to be interfered with by a court of law. The CEGB should first consider its own self-help remedies. It had the power to use the resaonable minimum of force, even though this might risk a breach of the peace.
	Statute References omitted

Regina –v- Commissioner of Racial Equality Ex parte Hillingdon London Borough Council [1982] AC 779
1982 HL Diplock L	Administrative	Casemap 1 Citers
	The House considered what would amount to a procedural unfairness in a meeting of a public body: "Where an Act of Parliament confers upon an administrative body functions which involve its making decisions which affect to their detriment the rights of other persons or curtail their liberty to do as they please, there is a presumption that Parliament intended that the administrative body should act fairly towards those persons who will be affected by their decisions."

Regina -v- Secretary of State for the Environment ex p Brent London Borough Council [1982] 1 QB 593
1982 QBD Ackner LJ	Administrative	Casemap 1 Citers
	The court considered a refusal by the minister to hear further representations from local authorities with regard to their rate support grants: "it would of course have been unrealistic not to accept that it is certainly probably that, if the representations had been listened to by the Secretary of State, he would have nevertheless have adhered to his policy. However, we are not satisfied that such a result must inevitably have followed …. It would in our view be wrong for this court to speculate as to how the Secretary of State would have exercised his discretion if he had heard the representations … we are not prepared to hold that it would have been a useless formality for the Secretary of State to have listened to the representations …".

Manuel and Others -v- Attorney-General; Noltcho and Others -v- Attorney-General [1983] Ch 77; [1982] 3 All ER 786
7 May 1982 ChD Sir Robert Megarry V-C	Constitutional, Administrative	Casemap 1 Cites
	The plaintiffs were Indian Chiefs from Canada. They complained that the 1982 Act which granted independence to Canada, had been passed without their consent, which they said was required. They feared the loss of rights embedded by historical treaties. The Attorney General sought the strike out of the claims. Held: The application for a strike out succeeded. The Act recited that it had been passed at the request of the Canadian Parliament. A British Court could not refuse to obey or question the validity of an Act of Parliament: 'The Canada Act 1982 is an Act of Parliament, and sitting as a judge in an English court, I owe full and dutiful obedience to that Act.' Declaratory relief was not available as against a party not before the court. Sir Robert Megarry V-C: "A motion to strike out a pleading should not be treated as being the trial of a demurrer or a preliminary point of law, to be determined one way or the other even if the judge is beset by hesitations and doubts. He who moves such a motion must make out a case that is clear beyond doubt. At the same time, one must beware of any assumption that because a case takes a long time to argue, the points at issue must be doubtful. Arguments must be assessed on their quality rather than on their duration, and sometimes the weaker the case the greater the profusion of ingenuity in supporting it." and "I have grave doubts about the theory of the transfer of sovereignty as affecting the competence of Parliament. In my view, it is a fundamental of the English constitution that Parliament is supreme. As a matter of law the courts of England recognise Parliament as being omnipotent in all save the power to destroy its own omnipotence. Under the authority of Parliament the courts of a territory may be released from their legal duty to obey Parliament, but that does not trench on the acceptance by the English courts of all that Parliament does. Nor must validity in law be confused with practical enforceability."
	Statute References omitted

Bland -v- Chief Supplementary Benefit Officer [1983] 1 WLR 262
1983 CA Sir John Donaldson MR, Sir Sebag Shaw	Administrative, Benefits	Casemap 1 Cites 1 Citers

Attorney General of Hong Kong -v- Ng Yuen Shiu [1983] 2 AC 629; [1983] UKPC 2
21 Feb 1983 PC Lord Fraser of Tullybelton	Commonwealth, Administrative	Casemap 1 Cites 1 Citers
	An illegal entrant into Hong Kong claimed that he was entitled by a legitimate expectation to a hearing before a deportation order might be made against him, there having been an announcement that persons in the respondent's position would be interviewed. Held: The court discussed legitimate expectation: "The expectations may be based upon some statement or undertaking by, or on behalf of, the public authority which has the duty of making the decision, if the authority has, through its officers, acted in way that would make it unfair or inconsistent with good administration for him to be denied such an inquiry." and "The justification for it is primarily that, when a public authority has promised to follow a certain procedure, it is in the interests of good administration that it should act fairly and should implement its promise, so long as implementation does not interfere with its statutory duty. "
	Link[s] omitted

Attorney-General -v- Able and Others [1983] 3 WLR 845; [1984] 1 QB 795
28 Apr 1983 QBD Woolf LJ	Crime, Administrative, Criminal Practice, Media	Casemap 1 Cites 1 Citers
	The Attorney General sought a declaration as to whether it would be the crime of aiding and abetting or counselling and procuring suicide, to distribute a booklet published by the respondent which described various effective ways of committing suicide. The stated aim of the booklet was to help readers overcome the fear of dying. Held: The offence would be committed only in the particular circumstances of the booklet being supplied to a particular individual considering suicide and with the intent of assisting or encouraging him. The offence was not committed by the general distribution of the booklet. However the court should also be reluctant to make declarations in advance as to the legality or otherwise of particular acts. That risked usurping the function of the court which considered a particular set of circumstances.
	Statute References omitted
	Link[s] omitted

Regina -v- Secretary of State ex parte Asif Khan [1984] 1 WLR 1337
1984 CA Parker LJ, Dunn LJ, Watkins LJ (dissenting)	Administrative	Casemap 1 Cites 1 Citers
	The Secretary of State had refused an entry clearance for a child to be allowed into the United Kingdom for the purpose of adoption by the applicant, but had done so upon grounds nowhere mentioned in a Home Office circular letter apparently setting out the policy or criteria to be applied in dealing with such applications. Held: A body acting as a decision-maker and consulting those affected by that decision, was not to be permitted to use a test that had not been discussed with those consulted and affected by it. Parker LJ: "I have no doubt that the Home Office letter afforded the applicant a reasonable expectation that the procedures it set out, which were just as certain in their terms as the question and answer in Mr Ng's case, would be followed… The Secretary of State is, of course, at liberty to change the policy but in my view, vis-à-vis the recipient of such a letter, a new policy can only be implemented after such recipient has been given a full and serious consideration whether there is some overriding public interest which justifies a departure from the procedures stated in the letter."

Council for Civil Service Unions (CCSU) -v- Minister for the Civil Service [1985] 1 AC 374; [1985] ICR 14; [1984] 3 All ER 935; [1983] UKHL 6
1984 HL Lord Scarman, Lord Diplock, Lord Fraser of Tullybelton	Judicial Review, Administrative	Casemap 1 Cites 1 Citers
	The exercise of a prerogative power of a public nature may be, subject to constraints of national security and the like, as susceptible to review as that of a statutory power. The controlling factor in determining whether the exercise of a power by a body is subject to judicial review is not in its source but its subject matter. Challenges to the lawfulness of subordinate legislation or administrative decisions and acts may take under the headings of illegality, procedural impropriety and irrationality. Lord Diplock: A legitimate expectation may arise from an express promise "given on behalf of a public authority", and "some benefit or advantage which ... [the applicant] had in the past been permitted by the decision-maker to enjoy and which he can legitimately expect to be permitted to continue to do until there has been communicated to him some rational grounds for withdrawing it on which he has been given an opportunity to comment." and "To qualify as a subject for judicial review the decision must have consequences which affect some person (or body of persons) other than the decision-maker, although it may affect him too. It must affect such other person either (a) by altering rights or obligations of that person which are enforceable by or against him in private law; or (b) by depriving him of some benefit or advantage which either (i) he had in the past been permitted by the decision - maker to enjoy and which he can legitimately expect to be permitted to continue to do until there has been committed to him some rational grounds for withdrawing it on which he has been given an opportunity to comment; or (ii) he has received assurance from the decision-maker that it will not be withdrawn without giving him first an opportunity of advancing reasons for contending that they should not be withdrawn." "Many of the most important prerogative powers concerned with the control of the armed forces and with foreign policy and with matters which are unsuitable for discussion or review in the Law Court. . . . Such decisions will generally involve the application of Government policy. The reasons for the decision-maker taking one course rather than another do not normally involve questions to which, if disputed, the judicial process is adapted to provide the right answer, by which I mean that the kind of evidence that is admissible under judicial procedures and the way in which it has to be adduced tend to exclude from the attention of the court competing policy considerations which, if the Executive discretion is to be wisely exercised, need to be weighed against one another - a balancing exercise which judges by their upbringing and experience are ill-qualified to perform." " An irrational decision is (Lord Diplock) "… a decision which is so outrageous in its defiance of logic or of accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it." Lord Fraser: "The question is one of evidence. The decision on whether the requirements of national security outweigh the duty of fairness in any particular case is for the Government and not for the courts; the Government alone has access to the information, and in any event the judicial process is unsuitable for reaching decisions on national security. But if the decision is successfully challenged, on the ground that it has been reached by a process which is unfair, then the Government is under an obligation to produce evidence that the decision was in fact based on grounds of national security."
	Link[s] omitted

Wordie Property Co Limited -v- Secretary of State for Scotland 1984 SLT 345
1984 Lord President Emslie	Administrative, Scotland	Casemap 1 Citers
	To demonstrate an error of law in a decision, the petitioner is required to show that the decision maker had failed to take into account a consideration which was both relevant and material.

Regina -v- Hillingdon Health Authority ex parte Goodwin [1984] ICR 800
1984 Woolf J	Administrative	Casemap 1 Citers
	"Whenever there has to be consultation, there has to be an indication of what there is to be consultation about; and, although an authority must enter into the consultation without a closed mind, it seems to me that there is nothing objectionable in the authority having decided on a course it would seek to adopt, if after consultation it decided that that is the proper course to adopt."