Alistair Sloan, Advocate

This is the third in a series of four blog posts looking at the Supreme Court’s decision in R (Evans) v HM Attorney General.  The first post went through the background to the case, while the second post focused on the Court’s decision in respect of section 53 of the FOIA.  This third post will look at the Court’s decision in respect of Regulation 18(6) of the EIRs.

By a majority of 6:1 the Supreme Court held that the certificate issued by the Attorney General under Regulation 18(6) was invalid.  The arguments in respect of Regulation 18(6) related specifically to European law and to the Directive that they seek to implement.

Article 6 of the Directive makes provision for ‘Access to Justice’ in respect of Environmental Information.  It provides (1) that where a public body refuses to make environmental information available there must be a process whereby the decision can be ‘reviewed administratively by an independent and impartial body established by law’.  The right to complain to the Information Commissioner under section 50 of the FOIA (which extends to the EIRs) would meet this requirement; (2) that over and above the administrative review of the decision that there is provision for further review before a court or another independent or impartial body established by law.  This would be covered by the right of appeal against a decision of the Information Commissioner to the First-Tier Tribunal; and (3) the decision under (2) must be capable of becoming final and binding upon the public body that holds the information.

The effect of section 53 as applied to environmental information under Regulation 18(6) of the EIRs is to mean that the decision of the Tribunal (or whichever appellate Court or Tribunal last hears an appeal) ceases to be final or binding on the public body holding the information; the Certificate cancels out the decision of the Court or Tribunal.  The Attorney General had argued that the provisions of section 53 and Regulation 18(6) in respect of Environmental Information did not violate the terms of the Directive; he argued that, despite the effect of the Certificate being to set aside the decision of the Tribunal, there was still the ability for a decision of a Court to become final and binding upon the public body concerned.  He based that averment on the existence of Judicial Review: a decision by an accountable person to exercise their power under Regulation 18(6) as read with section 53 is open to be judicially reviewed.

In respect of the Attorney General’s argument, Lord Neuberger said at [105]:

A domestic judicial review does not normally involve reconsideration of the competing arguments or “merits”. However, it seems to me clear that article 6.2, with its stipulation that the court should be able to “review” the “acts and omissions of the public authority concerned”, requires a full “merits” review. Even assuming in the Attorney General’s favour that, on a domestic judicial review, the court could, unusually, consider the merits, it gets him nowhere at least in a case such as this, where a tribunal has ruled that the information should be disclosed and the certificate is merely based on the fact that he disagrees with the final decision of the Upper Tribunal. In such a case, a court would be bound to conclude that the certificate was not soundly based as a court of record had already decided that very point as between the applicant and “the public authority concerned”.

Lord Mance said at [148]:

what becomes final in the event of judicial review failing, is not a decision on the merits that the Upper Tribunal’s decision is wrong. It is the conclusion that there is nothing wrong with the minister’s or Attorney General’s decision to override the Upper Tribunal’s decision. That cannot be consistent with the evident intention of article 6(2) – to provide means of recourse to a court or similarly independent and impartial system, which will decide, one way or the other, on the merits.

As a consequence of the views of 6 of the 7 Justices who heard the case, Regulation 18(6) is no more. It has ceased to be. It rests in peace.  It is an ex-Regulation.

This is the second in a series of four blog posts looking at the Supreme Court’s decision in R (Evans) v HM Attorney General.  The first post went through the background to the case and this post will focus on the Court’s decision in respect of section 53 of the FOIA.

By a majority of 5:2 the Supreme Court held that the certificate issued by the Attorney General was invalid.  However, there was a split among the 5 as to the reasons for the certificate being invalid.  Lords Neuberger, Kerr and Reed were in agreement with one another, while  Lord Mance and Lady Hail found that the Certificate was invalid for different reasons.  Lords Wilson and Hughes disagreed entirely and would have allowed the Attorney General’s appeal.

The reasoning of Lord Neuberger (with home Lords Kerr and Reed agreed)

The Justices here looked at two constitutional principals which are at the cornerstone of our democracy and are at the very centre of the Rule of Law.  The first of those principals is that decisions of a Court are binding upon the parties involved, subject to rights of appeal (and as Lord Neuberger pointed out, a Statute passed by Parliament given the supremacy of Parliament in our democracy).  The second of those principals is that the decisions of the Executive are reviewable by the Judiciary, not the reverse.

Lord Neuberger said, at paragraph [52], that the way in which the Attorney General interpreted section 53 of the FOIA

 “flouts the first principle and stands the second principle on its head. It involves saying that a final decision of a court can be set aside by a member of the executive (normally the minister in charge of the very department against whom the decision has been given) because he does not agree with it. And the fact that the member of the executive can put forward cogent and/or strongly held reasons for disagreeing with the court is, in this context, nothing to the point: many court decisions are on points of controversy where opinions (even individual judicial opinions) may reasonably differ, but that does not affect the applicability of these principles.”

He went on to state at paragraph [58] that “section 53 falls far short of being “crystal clear” in saying that a member of the executive can override the decision of a court because he disagrees with it.”  This drew on a line of authority, fully set out in paragraphs [53] – [57], that concludes unless Parliament has made it crystal clear that it is legislating contrary to the rule of law it is to be presumed that it is not doing so.

Lord Neuberger went on to consider previous authorities where the Court of Appeal had considered the question of whether Parliament had “intended [that] a member of the executive to be able freely to consider, or reconsider, for himself the very issues, on the same facts, which had been determined by another person or a tribunal.” [60]

Lord Neuberger concluded that section 53 of the FOIA  does not permit the accountable person mentioned therein to issue a certificate “simply because, on the same facts and admittedly reasonably, he takes a different view from that adopted by a court of record after a full public oral hearing.”  He also noted that the basis for this conclusion could not have bene unknown to Parliament at the time the FOIA was passed.

Lord Mance (with whom Lady Hale agreed)

The conclusion reached by Lord Neuberger was different to that which was reached by Lord Mance (who Lady Hale agreed with).  They found that the accountable person was able to issue a certificate under section 53 of the FOIA simply because they disagreed with the Tribunal’s decision; however, that where the certificate was issued in respect of findings of fact or rulings of law which were fully explained would require an extremely clear justification.  Lord Mance found that the Certificate issued by the Attorney General under section 53 of the FOIA did “not engage with or give any real answer to [the Upper Tribunal’s] closely reasoned analysis and its clear rebuttal of any suggestion that a risk of misperception could justify withholding of disclosure.”

While the Attorney General, or indeed any other accountable person as defined by section 53, could issue a certificate under section 53 because he disagreed with the findings of the Tribunal, on the same facts and arguments as were before the Tribunal, he did not justify his decision enough to enable the certificate to stand and so the certificate was invalid.