21/02/2024
On 13/02/2024 the Application for permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal was dismissed. The Judge found that there is no personal responsibility on the Prime Minister to consider setting up an inquiry. Again it was found that the fact that the Prime Minister passed on the letter to the DfE was not per se unlawful. The Judge also found that the principles of natural justice should not apply to a decision whether or not to set up a statutory inquiry and only come into play once an inquiry has been set up.
The judge also agreed with the initial Judge that there was an alternative remedy to the Prime Minister’s decision and so Judicial review was not appropriate. The Judge agreed that the decision of the DfE not to set up an inquiry after the Prime Minister had passed the letter on could have been challenged instead, if that was believed to be unlawful rather than the Prime Minister’s decision.
The Judge also agreed with the initial judges finding that as a decision had already been made on an inquiry by the DfE, having the Prime Minister remake the decision again instead of them would be pointless as he could lawfully make the exact same decision.
In all of this the Judge found that an appeal would have no real prospect of success.
The Claimant felt the initial Judge had made a number of errors based on assumption and not fact. The principle ones being that the Claimant was challenging whether the Prime Minister should have made the decision personally by law and that the DfE had already made a decision. The Claimant’s case was never that the Prime Minister himself had to legally make a decision, just that he should not have immediately given the power to the DfE to take charge of addressing a potentially criminal complaint made against themselves. What is also clear from the evidence is that there is no explicit claim from anyone that a decision has ever been made by the DfE not even from the PM’s own defence.
As a result the Claimant has made an application to reopen the case based on these critical errors under a 52:30 procedure. Although this is officially the last stage of appeal as a permission refusal cannot go to the Supreme Court there is a provision where a case can be reopened only under exceptional circumstances. It is believed that this is such a case given the gravity of the situation and the nature of the alleged errors and so an aplication will now be made.
