ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

The case concerned the ex gratia scheme for compensating people for periods in custody following wrongful conviction or charge resulting from the serious default of a public authority.

HELD While decisions of a Home Secretary under the scheme are susceptible to judicial review, intervention by the courts should be highly guarded and limited to cases where there is an issue about the reach and meaning of a policy where a minister, in his application and/or interpretation of it, strays outside the reasonable range of meaning, or where there is ambiguity. Legitimate expectation is not an appropriate route to construing the policy.

The courts should attempt to look at ministerial policy through the minister’s eyes as at the time when he has articulated it, by reference to the ordinary and natural meaning of the words, rather than through the eyes of a notional reasonable reader. It follows that the courts should allow latitude to a minister to decide, within a reasonable range of meaning of his statement of policy, to what it applies and what it means.