Category: Policy and Policy-Making

Judicial review, Dominic Cummings and ‘Potemkin paper trails’ – and why courts require reasons for certain decisions

11th June 2021

In three tweets in a thread posted this week, Dominic Cummings, the former assistant to the prime minister, refers to ‘Potemkin’ paper trails and meetings.

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What does he mean?

And does he have a point?

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What he is alluding to, of course, are the ‘Potemkin’ villages, where things in bad conditions were dressed up to be in good conditions so as to mislead others.

In the context of judicial review, Cummings presumably does not mean that bad reasons would be dressed up as good reasons.

What he instead intends to mean is that there could be artificial reasons and contrived meetings the purpose of which was to make a decision judge-proof.

To a certain extent, he has a point.

In the judicial review case in question, had there been evidence of officials conducting any form of evaluation exercise then the tender award may have been harder to attack legally.

And such an exercise could, in reality, have been nothing other than going through the motions rather than anything that could have actually led to another agency actually getting this valuable contract.

But this is not the reason the courts require reasons for certain decisions – and it may not have changed the judgment in this case either.

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Judges and courts are not stupid and naive.

Judges and courts know full well reasons can be artificial and contrived.

The judges were once barristers and solicitors and, as such, they would have had considerable experience of advising clients on providing reasons for certain decisions. 

The purpose of requiring reasons for decisions – and for ministers and officials to say they are true reasons – is to make it more difficult for bad and false decisions to be made.

For example – take the decision by the government to seek a prorogation of parliament in 2019.

No minister or official – or adviser – was willing to sign a witness statement (under pain of perjury) as to the true reason for advising the Queen to prorogue parliament.

And without such a sworn (or affirmed) reason, the government lost the case.

Reasons also provide a reviewing court with a basis of assessing whether a decision was so unreasonable that no reasonable decision could have made it, and also of assessing whether relevant considerations had been included and irrelevant considerations were excluded.

Providing reasons does not provide an escape route for cynical and irrelevant and unreasonable decision-making.

But it is an impediment, and one that makes it harder for ministers and officials to get away with bad decision-making. 

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And in the recent judicial review, it is not clear to me (as a former central government procurement lawyer) that even an artificial ‘Potemkin’ exercise would have necessarily saved the decision from legal attack.

Awarding a high-value contract to cronies where a nominal (though documented)  exercise of discretion had not shown any actual objective advantage over other possible suppliers would still have been open to legal attack.

So this is not necessarily a case where the failure to provide a ‘Potemkin’ paper trail is to blame for the loss of a legal case.

The pram may well have fallen down the stairs anyway.

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Why is it so difficult to prosecute for the sale and purchase of peerages?

7th June 2021

A person is in the news because they donated £500,000 to a political party days after taking a seat in the house of lords.

This post is not about that person.

I have no idea about the circumstances of that appointment. and so I do not make any allegations in respect of those circumstances – and this is not just safe libel-speak, I genuinely do not know, and nor (I suspect) do you.

(And anyone commenting below who makes an allegation of criminality in respect of that appointment – or anyone else – will not have their comments published – this is not Twitter, you know.)

This post is instead about the legislation that is usually mentioned when such appointments are made: the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925.

It is a curious statute – not least because the offences it creates appear hardly to have ever been successfully prosecuted.

(The one early exception appears to be Maundy Gregory.)

 

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The legislation has one substantive clause that in turn creates two offences.

The first offence is (and in language itself as cumbersome as the name, title and style of any obscure peerage):

‘If any person accepts or obtains or agrees to accept or attempts to obtain from any person, for himself or for any other person, or for any purpose, any gift, money or valuable consideration as an inducement or reward for procuring or assisting or endeavouring to procure the grant of a dignity or title of honour to any person, or otherwise in connection with such a grant, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanour.’

Let’s try to make sense of this word-soup.

This first offence relates to the person who is (in effect) on the supply-side of a relevant transaction – the person ‘accepting or obtaining’ the ‘inducement or reward’.

This supplier has to be shown to (a) accept, (b) obtain, (c) agree to accept, or (d) attempt to obtain [x] in return for [y].

The [x], in turn comprises two things: (a) any gift, money or valuable consideration which also has the quality (b) of being an inducement or reward for procuring or assisting or endeavouring to procure the grant of [y].

This means proof of a ‘gift, money or valuable consideration’ is not enough: there also needs to be proof of its purpose.

The [y] is the most straightforward: ‘the grant of a dignity or title of honour to any person, or otherwise in connection with such a grant’.

What all this means is that showing there is cash and an appointment is not enough: there has to be proof of intention to the criminal standard of proof – that is (in general terms) beyond reasonable doubt.

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The second offence deals with (in effect) the demand-side:

‘If any person gives, or agrees or proposes to give, or offers to any person any gift, money or valuable consideration as an inducement or reward for procuring or assisting or endeavouring to procure the grant of a dignity or title of honour to any person, or otherwise in connection with such a grant, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanour.’

There is no need to unpack this like the first offence – but you will notice that again there is the need to prove that the ‘gift, money or valuable consideration’ is for the purpose of bing an inducement or a reward.

So, as before, showing there is cash and an appointment is not enough – there needs to be proof of intention.

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Those with good political memories will recall the ‘cash for honours’ investigation of 2006-2007.

This investigation included the extraordinary moment of a dawn-raid on the home of a government official and the questioning by the police of the then prime minister.

All very dramatic.

But nothing came of it.

No charges were brought.

The Crown Prosecution Service provided detailed, legalistic reasons for their decision not to prosecute.

The CPS averred that not only did it need to prove intention (on both sides) but also that it also had to prove that there was an agreement:

‘If one person makes an offer, etc, in the hope or expectation of being granted an honour, or in the belief that it might put him/her in a more favourable position when nominations are subsequently being considered, that does not of itself constitute an offence. Conversely, if one person grants, etc, an honour to another in recognition of (in effect, as a reward for) the fact that that other has made a gift, etc, that does not of itself constitute an offence. For a case to proceed, the prosecution must have a realistic prospect of being able to prove that the two people agreed that the gift, etc, was in exchange for an honour.’

These CPS reasons were compiled and endorsed by some very clever criminal lawyers – though the rest of us may struggle to see the absolute need for proving an agreement under the 1925 Act.

Nonetheless the CPS insisted:

‘In essence, the conduct which the 1925 Act makes criminal is the agreement, or the offer, to buy and sell dignities or titles of honour. Section 1(1) is drafted in wide terms and captures any agreement in which a seller agrees to procure a peerage in return for money or other valuable consideration. Section 1(2) is also drafted in wide terms and captures any agreement in which a buyer agrees to provide money or other valuable consideration, in order to induce a seller to procure a peerage.’

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If the CPS are correct in this interpretation and construction of the statutory offences, then this makes it hard, if not impossible, for the offence ever to be prosecuted successfully.

And, even without the CPS gloss, the requirement to show intention made the offence hard to prosecute in the first place.

There may be other laws which may apply – for example, fraud legislation – but not the one piece of legislation that actually has the sale of honours as its dedicated purpose.

For, as long as those involved make sure there is no paper-trail and that the choreography of nods-and-winks are done in the right order, there is no real danger of any prosecution under the 1925 Act.

What the 1925 Act prevents is the blatant Lloyd-George style of an open market for the sale and purchase of honours.

For a statute to only regulate (in effect) the seemliness of the trade in peerages and other titles is a very, well, British (or English) thing to do.

Otherwise, the 1925 Act is an ornament, not an instrument – and so it is as much a mere constitutional decoration as any ermine robe, and is just as much use.

*****

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The Prime Minister’s disregard for rules-based regimes

6th June 2021

This is just a short post today – more of a signpost – to point you towards an interesting and thought-provoking post by Hannah White at the Institute of Government.

Her post brings together various examples of the contempt in which the current prime minister holds a range of rule-based regimes – showing that for Boris Johnson, to echo Leona Helmsley’s supposed words, rules appear to be for little people.

There are, of course, a number of problems with the prime minister’s approach.

For example, a great deal of the constitution of the United Kingdom is based on self-restraint and convention – and, although many prime ministers have breached constitutional norms, none have done so as openly and unapologetically as the current prime minister.

Another problem is that – especially at the time of this pandemic and also as the United Kingdom adjusts to its post-Brexit future – there will be a need for various rules to be followed as well as made.

And it is difficult to insist on others keeping to the rules when the head of the government himself sees compliance with rules as, at best, optional.

And perhaps the biggest problem is that there is a sense of checks and balances simply not mattering any more – a further move towards a central command polity.

Of course, in our present day hyper partisan political culture, few will care about such things.

The constitution of the United Kingdom is now, essentially, whatever Boris Johnson can get away with.

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The Ghost Regulation of Brexit – how Leave campaigned for the repeal of a regulation that never existed, and why Remainers should not gloat

5th June 2021

To the extent there was a positive case for Brexit, it was in the broadest terms – ‘taking back control’ and so on.

The impetus was primal – it did not matter what we were to be taking back control of, we were taking back control, and that was enough.

Remainers may scoff at this, but this was a basis on which Leave won and Remain did not – and the glaring fault of the Remain side was a lack of an equal and opposite positive case.

But.

One problem of any general case is that it can lack in the particulars.

And it was a feature of the Leave side that they rarely specified what would actually change in substance if the United Kingdom (were/) was to leave the European Union.

A consequence of this vagueness was that once the referendum vote was made for Brexit, there was a range of possible models for the further relationship with the European Union, from hard Brexit to Brexit-in-name-only.

Another consequence was a sense of ‘what now?’ – like the dog who caught the car.

Of course: given the general case for Brexit, this did not matter – and it still does not matter.

A case not made on detail is not defeated by that lack of detail.

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Yet the case for Brexit does produce some telling (and entertaining) examples.

The journalist Marcus Leroux showed one recently on Twitter.

First, the question:

Then the answer given:

That was (presumably) in 2016 – but earlier in 2021 Longworth was still citing this ergonomics directive:

(I have checked – the ergonomics directive was an example given in that 2021 Times piece.)

And here is the good (and fun) kicker:

The directive never existed.

It is a ghost directive.

And yet from at least 2016 to 2021 it was cited as an example of the point of Brexit – and published as such this year in a national newspaper.

Leroux continues:

And here is the passage in the 2013 government report (three years before the referendum):

Cogito ergonomics sum – or not.

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Of course, Remainers may gloat at such a prize example of idiocy – but it no more discredits Brexit than if it were true, because that was not why people voted and campaigned for Leave.

And the fact it has taken until 2021 for this to be exposed (at least to my knowledge) shows it was not uppermost in the minds of many following Brexit.

There is also, no doubt, ghost facts on the Remain side as well.

That said, this ghost regulation shows that it was perfectly possible for the United Kingdom to resist unwanted regulations in the European Union before 2016.

And there is the prospect that the regulatory regime the United Kingdom develops now was also possible within the European Union.

If so, this means – in a practical regulatory sense – there was no point in Brexit.

But at least we took back control, and we caught the car.

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Podcast – discussion with Alex Andreou on the upcoming Daniel Morgan report and its potential significance

31st May 2021

In this podcast released today (but recorded last Friday) I discuss with Alex Andreou the significance of the upcoming Daniel Morgan report – and also the recent attempts by the home office into bullying the independent panel.

Andreou is a superb podcast host, combining a formidable intellect with a luxurious, melodious voice (in contrast to my high-pitched Brummie Wednesday Addams) – and we hope that this will be a useful primer in the run-up to the publication of the report expected in mid-June 2021.

You can hear it on one of the links here.

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Some early reviews:

https://twitter.com/JonathanMolesUK/status/1399319292362035201

 

Did the Home Office blink? – the significance of today’s announcement of a date for the Daniel Morgan report

28th May 2021

Today came the news that the publication of the report on the Daniel Morgan independent panel should be on 15 June 2021.

This is the report into the 1987 death of Daniel Morgan, the collapse of the many subsequent investigations and prosecutions, and the existence of (and the relevance of) any corrupt relationships between the police, the private investigation industry and the press.

The statement of the panel is here and should be read in full. 

This is, of course, welcome news.

It ends the stand-off between the panel and the home office – and, on balance, the home office has given way more than the panel.

The late intervention of the home office – to demand a last-minute ‘review’ of the report – is now unlikely to frustrate the publication of the report.

Delay and blocking

This statement means that, unless something happens to prevent it, there is now a fixed, imminent date for publication.

This should prevent the report being delayed indefinitely by the home office sitting on it during this (supposed) review.

If the objective of the home office was to provide room for delay (or even prevent) the publication of the report, then that objective looks like it has been defeated.

There is a little wriggle-room for potential further delay – but not as much as if there was no date set at all.

Redactions

The statement also deals with the issue of any home office redactions.

Any redactions that the home office insist upon will be identifiable – and so, it would seem, contestable in court.

Each redaction would be an action by the home secretary that could – at law – be looked at by the high court for its reasonableness and relevance.

Any redaction would thereby not necessarily be the end of the matter – but just the prelude for litigation.

The redactions cannot just be silently made, with no one to know.

Again this is a set-back if the objective of the home office was to have room to make such silent redactions.

Forewarnings and leaks

If, however, the home office had as its objective that it would be forewarned of the content of the report, this objective has been achieved.

This means that if – and it is only an ‘if’ – there is anything politically significant in the report then the home office will not have a shock and so will not be bounced.

It also means there is the possibility of leaks from the home office – perhaps to the media – in the days before 15 June 2021.

This is notwithstanding the controlled conditions for the review of the report – which will remind those with longer memories of Robin Cook and the Scott report.

Making sense of the Home Office intervention

As this blog has already averred, there appears to be no good reason for the late home office intervention.

The purported reasons do not add up – and they appear to be improvised and cynical.

As I set out in detail here, the choice of ‘national security’ and ‘the human rights act’ as grounds appear to have been for providing the maximum litigation cover for any home office delay, and not because of any genuine concerns.

I am not a conspiracy theorist by inclination – conspiracies do, of course exist, but usually to hide cock-ups, as only then will a number of people have the motivation and focus to act in concert.

As such I do not think there is any conspiracy between the home secretary and others to try and block or delay or gut the report.

The home secretary may well be (as a lawyer would say) on a frolic of her own in all this, without contact with anyone else with an interest.

It may well be that the home secretary simply did not like the idea of something being published by an independent panel beyond her control or involvement.

But whatever the true motive for the home office’s late bullying intervention, the statement today means that it is more likely than not that we will see the report published in two weeks, and possibly with few if any redactions.

The panel and its lawyers should be commended for facing off this illiberal and misconceived intervention.

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How to treat the parliamentary evidence today from Dominic Cummings

26th May 2021

Dominic Cummings, the former assistant to the prime minister excites strong opinions – and it is difficult to escape those strong opinions when you write or think about him.

But the attempt should be made – as what he had to say at today’s remarkable parliamentary committee hearing may or may not be important.

The approach I would recommend is as follows:-

First – avoid confirmation bias – especially when it is from an unexpected source.

Many of the things he said confirm the prejudices of those critical of the current government generally and the prime minister in particular – and there was glee to hear him, of all people, say these things.

You should be especially wary of things which affirm what you think must be true.

Second – be aware of the selective nature of the evidence.

For example – some ministers were damned, but other ministers – such as the chancellor responsible for ‘eat out to help out’ and uncertainty over furlough payments – were not criticised

Nor was the cabinet office minister blamed for any difficulty in his department.

If this was a general critique of ministerial competence then it was lopsided – and almost vindictive.

Third – be aware also of motivation.

The former assistant to the prime minister wants, of course, to be vindicated – not least because of the Barnard Castle tarnish.

He has an understandable desire to have been right all along – and his failures only being that he did not do more sooner.

And fourth – there is the issue of honesty.

The former assistant to the prime minister once admitted that the £350million-a-week promise for the NHS was a convenient lie.

He was also one of those ministers and advisers who could not and did not sign the statement of truth (under pain of perjury) about the true reason for the prorogation – and it was the lack of such a witness statement that meant the government lost the case in the supreme court.

Indeed, the fact that if he said something untrue today may have been a contempt of parliament holds no fear for him – as he already has been held in contempt of parliament and with no consequences.

It was a win-win situation today from his perspective – he could take the benefit of absolute parliamentary privilege to make serious allegations, but with none of the sanctions for that benefit being misused.

Nonetheless, a lot of what he said ‘rang true’ – and it may be that there will be evidence that substantiates his many general and detailed claims of wrongdoing by others – some of which are highly serious.

And nothing he said should be dismissed out-of-hand just because he was the one who said it.

Everything he said may be true.

But everything he said, for the four reasons above, needs to be corroborated.

Today was great political theatre – but more is needed before any reliance can be placed upon this great political performance.

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Why ‘how to regulate’ guides are invariably nice and colourful but impractical

25th May 2021

It would be unfair to name the particular public body responsible but a new guide to regulation has just been published.

The guide is lovely to look at.

Pages and pages of colourful graphics, with boxes and arrows.

A well-meaning sequence of platitudinous or vague statements are made which together are to be taken as a guide to good regulation.

The guide is pretty and clever and earnest.

And the guide seems completely useless.

One suspects no better regulation will be made because of it, nor any better regulatory decision.

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The problem is not that, on its own terms, it is wrong.

On its own terms, the guide is quite wonderful.

Like a self-contained and lovingly illustrated code in some invented language like Dwarvish or Klingon or Dothraki.

The obscure illuminated manuscripts of our public policy age.

But the guide – and many guides like it – may not correspond to reality.

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The essence of regulation is practical, not theoretical.

The basic question is: what behaviour or outcome would happen (or not happen) but for the regulatory measure?

How will things actually be different (or the same) because of the intervention (or lack of intervention)?

And will those things really be more desirable than otherwise would be the case?

If the regulatory measure – either a rule or a decision – does not in practice affect behaviours or outcomes as desired, then it may be many things but it fails as a regulatory measure.

So: the best guide to regulation is work backwards from what is happening (or otherwise would happen) and see how that behaviour or outcome can be made to be different (or forced to stay the same) in a way desired.

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The problem with flowchart-based – and also with checklist-based – regulation is that it makes the regulator feel that something is being done.

Like the old joke about the driver who always looks in the rear-view mirror before pulling out – it does not matter what is coming, as long as they have looked in the rear-view mirror they can proceed to pull out.

In so many fields of human activity – from drug-taking to sex work to public health rules for coronavirus and electronic surveillance and public procurement (just to take a few public policy bug bears) – there is a belief that there must be regulations, as something must be done.

The problem with colourful guides on ‘how to regulate’ the process takes priority over practical effect and implementation.

There should perhaps be a new regulator to prevent flowchart-based regulation.

Perhaps it can be called OffChart.

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Why the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel legally can and should disclose the full report to the Morgan family at the same time as to the Home Office

24th May 2021

Today in parliament there was a short debate on the delays in the report in respect of the murder of Daniel Morgan, why there were successive collapses of investigations and prosecutions, and the significance of potential corrupt relationships between the press, the police and private investigation industry.

The link for watching the debate is here – and it is worth watching in full.

You will rarely see a junior minister so obviously unconvinced by their own brief – and there is an apparent contrast between her conciliatory manner and the content of what she had to read out.

(It is not unusual for junior ministers to stand in for cabinet ministers for these urgent debates – though it would have been appropriate for the home secretary to have been there.)

You get the impression that nobody – inside or outside of government – is actually convinced of the ‘national security’ and ‘human rights act’ points being taken to justify the home office’s position.

Indeed, both points seem to be ‘lines to take’ – formulated by some clever central government lawyer – as giving wriggle-room to the home office.

But neither contention adds up.

The panel report is not under the Inquiries Act 2005 – and so the exceptions under section 25 do not apply.

The most charitable explanation I can can conceive is that the government wants to avoid creating a precedent for other non-2005 Act reports being free from the same exceptions.

There are more plausible, less charitable explanations.

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The reason why the report being presented to parliament is legally important (as well as constitutionally appropriate) is that it will give the report absolute privilege in respect of defamation when it is published to the general public.

And although a publication of the report directly to the public by the panel without going through the home secretary and parliament would be an exciting event – and no more than the home secretary deserves – it would not be legally prudent. 

But it is worth looking at the terms of reference carefully on this point – as there may be another way forward in the face of home office obstinacy.

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The terms of reference are here – and they should be looked at in full.

Paragraph 6 indeed provides:

‘The Independent Panel will present its final Report to the Home Secretary who will make arrangements for its publication to Parliament.’

But one sentence in the following paragraph 7 is also interesting:

‘In the meanwhile, it is also envisaged that the Panel will brief the family incrementally, both on the progress of its work and on its emerging findings.’

And so is also paragraph 4(c):

‘…the Independent Panel will…brief members of the family through a final report which would be made available first to the family and then to the public at large’.

In other words: it was envisaged in the terms of reference that, although publication to the world was to be done through the home secretary and parliament, it was open to the panel to share its findings and indeed the final report directly with the family.

(Note the ‘will’ in 4(c).)

I do not know if the panel has shared the findings and the final report with the Morgan family – but not only is there nothing in the terms of reference to prevent the panel from doing this, the terms of reference expressly envisage this being done.

And there would be no greater check on any untoward redactions by the home office than the Morgan family having the original, unredacted report before them.

 

*****

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