Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service

En el Tribunal Superior , el juez Glidewell dictaminó que los empleados del GCHQ tenían derecho a ser consultados y que la falta de consulta invalidaba la decisión.

En el Tribunal de Apelación , Lord Lane CJ , Watkins LJ y May LJ sostuvieron que la revisión judicial no podía utilizarse para impugnar el uso de la prerrogativa real. Decidieron que, dado que la determinación de cuestiones de seguridad nacional es una función ejecutiva, sería inapropiado que los tribunales intervinieran. ^{[ 7 ]}

The House of Lords held the royal prerogative was subject to judicial review, just like statutory instruments.^[8] However, on national security grounds, the action of restricting the trade union was justified. Lords Fraser, Scarman and Diplock all believed that the issue of national security was outside the remit of the courts. Lord Diplock wrote "it is par excellence a non-justiciable question. The judicial process is totally inept to deal with the sort of problems which it involves." Lord Fraser stated that while the courts would not by default accept the government's argument that the matter was one of national security, it was a "matter of evidence" and the evidence provided in this case showed that the government was correct.^[9] Lord Diplock held that any prerogative power which impacted on a person's "private rights or legitimate expectations" was amenable to review, while Lords Fraser and Brightman held that only powers delegated from the monarch could be subject to judicial review as a candidate for such a review as the powers in question had been delegated from the monarch to the Minister for the Civil Service.^[10]

Lord Diplock said the following:

My Lords, I intend no discourtesy to counsel when I say that, intellectual interest apart, in answering the question of law raised in this appeal, I have derived little practical assistance from learned and esoteric analyses of the precise legal nature, boundaries and historical origin of "the prerogative," or of what powers exercisable by executive officers acting on behalf of central government that are not shared by private citizens qualify for inclusion under this particular label. It does not, for instance, seem to me to matter whether today the right of the executive government that happens to be in power to dismiss without notice any member of the home civil service upon which perforce it must rely for the administration of its policies, and the correlative disability of the executive government that is in power to agree with a civil servant that his service should be on terms that did not make him subject to instant dismissal, should be ascribed to "the prerogative" or merely to a consequence of the survival, for entirely different reasons, of a rule of constitutional law whose origin is to be found in the theory that those by whom the administration of the realm is carried on do so as personal servants of the monarch who can dismiss them at will, because the King can do no wrong.

No obstante, independientemente de la denominación que se les asigne, sin duda han perdurado hasta nuestros días diversos ámbitos jurídicos en los que el poder ejecutivo conserva facultades decisorias que no dependen de ninguna autoridad legal, pero que, sin embargo, tienen consecuencias sobre los derechos privados o las expectativas legítimas de otras personas, lo que haría que la decisión estuviera sujeta a revisión judicial si la facultad del decisor para tomarla tuviera un origen legal. Desde asuntos relativamente menores como la concesión de indultos a delincuentes condenados, los honores a personas ilustres, la personalidad jurídica de entidades meritorias y la distribución de fondos públicos a favor del poder ejecutivo por parte del Parlamento, se extienden a cuestiones tan vitales para la supervivencia y el bienestar de la nación como la conducción de las relaciones con estados extranjeros y —lo que constituye el núcleo del presente caso— la defensa del reino contra posibles enemigos. Adoptando la terminología utilizada en el Convenio Europeo de Derechos Humanos de 1953 (Convenio para la Protección de los Derechos Humanos y de las Libertades Fundamentales (1953) (Cmd. 8969)), del que el Reino Unido es parte, se ha vuelto habitual en las leyes referirse a este último como "seguridad nacional".

Señorías, no veo razón alguna para que, simplemente porque una facultad decisoria derive del derecho consuetudinario y no de una ley, deba ser inmune al control judicial. Considero que el control judicial ha alcanzado un nivel tal que, sin necesidad de analizar los pasos que lo han llevado a dicho desarrollo, se pueden clasificar convenientemente en tres categorías los motivos por los que la actuación administrativa está sujeta a control judicial. La primera la denominaría «ilegalidad», la segunda «irracionalidad» y la tercera «irregularidad procesal». Esto no significa que el desarrollo posterior, caso por caso, no pueda añadir con el tiempo otros motivos. Tengo en mente, en particular, la posible adopción futura del principio de «proporcionalidad», reconocido en el derecho administrativo de varios de nuestros miembros de la Comunidad Económica Europea ; pero para resolver el presente caso, bastarán las tres categorías ya bien establecidas que he mencionado.

Por «ilegalidad» como fundamento para la revisión judicial, me refiero a que quien toma la decisión debe comprender correctamente la ley que regula su facultad decisoria y debe aplicarla. Si posee o no dicha facultad es, por excelencia, una cuestión justiciable que, en caso de controversia, deben resolver los jueces, quienes ejercen el poder judicial del Estado.

By "irrationality" I mean what can by now be succinctly referred to as "Wednesbury unreasonableness" (Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd v Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1 KB 223). It applies to 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. Whether a decision falls within this category is a question that judges by their training and experience should be well equipped to answer, or else there would be something badly wrong with our judicial system. To justify the court's exercise of this role, resort I think is today no longer needed to Viscount Radcliffe's ingenious explanation in Edwards v Bairstow [1956] AC 14 of irrationality as a ground for a court's reversal of a decision by ascribing it to an inferred though unidentifiable mistake of law by the decision-maker. "Irrationality" by now can stand upon its own feet as an accepted ground on which a decision may be attacked by judicial review.

I have described the third head as "procedural impropriety" rather than failure to observe basic rules of natural justice or failure to act with procedural fairness towards the person who will be affected by the decision. This is because susceptibility to judicial review under this head covers also failure by an administrative tribunal to observe procedural rules that are expressly laid down in the legislative instrument by which its jurisdiction is conferred, even where such failure does not involve any denial of natural justice. But the instant case is not concerned with the proceedings of an administrative tribunal at all.

My Lords, that a decision of which the ultimate source of power to make it is not a statute but the common law (whether or not the common law is for this purpose given the label of "the prerogative") may be the subject of judicial review on the ground of illegality is, I think, established by the cases cited by my noble and learned friend, Lord Roskill, and this extends to cases where the field of law to which the decision relates is national security, as the decision of this House itself in Burmah Oil Co Ltd v Lord Advocate, 1964 SC (HL) 117 shows. While I see no a priori reason to rule out "irrationality" as a ground for judicial review of a ministerial decision taken in the exercise of "prerogative" powers, I find it difficult to envisage in any of the various fields in which the prerogative remains the only source of the relevant decision-making power a decision of a kind that would be open to attack through the judicial process upon this ground. 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. So I leave this as an open question to be dealt with on a case to case basis if, indeed, the case should ever arise.

Lord Roskill said the following:^[11]

In short the orthodox view was at that time that the remedy for abuse of the prerogative lay in the political and not in the judicial field.

Pero por fascinante que sea explorar esta corriente principal de nuestra historia jurídica, hacerlo en relación con la presente apelación tiene un aire de irrealidad. Hablar hoy de los actos del soberano como "irresistibles y absolutos" cuando la convención constitucional moderna exige que todos esos actos sean realizados por el soberano con el consejo de y serán ejecutados por los ministros del soberano actualmente en el poder, es sin duda obstaculizar el desarrollo continuo de nuestro derecho administrativo al evocar lo que Lord Atkin llamó una vez, aunque en un contexto diferente, el tintineo de las cadenas medievales de los fantasmas del pasado: véase United Australia Ltd v Barclays Bank Ltd [1941] AC 1, 29. ^{[ 12 ]} Espero que no esté fuera de lugar en este contexto citar una carta escrita en 1896 por el gran historiador jurídico FW Maitland al propio Dicey : "la única utilidad directa de la historia jurídica (sin mencionar su apasionante interés) reside en la lección de que cada generación tiene un enorme poder para moldear su propio derecho": véase Richard A. Cosgrove, The Rule of Law; Albert Venn Dicey; Victorian Jurist (1980), p. 177. ^{[ 13 ]} Al afirmar esto, Maitland fue un profeta mayor de lo que él mismo pudo haber previsto, pues es nuestra historia jurídica la que ha permitido a la generación actual dar forma al desarrollo de nuestro derecho administrativo, basándose en nuestra historia jurídica pero sin verse obstaculizada por ella.

My Lords, the right of the executive to do a lawful act affecting the rights of the citizen, whether adversely or beneficially, is founded upon the giving to the executive of a power enabling it to do that act. The giving of such a power usually carries with it legal sanctions to enable that power if necessary to be enforced by the courts. In most cases that power is derived from statute though in some cases, as indeed in the present case, it may still be derived from the prerogative. In yet other cases, as the decisions show, the two powers may coexist or the statutory power may by necessary implication have replaced the former prerogative power. If the executive in pursuance of the statutory power does an act affecting the rights of the citizen, it is beyond question that in principle the manner of the exercise of that power may today be challenged on one or more of the three grounds which I have mentioned earlier in this speech. If the executive instead of acting under a statutory power acts under a prerogative power and in particular a prerogative power delegated to the respondent under article 4 of the Order in Council of 1982, so as to affect the rights of the citizen, I am unable to see, subject to what I shall say later, that there is any logical reason why the fact that the source of the power is the prerogative and not statute should today deprive the citizen of that right of challenge to the manner of its exercise which he would possess were the source of the power statutory. In either case the act in question is the act of the executive. To talk of that act as the act of the sovereign savours of the archaism of past centuries. In reaching this conclusion I find myself in agreement with my noble and learned friends Lord Scarman and Lord Diplock whose speeches I have had the advantage of reading in draft since completing the preparation of this speech.

But I do not think that that right of challenge can be unqualified. It must, I think, depend upon the subject matter of the prerogative power which is exercised. Many examples were given during the argument of prerogative powers which as at present advised I do not think could properly be made the subject of judicial review. Prerogative powers such as those relating to the making of treaties, the defence of the realm, the prerogative of mercy, the grant of honours, the dissolution of Parliament and the appointment of ministers as well as others are not, I think, susceptible to judicial review because their nature and subject matter is such as not to be amenable to the judicial process. The courts are not the place wherein to determine whether a treaty should be concluded or the armed forces disposed in a particular manner or Parliament dissolved on one date rather than another.

In my view the exercise of the prerogative which enabled the oral instructions of 22 December 1983 to be given does not by reason of its subject matter fall within what for want of a better phrase I would call the "excluded categories" some of which I have just mentioned. It follows that in principle I can see no reason why those instructions should not be the subject of judicial review.

The Council of Civil Service Unions, with others, submitted the case to the European Court of Human Rights, but it was deemed inadmissible.^[18]

In R (Bancoult) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (No 2), heard at the House of Lords, one of the matters decided was whether or not the courts could subject Orders in Council to judicial review. The Lords unanimously agreed that although Orders in Council were defined as "primary legislation" in the Human Rights Act, there is a significant difference in that Orders in Council are an executive product and lack the "representative character" that comes with parliamentary authority and approval. As such, the Lords saw "no reason why prerogative legislation should not be subject to review on ordinary principles of legality, rationality and procedural impropriety in the same way as any other executive action".^[20]

In Rahmatullah (No 2) v Ministry of Defence; Mohammed v Ministry of Defence it has been held that Crown acts of state, although done under the prerogative, are non-justiciable because they relate to the subject matter of foreign affairs.^[21]

In R (Miller) v The Prime Minister and Cherry v Advocate General for Scotland [2019] UKSC 41 the Supreme Court quashed an Order in Council that sought to prorogue Parliament.