JR55

In re JR55 [2016] UKSC 22

BAILII judgment

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Parties and outcome

Claimant
JR55, a general practitioner (respondent in the Supreme Court)
Defendant
Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints (appellant)
Outcome
JR55 won: the Commissioner’s appeal was dismissed.

Citations in this work

Croydon

R v Commissioner for Local Administration, ex p Croydon London Borough Council [1989] 1 All ER 1033

Paragraph 16

16. On the particular facts of this case, there is a short answer to the Complaints Commissioner’s appeal. Under article 9(3) of the 1996 Order, he may not carry out an investigation into any actions in respect of which the complainant has a remedy by way of proceedings in a court of law. This is, subject to article 9(4), a condition precedent to his jurisdiction. It follows, as a Divisional Court in England held about a similar provision limitation on the powers of the Commissioner for Local Administration under the Local Government Act 1974, that the operation of article 9(3) cannot depend on whether the complainant’s allegations are well-founded. For the purposes of article 9(3) she has a remedy by way of proceedings in a court of law if, on the assumption that her complaint was justified, she would have a remedy in court: see R v Commissioner for Local Administration, Ex p Croydon London Borough Council [1989] 1 All ER 1033, 1044.

Bradley

R (Bradley) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2008] EWCA Civ 36; [2009] QB 114

Paragraph 19

19. The starting point is the legal and constitutional status of the Complain ts Commissioner’s reports. The practice of the United Kingdom government is to comply with the recommendations of statutory ombudsmen unless the department in question can put forward good reasons for not doing so: see Handling of Parliamentary Ombudsman C ases (Cabinet Office, 1996), para 61, and Managing Public Money (HM Treasury, 2013), para 4.12.2. This corresponds to what has been held to be the position of the United Kingdom government in relation to reports of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Admini stration. In R (Bradley) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2008] EWCA Civ 36; [2009] QB 114, the Court of Appeal in England accepted (para 63) that where a minister was responsible to Parliament for the public body in question, he was not bound t o accept the Commissioner’s findings or recommendations, because Parliament cannot have intended to preclude the minister from explaining his rejection of them to Parliament. Nevertheless, it was held (para 72) that he could not rationally reject them without “cogent reasons”.

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