In the matter of an application by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for Judicial Review (Appellant)

Hearing listed

Case summary
Appeal
Change log

Case summary

Case ID

UKSC/2024/0083

Parties

Appellant(s)

Secretary of State for Northern Ireland

Respondent(s)

Coroner Louisa Fee

Eugene Thompson (Next of Kin)

Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland

Issue

(1) What is the correct approach to reviewing the decision of an inferior court or tribunal that has purported to disagree with the assessment of national security issues by the responsible Minister? (2) Were cogent (or any) reasons provided in this case sufficient to render lawful the proposed departure from the Minister’s assessment? (3) Does procedural fairness require a coroner proposing to provide a gist of sensitive information, over which public-interest immunity has been asserted in a Ministerial Certificate, to give the relevant Minster an opportunity to make representations and submissions on the proposed gist before the decision is made to release it? (4) Did the coroner here act ultra vires, Wednesbury irrationally and/or fail to take into account a material consideration when she ordered disclosure of a gist / information damaging to national security when the inquest could never be completed by operation of statute?

Facts

The Appellant Secretary of State applied to judicially review the decision of the Respondent Coroner, which concerned whether public-interest immunity (‘PII’) barred the disclosure of documentation relating to an inquest. A legacy inquest had been opened into the death of an individual murdered by loyalist paramilitaries. The Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Ministry of Defence applied for PII to bar the disclosure of certain documents, for which leave was granted on 13 March 2024. The PII application was upheld in relation to six of the documents. The Respondent determined that aspects of the seventh, a police folder (‘Folder 7’), could be ‘gisted’ for reasons given in a closed ruling. In an open ruling, the Respondent carried out a balancing exercise between two competing aspects of the public interest of open justice and preventing harm to national security. She determined that the material in Folder 7 met the coronial threshold for disclosure and that any risk to national security could be mitigated using a partial gist. The Minister for Northern Ireland had, after the Chief Constable’s request, issued a Ministerial Certificate confirming that disclosure of the information in Folder 7 would damage the national interest. Following separate communication, the Chief Constable proposed an alternative gist, which was accepted by the Respondent but without recourse to the Minister. The Respondent then ruled that disclosure could be made of the second gist. The Appellant submitted that the Respondent’s decision to gist material would breach the policy of ‘neither confirm nor deny’ (‘NCND’) in a manner that would be contrary to national security interests. They also argued that her decision was inconsistent as she had decided to disclose material while upholding the PII claim. The Appellant’s challenges to both gists were dismissed by the High Court (in separate judgments) and Court of Appeal. The Appellant now appeals to the Supreme Court.