R v Secretary of State ex p Doody

Facts

Doody and three other prisoners were serving mandatory life sentences for murder. The trial judge and the Lord Chief Justice had made recommendations on the period to be served for retribution and deterrence, but the Home Secretary fixed the periods without telling the prisoners what the judges had recommended or why he reached his own figure, so they could make no meaningful representations.

History

The prisoners' applications for judicial review failed in the Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal, and they appealed to the House of Lords.

Issue

Whether the Home Secretary had to disclose the judicial recommendations, allow the prisoners to make representations before fixing the term and give reasons for departing from the judges' view.

Held

Appeals allowed. Fairness required the Home Secretary to disclose the judges' recommendations and to give reasons for any departure, and to allow representations before the term was fixed.

Ratio

• Where an act of a statutory decision-maker adversely affects a person, the content of the duty to act fairly depends on the context, and here, because the decision affected personal liberty and the prisoner's ability to challenge it depended on knowing the case against him, he had to be told the information relevant to the decision.
• The Home Secretary was required to allow the prisoner to make representations on the term before it was fixed, and for that to be meaningful the prisoner had to know the judges' recommendations and, if the Home Secretary intended to depart from them, the reasons.

The judgments

Key reasoning

• The duty of fairness is not a fixed code but is tailored to the statutory framework and the nature of the interests affected, and the closer the decision is to a sentencing decision, the more weight fairness carries.
• An opportunity to make representations is of little value unless the person knows the substance of the case against him, so disclosure of the judges' recommendations is a precondition of effective representations.
• Where a decision-maker departs from the recommendations of the trial judge and the Lord Chief Justice, fairness requires the departure to be explained, as the reasons are needed to enable the prisoner to challenge them and the courts to review them.

Obiter

• There is no general rule at common law that reasons must be given for administrative decisions, though the trend of the law is towards greater openness, and the absence of reasons could itself indicate that a decision is flawed.

Where it fits in the module

For FHS Administrative Law, Doody is the starred authority on giving reasons. It frames the central question whether there should be a general common law duty of reasons or only a duty arising where fairness requires it, and it sets the baseline from which later authorities, including those on statutory and public law reasons duties, are measured. It also illustrates the contextual conception of procedural fairness that dominates the course.

Criticisms

• Lord Mustill declined to recognise a general duty to give reasons, leaving the law dependent on case-by-case assessments of fairness and producing uncertainty for decision-makers and applicants.
• A duty to give reasons is tied to the need to make effective representations or to enable review, so it treats reasons as instrumental rather than as intrinsic to respect for the individual.
• The speech is expressed as a statement of general principles drawn from a sentencing context, and it can be argued that it cannot readily be transposed to administrative decisions with no liberty interest.