Facts
Complaints were made about the conduct of the then Home Secretary, Priti Patel, towards civil servants. The independent adviser on ministerial interests, Sir Alex Allan, advised that her conduct had met the definition of bullying under the Civil Service approach on some occasions, although she may have been unaware of its impact. The Prime Minister, as arbiter of the Ministerial Code, concluded that the Code had not been breached; the adviser then resigned. The FDA, a trade union for senior civil servants, challenged that conclusion.
Issue
(1) Whether the Prime Minister's decision on compliance with the Ministerial Code was amenable to judicial review on the ground that he misinterpreted the Code. (2) If so, whether he misdirected himself as to the meaning of bullying in the Code.
Held
Claim dismissed. The court did not accept that the Prime Minister had misinterpreted the Code in reaching his decision.
Ratio
- Where a decision maker announces a decision by reference to a non-statutory code, the court will not readily infer that he misunderstood its terms; on a fair reading of the materials the Prime Minister had not been shown to have adopted an erroneous meaning of bullying, so no ground of review was made out.
Key reasoning
- The Ministerial Code is not law; it is issued by the Prime Minister, who is the ultimate judge of the standards of conduct expected of ministers and of the appropriate consequences of a breach.
- Any judicial role is confined to whether the decision maker misunderstood the document he was applying, not whether the court agrees with his assessment of the facts or with the political judgment as to the minister's continued office.
- The court was not persuaded that the Prime Minister's published statement disclosed reliance on any meaning of bullying different from the one the Code contained; his conclusion that there was no breach was an overall judgment for him.
Where it fits in the module
In the constitutional codes topic the case is the leading example of a court engaging with the Ministerial Code, a key soft-law instrument regulating ministers. It illustrates the boundary between legal and political constitutionalism: the court accepts it may interpret a code where a decision depends on its meaning, yet leaves enforcement to the Prime Minister and Parliament. It also bears on the effectiveness of the independent adviser and on whether codes should be placed on a statutory footing.
Criticisms
- Making the Prime Minister the sole arbiter of breaches of a code that governs his own ministers leaves enforcement dependent on political will, as this episode, which ended with the adviser resigning, demonstrated.
- If courts can interpret a code but not insist on its application, judicial involvement may give the appearance of legal control without its substance.
- Conversely, it can be argued that any closer judicial supervision would draw the courts into political questions of ministerial confidence that are properly for Parliament.
Written with AI (claude-opus-5.5 (Claude Code writer)) on 1 November 2026, reviewed for errors by a second model (claude-sonnet-5.5 (Claude Code checker)). Read the case itself on Find Case Law. Spotted an error? Tell us.