Faithfull v Ipswich Crown Court

A compensation order forms part of the sentence imposed after conviction on indictment. A challenge to the Crown Court’s decision about compensation is therefore a matter relating to trial on indictment and falls within the jurisdictional exclusion in section 29(3) of the Supreme Court Act 1981. Judicial review is unavailable even where the sentencing judge made an error of law, and a declaration cannot be used to achieve indirectly what a quashing order could not achieve directly. Where confiscation and compensation orders are both considered, the confiscation order must be left out of account when deciding whether to make compensation, subject to the statutory mechanism for directing payment from sums recovered under confiscation.

Following the conviction and imprisonment of an employee for stealing £15,579.01 from her employer, the Ipswich Crown Court made a confiscation order but declined to make a compensation order. The judge considered that compensation might place the offender’s family home at risk and wrongly treated confiscation as relevant to the compensation decision.

The employer sought judicial review, arguing that the sentencing decision was legally erroneous and that a compensation order could have been made back-to-back with the confiscation order. The Crown Prosecution Service accepted the error but disputed the Administrative Court’s jurisdiction. The central issue was whether the claim concerned a matter relating to trial on indictment within section 29(3) of the Supreme Court Act 1981.

1. Claim dismissed. The Crown Court judge had erred in approaching the relationship between confiscation and compensation. Section 13(4) of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 required the confiscation order to be left out of account when deciding whether to make a compensation order. The judge also wrongly assumed that making both orders necessarily involved a double financial penalty.
2. The statutory scheme permits both orders to be made. Where the court believes that the offender will lack sufficient means to satisfy both in full, section 13(5) and (6) require the court to direct that specified compensation be paid from sums recovered under the confiscation order. A back-to-back order is therefore possible, but it depends on applying the statutory insufficiency-of-means test. The court could not determine what order would have been made because the Crown Court had not applied that test.
3. A compensation order is part of the sentence. This follows from section 50(1) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968, and from the statutory powers of the Court of Appeal to annul or vary compensation orders under section 132 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000.
4. The claim consequently fell within section 29(3) of the Supreme Court Act 1981. Matters relating to trial on indictment include sentence. The jurisdictional bar applies even where the complaint is that the Crown Court made an error of law in sentencing. The claimant’s status as a victim, rather than a party to the criminal proceedings, did not create an exception. The absence of a prosecution appeal against failure to make compensation did not permit judicial review to fill the gap.
5. The proposed declaration could not avoid the statutory bar. Its practical effect would have been to require the confiscated money to be paid to the claimant and would therefore have altered the sentence in substance. The claimant retained a civil remedy for the stolen sum, so the restriction on judicial review did not infringe his Convention rights.

The claim was brought directly in the Administrative Court against an order made by His Honour Judge Goodin in the Ipswich Crown Court on 22 May 2006. The claim was dismissed. The court certified a point of law of general public importance but refused permission to appeal.