Yarl's Wood Immigration Ltd & Ors v Bedfordshire Police Authority

Riot (Damages) Act 1886, section 2(1), gives an unqualified right to claim compensation to any person sustaining qualifying riot damage. That expression includes a corporate operator of a public institution which has public-law duties for order within it.

Those duties do not create an implied exception from statutory eligibility. The claimant’s responsibility for security, precautions, contribution to the riot, or other conduct is instead relevant when fixing such compensation as is just under the statutory proviso and the compensation procedure.

A purposive construction cannot displace the ordinary breadth of clear statutory language without a compelling inconsistency, absurdity or inconvenience.

A serious riot at the privately operated Yarl’s Wood Immigration Detention Centre caused extensive fire damage. The operators and their insurer sought compensation from the Bedfordshire Police Authority under section 2(1) of the Riot (Damages) Act 1886.

Beatson J dismissed the claim at first instance, holding that the operators were not qualifying persons because they exercised public-law powers and had responsibility for order in the centre: [2008] EWHC 2207 (Comm).

The appeal concerned a preliminary question of statutory construction. It was whether an operator of a contracted-out detention centre, notwithstanding its own public responsibilities for security and good order, could be a person entitled to bring a statutory claim for riot damage.

1. Appeal allowed. The court declared that the first and second appellants were entitled to bring a claim under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 for riot damage at the detention centre. The eventual merits and amount of any claim were not before the court.

2. Per Rix LJ, with whom Wall and Aikens LJJ agreed, the phrase any person in section 2(1) is unqualified. Section 9 confirms that it includes corporate and unincorporated bodies. Neither the appellants’ status as functional public authorities for some purposes nor their duties concerning order and security supplied a textual basis for excluding them.

3. Section 7 reinforced that conclusion. It expressly identifies the persons who may claim where a public institution is damaged. A detention centre was a public institution, and the statutory scheme did not suggest that control of such an institution, or public duties exercised within it, removed the controller from section 2(1).

4. The police authority’s strict statutory responsibility did not justify an implied category of non-qualifying claimant. Earlier authority concerning the distinct requirement that rioters be assembled riotously and tumultuously did not resolve claimant eligibility. Pitchers v Surrey County Council was the closest analogy: military control of a camp did not remove it from the police district or from the Act’s operation.

5. Any tension arising from the appellants’ own responsibility for order was addressed at the compensation stage. The proviso to section 2(1), section 3(1), and the statutory right of action allowed account to be taken of precautions, complicity, provocation and other conduct in fixing compensation that was just. Compensation could therefore be reduced, potentially to nil, without denying eligibility altogether.

6. Applying the ordinary meaning of the Act as a whole, the court found no inconsistency, absurdity or inconvenience sufficiently compelling to warrant a restrictive purposive construction. The contrary construction was a blunt jurisdictional exclusion where the Act itself supplied a fact-sensitive mechanism for achieving justice.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Allowed the appeal and declared that the appellants could bring a claim under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886: [2009] EWCA Civ 1110.
• High Court (Commercial Court) Beatson J held that the detention-centre operators were not qualifying persons under section 2(1) and dismissed the claim: [2008] EWHC 2207 (Comm).