Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs v Assistant Deputy Coroner for Inner North London

In a public interest immunity claim involving national security, the court must ultimately balance disclosure against non-disclosure. The minister’s assessment of national-security damage should be accepted unless cogent or solid reasons justify rejecting it. A sufficiently grave risk may end the inquiry; otherwise the court must conduct the balance on that evidential basis. A real and significant risk will generally, but not invariably, preclude disclosure. The decision remains judicial, and reasons are required, especially when disclosure is ordered despite the risk.

The Secretary of State sought judicial review of an Assistant Deputy Coroner’s public interest immunity rulings in the inquest into Alexander Litvinenko’s death. The Coroner upheld immunity for some material but rejected it for other material, ordering disclosure by way of gists and identifying related lines of inquiry. The Secretary of State argued that the Coroner had given insufficient weight to national security, failed to perform the required balance, and acted irrationally. The central issue was the proper approach where disclosure was said to create a real risk of significant damage to national security.

1. The claim succeeded. The court quashed the Coroner’s decision and the proposed gists. It declined to remit the matter.
2. Public interest immunity is ultimately a matter for the court, not the Government. The court must balance disclosure against non-disclosure, even where national security is relied upon.
3. The national-security risk had to be supported by evidence. That threshold was met. If disclosure would have a sufficiently grave effect on national security, disclosure should ordinarily end there. Otherwise, the balancing exercise must proceed.
4. The Secretary of State’s assessment of the nature and extent of the national-security damage should be accepted unless cogent or solid reasons justify rejecting it. The Coroner advanced no such reasons and therefore gave insufficient weight to the assessment.
5. The Coroner had to explain why the prejudice to the inquest outweighed the real and significant national-security risk. The need for a full and proper inquiry could not operate as an overriding consideration without reasoned justification.
6. The Coroner also failed to reconsider the balance after later rulings upholding immunity concerning Russian State responsibility and preventability.
7. The prejudice to the inquest narrative did not outweigh the national-security risk. No reasonable coroner could have reached the contrary conclusion on the proper approach.

The proposed peripheral gist and lines of inquiry could not stand in consequence.

The judgment records an earlier judgment in the same litigation concerning procedure: [2013] EWHC 1786. The present judicial review quashed the Coroner’s decision and did not remit the matter.