Baker v Police Appeals Tribunal

Public law remedies are discretionary, but the discretion to withhold relief after an unlawful decision has been established is constrained by principle and the rule of law. A court may refuse to quash for reasons such as delay or other claimant conduct, prejudice to third parties, an immaterial error, or the absence of any practical purpose. It is not a permissible reason that quashing would frustrate the public body’s preferred outcome or produce a result the court considers substantively unattractive. A decision-maker cannot use an unlawful second decision to correct an earlier decision after becoming functus officio. Legal certainty requires adjudications to become final, subject to appeal or review through lawful procedures.

The claimant, a police constable, was dismissed for gross misconduct. On appeal, the Police Appeals Tribunal substituted a final written warning and ordered reinstatement with full back pay. After discovering that the claimant had earned income in other employment, the Tribunal issued an amended order reducing the back pay. It accepted in judicial review proceedings that it had no power to amend its original order, but argued that the court should nevertheless refuse a quashing order to avoid injustice. The central issue was whether that discretion could properly be exercised in those circumstances.

1. Relief and nullity. The Tribunal became functus officio after issuing its original order and statement of determination. The amended order was therefore made without jurisdiction and was a nullity. As explained in Anisminic Ltd v Foreign Compensation Commission [1969] 2 AC 147 and O'Reilly v Mackman [1983] 2 AC 237, an unlawful public act may be treated as void, but a quashing order remains practically necessary to prevent reliance on it.
2. Permissible limits on discretion. The discretion to withhold relief is strictly limited. Recognised categories include improper pursuit of the claim, substantial prejudice to third parties, an error which was immaterial to the result, and circumstances in which relief would serve no practical purpose. The categories are not necessarily closed, but they must be governed by principle rather than an unstructured view of fairness.
3. Impermissible considerations. It was wrong to refuse relief merely because quashing the amended order would frustrate the Tribunal’s intention or allow the claimant to benefit from an outcome regarded as undesirable. The Tribunal’s original error was failing to investigate the claimant’s other earnings; the amended order was not a correction of wording but a new decision which the Tribunal lacked power to make. The possibility that the original order might itself have been challengeable for material mistake of fact did not justify leaving the later unlawful order in place.
4. Legal certainty and collateral challenge. Allowing an adjudicator to alter a final decision by unlawful means would undermine finality and legal certainty. The court also noted that validity could be challenged collaterally in later private-law proceedings, following Boddington v British Transport Police [1999] 2 AC 143, Wandsworth London Borough Council v Winder [1985] AC 461 and Roy v Kensington and Chelsea FPC [1992] 1 AC 624.
5. The amended order dated 30 June 2011 was quashed. The Tribunal was ordered to pay the claimant’s costs, assessed at £20,000 on the standard basis.

The judgment does not state any prior appeal. The claim was a first-instance judicial review in the Administrative Court.