Venables, Re

Applicants seeking to vary or discharge an injunction must identify the precise relief sought and provide evidence complying with the applicable procedural rules. They cannot require another party or public authority to supply material before properly formulating their own case. Expert evidence requires permission and a properly particularised application identifying the field, issues and questions for the expert. Procedural rules apply equally to represented and unrepresented litigants. Case management directions and filing deadlines must be complied with. The court may direct that case management hearings occur in public where the public interest and open justice strongly favour that course, while leaving the privacy of any substantive hearing for later determination.

Ralph Stephen Bulger and James Patrick Bulger applied to vary or discharge, insofar as it concerned the person formerly known as Jon Venables, a lifelong anonymity injunction made in 2001 and subsequently varied. The application followed further criminal offending by him, but the applicants had not clearly specified the variation or discharge sought, the evidence relied upon, or the proposed role of expert evidence. They also sought the involvement of the Ministry of Justice and access to documents held by it. The court was required to decide what directions were necessary to put the application in proper order and whether the immediate case management hearing should be held in public.

1. Application not yet ready for substantive determination. The applicants had failed to state with sufficient precision whether they sought variation, discharge, or a particular amendment to the injunction. They had also failed to provide properly formulated evidence and proposals for expert evidence.
2. An applicant must identify the relief sought and place before the court, in compliance with the applicable rules, the lay and expert evidence on which the application is based. An applicant cannot require others first to provide the material needed to build the case. The court would not police or enforce the Ministry of Justice’s obligations concerning a subject access request under the Data Protection Act 1998.
3. Non-compliance with the bundle requirements in Practice Direction 27A was serious. The requirements exist to ensure focused pre-reading, efficient hearings and reduced delay. They apply to all hearings before a judge sitting in the Family Division, whether the matter is governed by the Family Procedure Rules 2010 or the Civil Procedure Rules 1998.
4. The proposed expert evidence had been filed without complying with Family Procedure Rules 2010 rule 25.4(2), and the corresponding requirement in Civil Procedure Rules 1998 rule 35.4(1). Any application for permission had to identify the field, issues and questions for the expert and comply with rule 25.7 and the relevant practice directions.
5. Applying the principles in Barton v Wright Hassall llp [2018] UKSC 12, procedural rules do not generally impose a lower standard of compliance on litigants in person; the requirement was especially clear where the applicants were represented.
6. The next case management hearing should be held in public. The hearing had not involved sensitive material and there were overwhelming public-interest reasons for open reporting, subject to the injunction. Whether the eventual substantive hearing should be wholly or partly private was left for later consideration.
7. The applicants were directed to file by 4 June 2018 a draft order and statement of case specifying the proposed variation and reasons; by 2 July 2018 any compliant expert-evidence application and any relief sought against the Secretary of State for Justice; and by 16 July 2018 any factual witness statements. A further directions hearing was ordered, with costs in the case.

First-instance case management decision. No appeal history is stated in the judgment.