Thu Van Nguyen, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Justice

The Secretary of State may recall a life prisoner on licence for breach of a licence condition only where there are reasonable grounds for concluding that a breach occurred and recall is necessary for public protection. The decision-maker must investigate explanations sufficiently to ensure that the information relied on is reasonably accurate, but need not establish that it is absolutely correct or conduct an exhaustive inquiry. In a summary recall process, reliable monitoring evidence may provide reasonable grounds for finding an intentional breach. The necessity limb may be satisfied by evidence that the prisoner’s risk has escalated and cannot be managed in the community. A previous Parole Board decision is not an automatically mandatory relevant consideration where the statutory test must be applied to the circumstances existing at the time of the later recall.

The claimant, serving a life sentence for murder, challenged the Secretary of State’s decision of 15 January 2025 to revoke his licence and recall him to prison under section 32 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997. The recall followed three alcohol-monitoring alerts, which the claimant denied, alleging that the monitoring tag had produced false readings. A previous recall in 2023, based on different monitoring events, had been followed by a Parole Board decision dated 25 March 2024 directing release and finding that the earlier recall was unlawful.

The claimant alleged procedural unfairness and irrationality, including failure to investigate the tag readings adequately, failure to consider alternatives to recall, and failure to take account of the previous Parole Board decision.

1. Claim dismissed. The governing test under section 32 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 required reasonable grounds for concluding that a licence condition had been breached and a finding that recall was necessary for the protection of the public.
2. The information before the Secretary of State was reasonably accurate. The three alerts, the claimant’s complete-abstinence condition, the SCRAM Systems explanations and the reported diagnostic checks provided reasonable grounds for concluding that alcohol had been consumed on three occasions. The decision-maker was not required to establish the accuracy of the tag absolutely or send it for physical testing, given the summary nature of the process and the absence, at the relevant time, of supporting evidence for the claimant’s denial.
3. The claimant’s intentional breach could reasonably be inferred from the monitoring evidence. The Secretary of State was also entitled to find a public-protection risk, having regard to the causal connection between alcohol and the index murder, the claimant’s high assessed risk to the public, three breaches in a short period and the assessment that he was not taking responsibility for alcohol use.
4. The absence of detailed reasoning about alternatives to recall did not invalidate the decision. The statement that the claimant was no longer manageable in the community sufficiently conveyed that the risk could not be contained by less restrictive measures. A prior warning was not an essential prerequisite to lawful recall.
5. The Parole Board’s earlier decision was not a mandatory relevant consideration. Section 32 required assessment of the circumstances existing when the later recall was considered. The earlier decision concerned materially different evidence and circumstances, and its conclusions were not determinative of the later statutory assessment.
6. An error in recording the likely level of alcohol consumption on one occasion was immaterial. The rationale for recall was the fact of three alcohol breaches, not the precise estimated quantity, and section 31(2A) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 independently required refusal of relief because the outcome was highly unlikely to have been substantially different.

This was a first-instance judicial review claim. Permission was granted on the papers on 3 April 2025 by Matthew Butt KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge. The claim was dismissed by the Administrative Court.