Chris Spiropoulos v Information Commissioner

In an appeal on the adequacy of reasons, an appellate tribunal must consider the decision below as a whole, including what may be inferred from it. A tribunal need not set out every step of its reasoning or expressly state why it preferred one witness’s evidence, provided its findings make that preference sufficiently clear and the parties and appellate court can understand the decision. Express reasons are good practice where conflicting evidence concerns the central issue, particularly when only one party gives oral evidence. An omission of that best practice is not necessarily a material error of law.

The appellant appealed against the First-tier Tribunal’s dismissal of his information-rights appeal. He had requested information concerning fax transmissions and related records held by the Ministry of Justice. The Information Commissioner and the First-tier Tribunal concluded that the requested information was not held by the public authority at the relevant time.

The appellant argued that the First-tier Tribunal had failed to explain why it preferred documentary evidence from the public authority to his oral evidence that he had found the requested information on a court file. Permission to appeal was granted on that ground only. The central issue was whether the First-tier Tribunal’s reasons were legally adequate.

1. The appeal was dismissed. The First-tier Tribunal had not made an error of law.
2. The relevant question was whether the Ministry of Justice held the requested information at the statutory time. The First-tier Tribunal treated the court file as the realistic place where the information might have been held and relied on evidence that the file had been checked without the information being found.
3. The duty to give reasons is assessed by asking whether the parties can understand why they won or lost and whether an appellate court can determine whether the decision is sustainable. The reasons must be read as a whole. What is implicit may be sufficient, and appellate courts should exercise restraint and avoid an unduly critical analysis.
4. The First-tier Tribunal had not expressly identified the conflict between the appellant’s evidence and the Ministry’s documentary evidence, or expressly stated why it preferred one over the other. That would have been good practice, especially because the appellant gave oral evidence and the Ministry did not.
5. Nevertheless, the First-tier Tribunal’s criticism of the appellant’s evasiveness and of the inconsistency between his evidence and his allegation of a cover-up sufficiently implied that it did not find his evidence credible on the contents of the court file. It was therefore unnecessary for the tribunal separately to explain why the Ministry’s evidence was credible.
6. The permitted ground was not made out. The appeal was dismissed.

• Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber) — The appeal was dismissed. The tribunal held that the First-tier Tribunal’s decision did not involve an error on a point of law: [2025] UKUT 285 (AAC).
• First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber) — The appellant’s appeal against the Information Commissioner’s decision was dismissed because the Ministry of Justice did not hold the requested information: [2024] UKFTT 00814 (GRC).