Goldsmith, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Justice

A Secretary of State may lawfully reject the Parole Board’s recommendation about transfer to open conditions if the decision is rational and falls within the range of reasonable decisions open to the Secretary of State. The weight given to the Board’s assessment depends on whether it had a particular advantage on the issue in question. Where an earlier judicial review identified such an advantage and required reasons addressing it, a later decision must engage with those findings. Ignoring the earlier judgment’s reasoning, including its conclusions about the interaction between diagnosis, personality and risk, renders the decision unlawful.

The claimant, an indeterminate sentence prisoner with autism spectrum disorder, challenged the Secretary of State’s February 2025 refusal to transfer him from closed to open conditions. The Parole Board had recommended direct transfer, but the Secretary of State preferred an incremental progression through the closed estate.

An earlier refusal had been quashed by The King (Goldsmith) v Secretary of State for Justice [2024] EWHC 3464 (Admin) because insufficient reasons had been given for rejecting the Board’s recommendation. The central issue was whether the February 2025 decision adequately addressed the Board’s identified expertise and the earlier judgment’s reasoning.

1. Stay and justiciability. The court refused to stay the claim or treat it as academic. The lawfulness of the impugned decision was independent of the later parole review. The forthcoming review could affect relief, but did not prevent determination of legality.
2. Applicable approach. Under Secretary of State for Justice v Sneddon and Oakley [2024] EWCA Civ 1258, the Secretary of State is the decision-maker and may reject a reasonable recommendation of the Parole Board on the basis of a different reasonable assessment. Irrationality asks whether the decision was outside the range of reasonable decisions open to the decision-maker or contained a demonstrable flaw in reasoning. The assessment includes scrutiny of the consideration and weight given to the Board’s advice.
3. The Board may have a particular advantage in assessing prisoner risk, especially where it has heard and tested expert evidence and includes an expert member. The weight owed to its assessment varies with the nature of the issue. A disagreement about risk associated with transfer to open conditions may readily be reasonable, but the decision-maker must still address any identified advantage and explain the disagreement.
4. The February 2025 decision set out evidence supporting the Secretary of State’s view, including concerns about internalised learning, emotional control and the views of prison professionals. It did not, however, engage substantively with the earlier judgment’s findings that the Board had a particular advantage concerning the interaction between the claimant’s diagnosis, personality characteristics and resulting risks. It also failed to explain the rejection of the Board’s conclusions about autistic traits, sexual risk and the need for exposure to less structured social challenges.
5. That omission repeated the flaw identified in the earlier judicial review. The Secretary of State had effectively ignored the earlier judgment’s reasoning and conclusions. The claim therefore succeeded. The decision was declared unlawful and quashed. No further relief was granted at that stage, in light of the claimant’s later transfer to Category C, the passage of time and the forthcoming Parole Board hearing.

The claim was a first-instance judicial review. An earlier decision concerning the claimant had been quashed by the High Court in The King (Goldsmith) v Secretary of State for Justice [2024] EWHC 3464 (Admin). The present claim succeeded and the February 2025 decision was quashed.