| SOCIAL SECURITY — Occupational pension scheme — Minimum funding requirement — Withdrawal of scheme due to lack of assets — Parliamentary Commissioner publishing report of maladministration in ministerial department and recommending restoration of scheme — Whether report binding minister — Whether minister entitled to reject report.
R (Bradley and others) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and others; [2008] WLR (D) 38
CA: (Wall LJ, Brackburne J and Sir John Chadwick): 7 February 2008.
Where the Parliamentary Commissioner had found maladministration in a ministerial department, the Secretary of State, although not bound by the Commissioner’s decision, was not entitled to reject the Commissioner’s finding on the basis that he preferred another view which could not be categorised as irrational.
The Court of Appeal so held (1) allowing the appeal of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from Bean J, The Times, February 27, 2007, that the Parliamentary Commissioner’s decision was binding on government ministers; (2) dismissing his appeal from the judge’s ruling that the Secretary of State’s decision to reject the first finding of maladministration should be quashed and (3) allowing in part the appeal of the claimants, Mr Henry Bradley, Mr Robin Duncan, Mr Andrew Parr and Mr Thomas Waugh, that the judge’s ruling, that decisions of the Secretary of State to reject findings of maladministration in the Report, were lawful.
The Report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration entitled “Trusting in the pensions promise: government bodies and the security of final salary occupational pensions” (HC 984) was published on 15 March 2006 concluding that there had been maladministration in Department of Work and Pensions and its predecessor, the Department of Social Security; the finding also concluded that the complainants had suffered injustice “through an inability to make informed choices or to take remedial action”.
SIR JOHN CHADWICK said that the examination of the provisions of the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 itself provided no support for the view that, as enacted, the legislation went beyond the intentions of the Government as revealed by the White Paper. There was nothing in the Act to suggest that Parliament intended to preclude a minister who was called to account before either House from explaining, as part of his justification for the decision to provide no remedy in respect of the complaint, his reasons for rejecting the Commissioner’s finding of maladministration. The Secretary of State, acting rationally, was entitled to reject a finding of maladministration and prefer his own view. But, it was not enough that the Secretary of State has reached his own view on rational grounds: it was necessary that his decision to reject the Ombudsman’s findings in favour of his own view was, itself, not irrational having regard to the legislative intention which underlay the 1967 Act. To put the point another way, it was not enough for a minister who decided to reject the Ombudsman’s finding of maladministration simply to assert that he had a choice: he should have a reason for rejecting a finding which the Ombudsman has made after an investigation under the powers conferred by the Act. In the circumstances, it was irrational for the Secretary of State to reject the Ombudsman’s finding to that effect. For that reason the judge was correct to conclude that the Secretary of State’s decision to reject the first finding of maladministration should be quashed. His Lordship was not persuaded that the Secretary of State was entitled to reject the Ombudsman’s finding merely because he preferred another view which could not be characterised as irrational.
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Appearances: Philip Sales QC, Daniel Stilitz and Holly Stout ( Solicitor, Department of Work and Pensions) for the Secretary of State); Dinah Rose QC and Tom Hickman (Bindman and Partners) for the claimants; James Maurici (instructed by Beachcroft LLP) for the Parliamentary Commissioner; Clive Lewis QC and Ben Hooper (Treasury Solicitor) for the Attorney General.
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