R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Fire Brigades Union

Ratio Decidendi

Facts

Parliament had enacted, in the Criminal Justice Act 1988, a statutory criminal-injuries compensation scheme based on common-law damages, but provided that its provisions would come into force on a day the Home Secretary appointed by order. Years later the Home Secretary announced he would not bring the statutory scheme into force and would instead introduce, under the royal prerogative, a very different and less generous tariff-based scheme. The Fire Brigades Union and others challenged that decision by judicial review.

Judgment Summary

The House of Lords held, by a majority, that the Home Secretary had acted unlawfully. Although the commencement provision gave him a discretion as to when to bring the statutory scheme into force, it did not entitle him to decide never to bring it into force at all; he remained under a continuing duty to keep under consideration whether to implement the scheme Parliament had enacted. It was an abuse of prerogative power to introduce, and to spend money on, a tariff scheme that was inconsistent with and would pre-empt the statutory scheme, because that would frustrate the will of Parliament as expressed in the 1988 Act. Lord Browne-Wilkinson emphasised that the executive cannot use prerogative powers to defeat the purpose of a statute Parliament has enacted, even one not yet in force. The minority would have held the matter non-justiciable or premature. The case is a leading authority on the relationship between statute and prerogative and on the limits of executive power once Parliament has legislated.

Key Quotes

Subsequent Treatment