MR JUSTICE BURTON
Approved Judgment
Human Rights Watch & Ors v SoS for the Foreign &
Commonwealth Office & Ors
decision was made in their favour and endorsed (§ 19) the fact
that such notification is:
a. Mandatory under s. 68(4) of RIPA 2000;
b. Necessary for the purposes of compensation under the
regime;
c. Required for compatibility with Articles 6 and 8 of the
Convention. In Kennedy v UK at § 189, the ECtHR held that
a successful claimant is entitled to information on the
findings of fact made in his or her case;
d. Required for public confidence in the Tribunal. In the
Tribunal’s words [in Belhadj] it has been:
‘entrusted with the task of investigating complaints, to a large
extent in closed proceeding… It would, in the Tribunal’s
judgment, undermine public confidence that Parliament had
created a means of holding the relevant public agencies to
account, if the Tribunal’s findings of unlawful conduct by the
Intelligence Agencies could be concealed…” (§ 19).
33. The Respondents nonetheless argue that the Tribunal
should exercise its discretion to avoid giving a successful
claimant notification of his or her decision. They rely on one
obiter passage in the Belhadj judgment (“There may perhaps
be exceptional circumstances (not relevant in the present case)
in which particular facts may drive the Tribunal to a different
conclusion, whether by reference to discretionary
Administrative Court principles pursuant to s.67(2) or
otherwise…” (§ 18)).
34. The Tribunal made it clear that this “cannot possibly be the
ordinary case” (§ 18) and that the circumstances of the
Belhadj case did not amount to the hypothetical ‘exceptional
circumstances’. Further:
a. The Tribunal in Belhadj (§ 18) explicitly rejected any
distinction between ‘substantial breaches’ and other
breaches for notification purposes:
i. there is no such requirement in the statutory regime;
ii. the RIPA regime only provides the Tribunal with a
binary choice between a determination in favour of the
Claimant or not;
iii. Hansard indicates that the Minister explicitly
rejected this distinction when the legislation was
passed and plainly stated that “We have no intention
of limiting the determination when a tribunal makes a