Page 75 - When Things Go Wrong

duty of candour fills the gap by ensuring that at the outset of a JR the public
body provides a true and comprehensive account of the way that it arrived at
relevant decisions, “by way of [witness statement] of the relevant facts and (so
far as they are not apparent from contemporaneous documents which have
been disclosed) the reasoning behind the decision challenged”. 209 The public
authority must assist the court with full and accurate explanations of all facts
relevant to the issue before the court. 210

4.36 The essential principle is that a public authority’s objective should not be to
win the case at all costs, but to assist the court in its consideration of the
lawfulness of the decision under challenge, thereby serving to uphold the rule
of law and improve standards in public administration. It must therefore fully
disclose all relevant information, including that which is harmful to its own
case. 211

4.37 The duty extends beyond mere disclosure. In a recent pronouncement on the
duty, Singh LJ observed that:

The duty of candour and co-operation which falls on public authorities,
… is to assist the court with full and accurate explanations of all the facts
relevant to the issues which the court must decide. It would not, therefore,
be appropriate, for example, for a defendant simply to offload a huge
amount of documentation on the claimant and ask it, as it were, to find
the “needle in the haystack.” It is the function of the public authority itself
to draw the court’s attention to relevant matters; as [counsel for the
Respondent] put it at the hearing before us, to identify “the good, the bad
and the ugly”. This is because the underlying principle is that public
authorities are not engaged in ordinary litigation, trying to defend their
own private interests. Rather, they are engaged in a common enterprise

209 Belize Alliance of Conservation Non-Governmental Organisations v Department of the Environment
[2004] UKPC 6, [2004] Env LR 761 [86] (Lord Walker).
210 R (Quark Fishing Ltd) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs [2002] EWCA
Civ 1409 [50].
211 R v Lancashire County Council, ex parte Huddleston [1986] 2 All ER 941.
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