Alexander McColl and Alexa Thompson succeed in quashing Parole Board failure to hold an oral hearing
12 August 2024
Claimant succeeds in judicial review of the Parole Board’s failure to convene an oral hearing in R (on the application of Taylor) v Parole Board and Secretary of State for Justice [2024] EWHC 1363 (Admin)
Mr Taylor was a recalled IPP prisoner who sought re-release and applied for an oral hearing before the Parole Board in order to present his case. On 29th June 2023, the Parole Board decided on the papers that there should be no direction for re-release and that an oral hearing could not be convened due to there being outstanding risk reduction work to be completed. Further submissions were made on behalf of the Claimant as to why the case should proceed to an oral hearing. In a further decision on 4th July 2023 an oral hearing was again refused, this time on the basis that the Claimant’s representations raised no new matters that had not already been taken into account in the original decision and there were therefore no grounds for overturning that decision.
The Claimant challenged the decisions by judicial review, arguing that:
- The refusal to convene an oral hearing was procedurally unfair;
- The Defendant failed to give adequate reasons for its decision; and
- In its second decision, the Defendant erroneously treated the application for an oral hearing as a review of the original decision, rather than focusing on whether an oral hearing should take place.
Recorder Wright KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, applying the Osborn principles, found that procedural fairness required an oral hearing in order to facilitate an effective assessment of risk. An oral hearing would have given the Claimant the opportunity to demonstrate his ability to comply with licence conditions, particularly as he had spent several years on licence in the community since his initial release. An oral hearing would have also facilitated a better assessment of risk, particularly in view of an absence of evidence from a Prison Offender Manager.
On the second ground, it was held that the reasoning of the Parole Board in the first decision failed to provide sufficient detail to enable the Claimant to understand why the decision to deny him an oral hearing had been made. The second decision similarly was found to contain inadequate reasoning as ‘[t]hey did not engage in any meaningful sense with the arguments that had been raised’.
Finally, it was decided that the Parole Board in its second decision erred in its approach by approaching its task as a review of the first decision, rather than focusing on the question of whether fairness required an oral hearing. The High Court quashed the decisions of the Parole Board and directed that an oral hearing should take place.
The judgment of the High Court can be found here.
Alexander McColl drafted the Detailed Statement of Grounds and Claimant’s Skeleton Argument. Alexa Thompson conducted the substantive hearing in the High Court. Instructed by Matthew Bellusci of Duncan Lewis Solicitors.
