House of Lords

Published May 6, 2008

Regina (Edwards and Another) v Environment Agency and Others

Before Lord Hoffmann, Lord Hope of Craighead, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood and Lord Mance

Speeches April 16, 2008

It was an abuse of the procedure of the House of Lords for legal representatives to seek to reargue the case having been sent in confidence advance copies of draft speeches which the Law Lords proposed to deliver, for the sole purpose of correcting misprints, inadvertent errors of fact or ambiguities of expression.

The House of Lords so stated, obiter, when unanimously dismissing the appeal of the claimants, David Edwards and Lilian Palikaropoulos, from the Court of Appeal (Lord Justice Auld, Lord Justice Rix and Lord Justice Maurice Kay) ([2006] EWCA Civ 174) who upheld the refusal by Mr Justice Lindsay ([2005] EWHC 657 (Admin)) of an application for judicial review of a decision, dated August 12, 2003, of the first defendant, the Environment Agency, permitting Rugby Cement Ltd, the interested party, to burn waste tyres at its plant in Rugby. The Secretary of State for the Communities and Local Government and the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs were joined as second and third defendants respectively.

Mr David Wolfe and Miss Tessa Hetherington for the claimants; Mr David Elvin, QC and Miss Kassie Smith for the defendants; Mr Stephen Tromans and Mr Colin Thomann for Rugby Cement.

LORD HOFFMANN said that the hearing of the appeal was concluded on January 23, 2008. On Friday April 4, after the members of the Appellate Committee had prepared drafts of the speeches which they proposed to deliver, the solicitors to the parties were told that judgment would be given on April 9.

In accordance with the practice of the House of Lords, copies of the draft speeches were provided in confidence with a request that counsel check them for error and ambiguity.

On Monday April 7, the claimants’ solicitors notified the Judicial Office that they proposed to submit a memorandum pointing out errors in the judgment but that it could not be submitted until the following morning. Judgment therefore had to be postponed until April 16.

The memorandum when it arrived consisted of 27 paragraphs of closely typed submissions referring to three Directives which had not been mentioned in the claimants’ lengthy submissions to their Lordships and repeating other arguments which had already been considered.

It contained nothing which caused his Lordship to wish to change the views expressed in his draft judgment.

In his Lordship’s opinion, the submission of such a memorandum was an abuse of process of the procedure of the House of Lords. The purpose of the disclosure of the draft speeches to counsel was to obtain their help in correcting errors of fact or ambiguities of expression. It was not to enable them to reargue the case.

Solicitors: Richard Buxton, Cambridge; Mr Duncan Mitchell, Bristol and Treasury Solicitor; Mr Michael Collins, Egham.

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