National Insurance in UK Law

There may be many cases where a summons for a declaration is at least an adequate substitute for certiorari proceedings and where it may have advantages over it with no defects. That would be so where an authoritative statement of the law by the High Court will serve to undermine a decision or order so that it need not be complied with and could not in the light of the pronouncement of the law be successfully enforced.

Apart from certiorari there is no machinery for getting rid of the decision of the National Insurance Commissioner and, what is more important, no way cf substituting an effective award on which the claims could be paid.

Secondly, the phrase "bodily functions" is a restricted and precise one, narrower than, for example, "bodily needs". Thirdly, the phrase "attention … in connection with bodily functions", which must, I think, be read as a whole, connotes a high degree of physical intimacy between the person giving and the person receiving the attention. I would add that I fully agree with the observations of Dunn L.J. in Packer's case at page 1023 in the paragraph between letters E and G.

What is in dispute is the qualitative assessment of those facts by the commissioners. I am not entitled to interfere merely because I might myself take a different view of the matter. I am only entitled to interfere if the Revenue's case is strong enough to establish that the decision reached by the commissioners was either one which no reasonable body of commissioners properly instructed could have reached or if they took irrelevant facts or matters into account in reaching those decisions.

Looking at the figures in this case, it is quite clear to me that the figures cannot be regarded as minor and technical and that the borderline has clearly been crossed by these figures. They are significant sums which were significantly late on every occasion on which they were due. They were not what one might call horrendously late but the test is not whether they were serious or really serious.