Jon Rivers v Chief Constable of Surrey Constabulary
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Sir Ross Cranston |
| Judgment Date | 12 June 2023 |
| Neutral Citation | [2023] EWHC 1417 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Docket Number | Case No: CO/4467/2020 |
and
[2023] EWHC 1417 (Admin)
Sir Ross Cranston
Sitting as a High Court judge
Case No: CO/4467/2020
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
KING'S BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Dr JON RIVERS in person (assisted by his McKenzie friend, David Abbott) as Claimant
Simon Myerson KC (instructed by Weightmans LLP) for the First and Second Defendants
Julian Blake (instructed by Womble Bond Dickinson) for the Third Defendant
Hearing date: 8 June 2023
INTRODUCTION
This is the judgment following a hearing ordered by Sir Duncan Ouseley to consider directions in relation to the application by the claimant, Dr Rivers, for committal for contempt dated 30 November 2022, supplemented by a further application of 19 January 2023.
The origins of these proceedings lie in the disclosure about Dr Rivers made by the Chief Constable of Surrey Constabulary (“the Chief Constable”), the first defendant, under the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (DVDS), also known as ‘Clare's Law’.
The second and third defendants are respectively the Chief Constable's solicitor and counsel who represented him in a judicial review which Dr Rivers brought relating to the disclosure. It should be noted that the applications name Mr Stephens as Chief Constable, but he has been succeeded by Mr Tim de Mayer. Mr Stephens is not before the court as a party or interested person. On that basis the applications against him personally go nowhere. Neither the second nor third defendant in these proceedings were named defendants in the judicial review, indeed were not clearly joined to the present applications. They were made defendants by Sir Duncan Ouseley's order.
As well as the matters raised in Sir Duncan Ouseley's order, the judgment considers other application, one by the defendants to strike out the proceedings, and two by the claimant, one dated 21 March 2023 to strike out defendants' statement of case and seeking summary judgment, another dated 5 May 2023 to adduce bad character evidence of the defendants. It is convenient to deal with all these in this judgment.
BACKGROUND
‘Clare's Law’ disclosure
The Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme enables the police to release information about any previous history of violence or abuse a person might have. On 23 April 2020 the Chief Constable made disclosure under Clare's Law to Dr Rivers' then partner, A, at her request. In the judgement this is called “the Disclosure”. The Disclosure contained important and (and in my view inexcusable) mistakes. Clare's law will lose credibility unless the police take great care in ensuring that the information recorded and then disclosed under it is accurate.
Next day the Disclosure was sent to the London Borough of Hounslow, where Dr Rivers was a teacher. A Single Combined Assessment Risk Form was completed to Surrey Children's Services notifying them that a disclosure had been made. Dr Rivers was dismissed from his teaching post as a safeguarding risk and because he had not disclosed matters as required.
Dr Rivers, his father, Mr David Abbott, and A, all complained about the Disclosure because of the mistakes it contained. As an illustration a serious mistake, which originated from the Suffolk Constabulary, and which the Chief Constable later acknowleged, was that the Disclosure wrongfully stated that an allegation had been made that Dr Rivers had twice threatened to kill an ex-partner. The allegation was in fact that Dr Rivers had informed an ex-partner that he wished to kill his former head teacher.
Dr Rivers made a formal complaint to the Surrey Police in late April 2020. This was investigated by Surrey Police Professional Standards Department who responded to the claimant on 1 September 2020. It found that the disclosure response was satisfactory but acknowledged that there had been errors.
Following complaints made to the police forces which had entered the original records in the Police National Database referred to in the Disclosure, in March 2021 Suffolk Constabulary made changes to the underlying data about the allegations made against Dr Rivers. The Metropolitan Police Service refused to amend its data. The Chief Constable amended the Disclosure and sent this to Dr Rivers' then representatives and A in early December 2021.
The judicial review
It was the letter of 1 September 2020 which Dr Rivers challenged by way judicial review launched in December 2020. The challenge was to the Chief Constable's failure to complete the disclosure, or to correct the disclosure made about him. The judicial review was couched in this way because to challenge the Disclosure itself from April 2020 would have been out of time.
Following the issue of the claim there was protracted correspondence between the parties and suggestions for mediation. As a result, the application for permission for judicial review did not go to a judge. Then in April 2022 Dr Rivers filed an application for urgent consideration of the claim, and a “revised” claim which asserted that the amended disclosure was unlawful. There was also an allegation that the Chief Constable had failed to comply with its duty of candour and to conduct proceedings fairly and reasonably. The application for urgent consideration was refused.
In early May 2022 Dr Rivers issued an application notice seeking permission to adduce new evidence which was appended to the application notice and which he said demonstrated that the Chief Constable had behaved dishonestly. The following month Dr Rivers filed an application for committal for contempt relating to the notice of change of solicitors, and directed primarily at Weightmans LLP, acting for Chief Constable.
When Dr Rivers' applications went to Johnson J in June 2022, he refused them on the papers with detailed reasons. There was a renewed application at an oral hearing before Freedman J in August 2022.
In a detailed reserved judgment handed down on 22 September 2022 Freedman J refused permission in relation both to the renewed application for permission to apply for judicial review and the renewed application to make a contempt application: R (on the application of Dr Jon Rivers) v The Chief Constable of Surrey Constabulary [2022] EWHC 2382 (Admin).
Freedman J's judgment and the appeal
Only three points need to be noted from Freedman J's judgment. First, Freedman J held that Dr Rivers failed to make an arguable case that with the assessment and decision contained in the letter on 1 September the Disclosure had not been accurately corrected: [60], [62(10)]. Moreover, given that the Chief Constable was entitled to rely on the information available to him, Dr Rivers had been unable to show that with the Disclosure there was an arguable case that it was unlawful for the Chief Constable to make it to A [61].
Secondly, the third defendant appeared as counsel at that hearing. In her submissions she used a schedule (“the Court Schedule”) to set out the inaccuracies in the original disclosure — a “helpful schedule” Freedman J described it. There were also tracked changes showing the original and amended disclosures. These showed how amendments were made to the disclosures [27], [48]. In his judgment, Freedman J commented that these made plain “the seriousness of the matters disclosed both before and after amendments were made” [48].
Thirdly, as well as challenging the accuracy of the disclosures, Dr Rivers alleged that the Chief Constable had repeatedly given a knowingly false account of the disclosures and that there was dishonesty and unlawful behaviour: [7]–[9]. Counsel was included in these allegations. Dr Rivers also alleged that the Chief Constable had “seemingly enticed others to change their statement”: [8]. In relation to this Freedman J said that “nothing that I have seen in the preparation and in the hearing leads me to the conclusion that any of the allegations of bad faith or dishonesty made against the Defendant are borne out by information within the papers”: [10]. Freeman J also rejected allegations of dishonesty and lying to the court: inaccuracies, mistakes and negligence do not found the case: [70], [89].
Freedman J referred to the contents of the email of 20 September 2022, following the hearing which, amongst other things, made five allegations that the Chief Constable's legal representatives had misled the court and five allegations that they had failed to inform the court of specific matters. Freedman J held that there was nothing in these communications which had an impact on his judgment. He said: “They do not cast any new light on the application for permission nor do they affect the underlying reasoning or conclusion”: [80].
Dr Rivers sought to appeal Freedman J's refusal of permission of his application for judicial review to the Court of Appeal. In early December 2022 there was also an application with a Court of Appeal reference CA-2022-001886 relating to warning markers in police records and their evidential value. The third defendant before me did not see this application.
Dingemans LJ refused permission to appeal on 22 December 2022 (CA-2022-001886). In his view there were no arguable grounds to show that the Chief Constable's relevant decision was unlawful. Dingemans LJ also refused the application to rely on fresh evidence because it would not have an important influence on the result of the case. Dingemans LJ observed that “there is nothing in the judgment to show that the judge was misled into a wrong judgment”.
The...
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