Porter v Magill
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL |
| Judgment Date | 13 December 2001 |
| Neutral Citation | [2001] UKHL 67 |
| Court | House of Lords |
| Date | 13 December 2001 |
[2001] UKHL 67
Lord Bingham of Cornhill
Lord Steyn
Lord Hope of Craighead
Lord Hobhouse of Wood-borough
Lord Scott of Foscote
HOUSE OF LORDS
My Lords,
The issue in this appeal is whether the auditor should have certified any sum to be due to the Westminster City Council from Dame Shirley Porter and Mr David Weeks and, if so, in what amount.
The appellant, Mr John Magill, is the auditor. He was appointed by the Audit Commission under section 13 of the Local Government Finance Act 1982 to audit the accounts of Westminster City Council for the years 1987-8 to 1994-5. He conducted a very lengthy and detailed audit and certified under section 20 of the Act that three councillors and three officers had, by wilful misconduct, jointly and severally caused a loss of approximately £31m to the council which they were liable to make good. All three of the councillors and two of the officers pursued appeals against the auditor's decision to the Queen's Bench Divisional Court (Rose LJ, Latham and Keene JJ). The councillors were Dame Shirley Porter, who was leader of the council at all material times, Mr David Weeks, who was deputy leader, and Mr Hartley, who from June 1987 was chairman of the council's Housing Committee. The two officers were Mr England, who was the council's director of housing, and Mr Phillips, who was managing director of the council. The Divisional Court upheld the auditor's finding that Dame Shirley Porter and Mr Weeks were liable, although it reduced the sum certified; it allowed the appeals of Mr Hartley and the two officers and quashed the auditor's certificate in relation to them: (1997) 96 LGR 157. On further appeal by Dame Shirley Porter and Mr Weeks, the Court of Appeal by a majority (Kennedy and Schiemann LJJ, Robert Walker LJ dissenting) upheld both appeals on liability: [2000] 2 WLR 1420. Robert Walker LJ, although in favour of dismissing both appeals against liability, would have reduced the sum of the auditor's certificate: p 1504. On this quantum issue Kennedy LJ agreed with him (at p 1429) and Schiemann LJ (at p 1447) expressed no opinion. The auditor now appeals to this House seeking to reinstate the certificate issued against Dame Shirley Porter and Mr Weeks in the sum certified by the Divisional Court. Mr Hartley and the two officers are no longer directly involved in the proceedings. It is necessary to decide whether the Court of Appeal was right to quash the certificate issued against Dame Shirley Porter and Mr Weeks and, if not, in what sum that certificate should have been issued.
My Lords, the facts giving rise to this appeal and much of the evidence have been summarised at some length by the Divisional Court (at pp 164-166, 175-203) and by the Court of Appeal (pp 1431-1432, 1463-1482) and are the subject of a lengthy statement of facts agreed between the parties for purposes of this appeal. The facts and the evidence are crucial to the appeal, but it is unnecessary to repeat the detailed summaries already made. It is enough, for present purposes, to highlight some of the key events in the narrative, which I take from the agreed statement of facts.
The council comprised 60 councillors elected to represent 23 wards. As a result of the local government elections in May 1986, the overall Conservative party majority was reduced from 26 to 4. The close results of those elections prompted leading members of the council to consider how council policies could be developed in order to advance the electoral prospects of the Conservative party in the next local government election to be held in 1990. Dame Shirley Porter was determined that the Conservative party would have a greater majority at the 1990 elections than that which it had narrowly achieved in 1986. With this end in view, she reorganised the party's administrative and decision-making structure and herself chaired a group of committee chairmen. This body comprised herself as leader, Mr Weeks, the deputy leader, the majority party's chief whip and the chairmen of the council's committees. It was not a committee or sub-committee appointed by the council. It met on a regular basis, sometimes with officers in attendance. It developed and promoted policy. One of these concerned the designation of council-owned properties for sale.
The council first introduced a policy of designated sales in 1972. Under this policy, blocks of council dwellings were designated and, when a dwelling in a designated block became vacant, it was not re-let but offered for sale to an approved applicant with the intention that all dwellings in designated blocks would become owner-occupied. Under the scheme as it was in July 1987, 10 to 20 sales per annum were generated from the 300 dwellings then designated. With a view to achieving greater success in the 1990 elections, the chairmen's group formulated a policy entitled "Building Stable Communities" (known for short as "BSC"). This included targets for increasing the numbers of Conservative voters in each of eight key wards, the target voter figures for those wards adding up to a total of 2,200. The eight most marginal wards in the election of May 1986 from the Conservative party's point of view were Bayswater, Cavendish, Hamilton Terrace, Little Venice, Millbank, St James's, Victoria and West End. Those eight wards were chosen in mid-February 1987 by some members of the majority party on the council (including Dame Shirley Porter and Councillor Weeks), and were known as the "key wards". Both the eight key wards and the target voter figures (which envisaged an overall increase of 2,200 Conservative supporters in the eight key wards) were identified to officers in February 1987. The target voter figures remained the same thereafter and the achievement of those figures (including the contribution of designated sales to them) was monitored by leading members and officers. The references in contemporary documents to "new residents", "more electors" and "new electors" in many instances were euphemisms for "more potential Conservative voters", particularly in marginal wards. A major element of BSC was to increase designated sales of council properties in the eight key wards to potential owner-occupiers. It was believed that owner-occupiers would be more likely to vote Conservative. In some of the key wards there was very little council housing and few or no designated properties. But, even in respect of those wards, designated sales appeared on monitoring charts recording the progress towards the targets in the eight key wards. From July 1986, if not before, concentrating on marginal wards was majority party policy. The intention of the majority party was to develop council policies which would target marginal wards, including such housing policies as could affect the make-up of the electorate in those wards.
Very soon after the 1986 local government elections, the first suggestions for disposing of council housing, including increased designation, were made. On 19 May 1986, Mr England informed the then chairman of the Housing Committee that it would be virtually impossible for the council to meet its statutory obligations if a policy of wholesale disposal of council housing were to be adopted. On 3 June 1986 the chairmen's group decided that major policy initiatives should come down from it (and from the Policy and Resources Committee) and it discussed marginal wards. On 5 June 1986 the chairman of the Housing Committee responded to Dame Shirley Porter's request for a note on "balancing the social mix" by identifying a number of factors contributing to the drop in the Conservative party's "natural support" and suggesting various options for increasing home ownership, including increased designated sales which would, however, lessen the council's "already stretched ability to meet our statutory requirements". On 24 June 1986 Dame Shirley Porter and Mr Weeks attended the chief officers' board when the officers were told that the focus of attention would be on winning the next election, and there was discussion of the majority party's objective of "social engineering including housing". On 30 June 1986 a working lunch, attended by Dame Shirley Porter and others, was held to discuss a prospective planning study: Mr England made a note of the discussion which included references such as "economic justification for Gmander on Hsg", "who is a Tory Voter?", "Gentrification" and "will company lets vote Tory". On 29 July 1986 Dame Shirley Porter had a discussion with Mr Phillips concerning properties in key wards, voting records and decanting and she asked Mr England for information in respect of key wards. By the beginning of September 1986 the council's policy unit had prepared a paper on "homelessness/gentrification". It stated that "homelessness is reaching crisis proportions" and described "gentrification" as:
"ensuring that the right people live in the right areas. The areas are relatively easy to define: target wards identified on the basis of electoral trends and results. Defining 'people' is much more difficult and not strictly Council business … the housing/planning study should be used to define which initiatives are likely to produce the desired results, and in which areas."
On 1 September 1986 Mr England produced a paper for Mr Weeks on "Gentrification" in which he identified the major constraints on initiatives to increase home ownership as the duties to the homeless and other high priority rehousing requirements.
Dame Shirley Porter wrote a paper setting out her "Strategy to 1990" in which she gave top priority to winning the 1990 elections. Two of the key issues identified in the "Strategy to 1990" in relation to electoral...
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Subject Index
...Coplc [1987]1 Lloyd’s Rep.379 . . . . . . . . . . . . .96Pollitt vR (1992) 174CLR 558 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326Porter v Magill [2001] UKHL 67, [2002] 2 AC 357. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160,252Practice Direction (1837) 7 Car & P 675, 173 ER296 . .......