R v Yorkshire Regional Health Authority, ex parte Baker
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 26 March 1996 |
| Date | 26 March 1996 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
Queen's Bench Division
Before Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, QC
National health service - pharmaceutical services - test for adequacy of provision
The test for granting an application to supply pharmaceutical services did not create two distinct alternative methods for determining the adequacy of present provision since the words "necessary or desirable" in the statutory provisions were not to be construed disjunctively.
A body making a decision under section 42(2)(c) of the National Health Service Act 1977 and regulation 4(4) of the National Health Service (Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations (SI 1992 No 622) should first ask if the provision of pharmaceutical services was adequate and only address the question of the necessity or desirability of granting an application where that was in doubt.
Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, QC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge in the Queen's Bench Division, so held in dismissing the application of Patrick Baker for judicial review by way of certiorari to quash the decision of the Family Health Services Appeal Unit not to allow him to provide certain pharmaceutical services in Truro.
The applicant had applied to the Family Health Service Association (FHSA) in Truro for registration to supply certain pharmaceutical services there but established competitors, Inns and Taylor and others, objected. The FHSA granted the application and the objectors appealed to the appeal unit, administered by Yorkshire Regional Health Authority,
Regulation 4 of the 1992 Regulations, made in substantially the same terms as section 42(2)(c) of the 1977 Act, provides:"(4) An application … shall be granted by the FHSA only if it is satisfied that it is necessary or desirable to grant the application in order to secure, in the neighbourhood in which the premises in which the applicant intends to provide the services are located, the adequate provision … of the services … specified in the application."
Mr Andrew Hillier for Mr Baker; Mr Keith Freeman for the appeal unit; Mrs Jane Oldham for the objectors.
HIS LORDSHIP said that the primary focus of the decision maker's satisfaction was whether the services specified in the application were adequately provided.
The key to the meaning of section 42(2) and regulation 4 was adequacy. There was no need at that stage to ask whether it was necessary or desirable to secure those...
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...adequacy. We respectfully agree. [17]The second English case cited to us was R v Yorkshire Regional Health Authority, ex parte Baker, (1996) 35 BMLR 118, a decision of Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC sitting as a Deputy Judge of the High Court. This case was relied upon to some extent by Laws LJ i......
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