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Session 2001- 02
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| Judgments - Magill v. Porter Magill v. Weeks
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HOUSE OF LORDSLord Bingham of Cornhill Lord Steyn Lord Hope of Craighead Lord Hobhouse of Wood-borough Lord Scott of Foscote OPINIONS OF THE LORDS OF APPEAL FOR JUDGMENTIN THE CAUSEMAGILL (APPELLANT) v. PORTER (RESPONDENT) MAGILL (APPELLANT) v. WEEKS (RESPONDENT) ON 13 DECEMBER 2001 [2001] UKHL 67 LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. 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. 2. 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. 3. 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. 4. 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. 5. 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. 6. 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:
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. 7. 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 success were "homelessness/gentrification" and how best to use the study about to be commissioned from consultants. The paper prepared by the policy unit on "homelessness/gentrification" formed part of Dame Shirley Porter's paper. Her "Strategy to 1990" was agreed by the chairmen's group on 2 September 1986 and on 3 September was circulated by the head of the policy unit to all chief officers. Officers recommended that the consultants' study should be used to establish the key wards and the need for increased home ownership in them. At a meeting on 15 September 1986 with representatives of the consultants, attended by Dame Shirley Porter and Mr Weeks, there was a discussion of a strategy "to push labour voters out of marginal wards. Housing Dept can't say privatise/gentrify council blocks in marginal wards - 400 in B & B but we could say - preserve economic base - need to boot out these blocks". Reference was also made to an aim to "preserve local communities - but boot out certain categories" and to community groups which "don't vote Tory". Dame Shirley Porter told the consultants "we want the right answers". In January 1987 a paper on home ownership was written at Dame Shirley Porter's request by the then vice-chairman of the Housing Committee, Mr Segal. That paper, written in advance of the consultants' report, identified the short-term objective as being "to target the marginal wards and, as a matter of the utmost urgency, redress the imbalance by encouraging a pattern of tenure which is more likely to translate into Conservative votes". The paper assumed that owner-occupiers were more inclined to vote Conservative and drew attention to the low proportion of owner-occupiers in Westminster relative to the national average. It called for the council to reappraise its designation policy and to "identify far more blocks particularly in key marginal wards". The paper was submitted to, and generally endorsed, by the chairmen's group at its meeting on 27 January 1987. Further work on designated sales in marginal wards followed. At least from the time of this paper in January 1987, targeting designated sales in marginal wards was firm political policy. The chairmen's group decided on 24 March 1987 to adopt a target of 250 designated sales per annum in the marginal wards. At that meeting, attended by Dame Shirley Porter and Mr Weeks, she stated: "need a peg in the [consultants'] report". The chairmen's group also considered a draft report. Dame Shirley Porter indicated that she did not want the report to go into detail because it exposed the other sales policies for discussion, notwithstanding that the report had been prepared, according to Mr England, to give members a "smokescreen" to identify the designated area for growth. Mr England explained to the managing director in a memorandum dated 26 March 1987 that the intention was to plant a question at the Housing Committee on 1 April 1987 in order to obtain authority for officers to provide a report on how to increase designated sales to at least 250 per annum, and that he intended to report back "once we have [the consultants'] steer on 250 in certain wards". 8. By this stage legal concerns were beginning to surface. On 20 March 1987 the deputy city solicitor advised the then chairman of the Housing Committee on the need to have sufficient justification for a major change in policy on designated sales, reinforcing (as he put it) the notes of caution that had already been expressed. On 24 March 1987 one of Dame Shirley Porter's aides (Mr Greenman) addressed certain questions to the director of housing and the city solicitor. In response to the first question addressed to him, namely, whether the council's new policy on 100% designation for sale in the eight target wards would conflict with the council's statutory obligations, the city solicitor replied on 24 March 1987 to Dame Shirley Porter that:
A further question was addressed: "Is there any possibility that this policy will lay the council open to (a) judicial review of its policy or (b) surcharging for illegality etc". To this question the city solicitor replied:
In response to a further question the city solicitor said:
9. The consultants' report was received by the council on about 10 April 1987. The Divisional Court found that Dame Shirley Porter plainly hoped and was deeply interested in the possibility that the report would provide a peg on which to hang the policy of increasing designated sales in marginal wards. Both she and Mr Weeks knew that, without the consultants' support, the officers could not provide professional justification for designation only in the eight wards. In fact, the consultants' report gave no such support. The report did not identify the eight key wards. Of the five "stress" wards it considered, only two were among the eight key wards. On its face the report gave no support for any increase in designated sales. It recommended that the council should exercise its powers with a view to "making available a supply of low and medium priced rented housing". 10. Before receipt of this report, on 17 March 1987, a memorandum from the director of housing to the chairmen's group advised that, with the scale of designation then proposed, namely of all council properties in the eight key wards (490 sales per annum), the council might find it impossible to meet its statutory obligations to a number of homeless households; that it was not possible in professional terms to justify a designation of all properties in the eight key wards given the impact on the homeless and other priority cases; that the "key ward analysis" would have to be provided by the forthcoming consultants' study; and that members should seek legal advice on the reasonableness of the proposed course of action. In a further memorandum on the following day, the director of housing advised Dame Shirley Porter in addition that it was necessary to consider providing additional properties for the homeless and "non-statutory groups" in non-key wards but that the time required for such provision might conflict "with the objective of achieving the number of sales within the three year period". A later discussion paper on designated sales, prepared in the housing department and presented to Dame Shirley Porter and the chairmen's group on 5 May 1987, stated that the Housing Committee would need to set the number of designated sales per annum to be achieved and select the relevant properties for designation. It recorded that the city solicitor and secretary had advised that it was imperative that counsel's advice should be obtained on the final shape of the committee report and that there were four further matters for decision by the committee. The fourth of these was:
Having read this discussion paper, Dame Shirley Porter summoned its author and the deputy city solicitor to her office at 9.45am on 5 May 1987. She told the author that the paper was not what was required; that the policy was clear; and that the note needed to spell out how it was to be achieved, not give options. She told the deputy city solicitor to obtain leading counsel's advice. She also required that a revised note be prepared for the chairmen's group meeting that evening. 11. That afternoon, Mr Jeremy Sullivan QC saw the deputy city solicitor, Mr England and the author of the discussion paper in consultation. He was informed that the majority group wished to target sales in marginal wards for electoral advantage. He advised that the council could not lawfully sell 250 properties per annum in the marginal wards alone. He advised that properties had to be designated for proper reasons, across the whole of the city and not in particular wards and that, in identifying properties to be designated, the same criteria had to be applied across the whole city and, ultimately, choice made without reference to anything other than those proper criteria. He also advised on a number of other matters, including the legality of a scheme of capital grants which was not ultimately adopted. Following this consultation, Mr England wrote a note to Dame Shirley Porter suggesting action in relation to the matters identified in the discussion paper. The note was relayed to the chairmen's group at its meeting on the evening of 5 May 1987. That meeting was attended (among others) by Dame Shirley Porter, Mr Weeks and Mr Hartley. In interview on 5 November 1992, in his affidavit and in cross-examination Mr England accepted that Mr Sullivan had not advised that marginality of a ward was a proper factor when designating for sale. In the course of his note Mr England stated:
On the evening of 5 May 1987, the chairmen's group agreed to target designated sales city-wide in order to produce the agreed number of designated sales in marginal wards. The group decided to adopt the course described in Mr England's note of increasing the number of designated sales so as to be able to achieve the policy objective of 250 sales per annum in the marginal wards. 12. On 13 May 1987, Dame Shirley Porter was re-elected leader and Mr Weeks deputy leader of the majority party. Dame Shirley Porter appointed Mr Weeks as lead chairman for BSC with responsibility for ensuring that its performance met time-scales. She appointed Mr Hartley to be chairman of the Housing Committee. 13. The chairmen's group met on 13-14 June 1987. In a note by Dame Shirley Porter presented to the meeting it was stated that:
In a note by Dame Shirley Porter on BSC the key elements of the policy were summarised. One of these was the targeting of key areas, under which heading the voter targets for the eight marginal wards, in the total of 2,200 voters already mentioned, were listed. The note said that:
October 1989 was the qualifying date for inclusion in the electoral register for the 1990 local government elections. At this meeting the chairmen's group endorsed the target of 500 sales per annum across the council area in order to produce the number of sales desired in the marginal wards. Mr Hartley, the new chairman of the Housing Committee, knew that the policy for designated sales which he had to carry forward was to produce 250 sales in the marginal wards, in order to improve the Conservative vote in those wards. The target of 500 was passed on to officers, and members agreed that they would select at the Housing Committee the estates they wished to see designated for sale. A meeting was held on 6 July 1987, two days before the Housing Committee was to meet, attended by Dame Shirley Porter, Mr Weeks, Mr Hartley and others to discuss how to monitor the impact of BSC policies on each key ward in the context of electoral considerations and to monitor targets for such policies including designated sales. It was recorded that "the Leader reaffirmed the agreed BSC programme of action as agreed by chairmen as an all embracing strategic Council policy with priorities for BSC initiatives" and that both she and Mr Hartley "felt that the City Council had an agreed plan of action which could be clearly understood and implemented by officers". 14. At the meeting of the Housing Committee on 8 July 1987, Mr Hartley presented a joint report in which option 3, designation of sufficient properties to produce 500 sales per annum, was the majority party's preferred option. That option was placed before the committee because Dame Shirley Porter and Mr Weeks hoped to increase the Conservative vote in marginal wards by selling each year 250 council properties in those wards. They knew, or had every reason to believe, that as adoption of option 3 was Conservative policy, promulgated by Mr Hartley as chairman of the committee, it would become council policy. There was no instance of the Housing Committee, at this time, not adopting the majority party's policy. Mr Hartley knew that he was promoting this policy in order to produce 250 sales per annum in the eight marginal wards in order to increase the number of Conservative party voters in them. He also knew that, in supporting this policy, it would be adopted by the Housing Committee. The committee resolved to designate a number of specific properties for sale which were expected to produce 500 sales per annum. The committee further resolved to introduce a scheme of capital grants. 20,697 properties had been identified in the joint report to the committee as eligible for designation. Of these, 5,912 dwellings (29%) were in the eight key wards, 13,633 dwellings (66%) were in the other fifteen wards and there were in addition 1,152 scattered miscellaneous properties. The list of properties to be designated was not recommended by officers; it was presented by the chairman of the Housing Committee. 9,360 dwellings were designated, including all the scattered miscellaneous properties. 74% of all eligible dwellings in the eight key wards were designated; only 28% of all eligible properties in the other wards were designated. 15. There were seven Conservative party members who voted at the meeting of the Housing Committee: Councillors Hartley, Dutt, Warner, Bianco, Buxton, Evans and Hooper. Councillors Hartley, Dutt, Evans, Hooper and Bianco were appointed to be members of the Housing Committee by Dame Shirley Porter acting as the chairman of the Policy and Resources Committee. For five of these members (Councillors Hartley, Dutt, Evans, Buxton and Hooper) it was the first meeting of the Housing Committee they had attended as voting members. There were five members of the committee who were members of the Labour Party. Designated sales was the seventh of eighteen items on the agenda. The committee adopted the list proposed by Councillor Hartley by seven votes to five. The Conservative members voted in favour; the opposition members voted against. |
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