England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
(LORD JUSTICE DYSON)

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2 Wednesday, 3rd July 2002

Wednesday, 3rd July 2002

1. LORD JUSTICE SCHIEMANN: Before me is an application made by Mr Chris Gledhill on behalf of Mr Grey, who is a mental patient. The application is a renewed application for permission to appeal from a decision of the Divisional Court made on 29th October 2001. The application for permission to appeal was made on 30th November 2001. That required an extension of time. No evidence is before the court as to why that extension was necessary; it may have had something to do with legal aid. The applications for extension of time and permission to appeal came before Dyson LJ on 25th January 2002. He found that there was no real prospect of success in relation to any challenge of the Divisional Court's decision and so he refused permission. Mr Grey in those circumstances went back to the Mental Health Tribunal for a hearing in relation to the same application which had been quashed by the Divisional Court. He was there represented.
2. Before the Mental Health Review Tribunal a lot of evidence was led on either side, and at the end of the day a fully reasoned decision was given on 8th March 2002 by the Mental Health Tribunal to the effect that the appellant is suffering from a psychopathic disorder and should continue to be detained. I ought to explain that the background to the case is that the applicant, Mr Grey, was sentenced in respect of a homicide.
3. The Tribunal sent their decision to Mr Grey's solicitors. Mr Grey thereupon changed solicitors and put in a new application to this court, as I understand it to restore their application for permission to appeal the Divisional Court's decision of 29th October 2001 and an extension of time which had been refused by Dyson LJ. That renewed application was not made until 10th May 2002, some two months after the second hearing before the Mental Health Review Tribunal and more than 3 months after Dyson LJ's refusal.
4. Mr Gledhill was unable to provide any evidence for this further delay and, as he very frankly accepted, he has substantial problems in the making of this application, because there appears to be no justification for this delay. He submits, however, that underlying it all there are tenable grounds of appeal in relation to the original decision of the Divisional Court of 29th October 2001 although those grounds did not appeal to Dyson LJ.
5. I cannot do justice to their full complexity but the substance of the point made is that the old section 73 of the Mental Health Act has been declared to be non-convention compliant, and the Home Secretary, it is said, abused the process of the court by relying in an application for judicial review on a provision which had been declared to be non-convention compliant and which he had in substance agreed ought to be rectified by a subsequent legislative process but had not moved with the appropriate speed, with the result that Mr Grey had been deprived of the benefit of that. It is, if I may say so, an extremely difficult argument to run in all the circumstances. As it seems to me in a case where there is unexplained delay of this length and the would-be appellant has instead taken part in substantive processes before the Mental Health Tribunal it would not be appropriate to extend the time for any appeal.
6. In those circumstances this application is refused.
(Application refused; costs to be subject to detailed assessment).