R (Metropolitan Police Commissioner) v Police Conduct Panel [2025] EWHC 1462 (Admin) 17 June 2025, judgment here
Skeleton arguments and written submissions are often emailed to coroners in advance of an inquest or PIRH. The full document is rarely read out in full, and so any press or public sitting in court may find the resulting arguments extremely difficult to understand or follow when only partial extracts from the written document is elliptically referred to in oral submissions.
In such circumstances how are those who are entitled to attend the open public inquest hearing supposed to understand the arguments relied upon by the different interested persons or make sense of the coroner’s ruling on a relevant matter?
This recent decision by Fordham J, reminds us that, whatever the forum, open justice requires judges and tribunals to ordinarily make skeleton arguments relied on at a public hearing available to the press promptly if requested at that hearing. To do so promotes open justice, as to both public scrutiny and intelligibility. It also promotes contemporaneous reporting and public confidence.
In his Administrative Court judgment Mr Justice Fordham explains how two members of the press attended the High Court hearing (that has no relevance to inquest lawyers unless you want to divert into the interesting question of how Galbraith was wrongly applied in police misconduct proceedings). Each journalist had requested copies of the skeleton arguments and, when they were not immediately forthcoming, they raised this with the Court. When Fordham J made an unopposed direction for immediate provision of the skeleton arguments to the media he was also invited by the two members of the press to record the position in law. Given his track record in respect of this issue it is unsurprising that this judge was more than happy to oblige.
In Dring v Cape Intermediate Holdings Ltd [2019] UKSC 38 [2020] AC 629 (a case in which a certain Michael Fordham QC, as he then was, appeared) Lady Hale had firmly re-emphasised how open justice is a principle at the heart of our system of justice and vital to the rule of law. The requirements of open justice apply to alltribunals exercising the judicial power of the state[1] (which must of course include coroners). “Our courts sit in public, not only that justice be done but that justice may be seen to be done”, and as Lady Hale said in respect of written submissions or skeleton arguments “the confidence of the public in the integrity of the judicial process must depend upon having an opportunity to understand the issues.”[2]
The purposes of the open justice principle include enabling public scrutiny of the way in which courts decide cases – to hold the judges to account for the decisions they make and to enable the public to have confidence that they are doing their job properly. And to enable the public to understand how the justice system works and why decisions are taken.[3]
Fordham J relied on Dring when he noted that the provision of skeleton submissions to the media was an important element of open justice. Indeed often, said the judge, it is entirely appropriate for skeleton arguments also to be available to members of the public who wish to understand the hearing.
This does not of course mean there is any right of the press or public to obtain a document. Any person wanting a skeleton argument should identify how this will advance open justice, but the threshold is often easily cleared by reference to simply understanding the case. The question then will be whether there are any countervailing factors which justify withholding the skeleton or part of it.
In Fordham J’s view it follows from all of this that advocates should come to a public hearing, prepared promptly to provide their skeleton argument to the press, having thought ahead about any countervailing factor, and bringing any contingently-redacted version of the document with them if redaction is needed.
Serving written submissions on participants in an inquest
Fordham J is clearly hot on the topic of doing the right thing in respect of one’s skeleton arguments. As he previously pointedly remarked in Bell v Brabners LLP [2021] EWHC 560 QB:
‘it is a cardinal principle of the conduct of proceedings before the Court that, absent an identified compelling reason, a party’s communications with the Court on matters of substance or procedure (unless they are purely routine, uncontentious or administrative) must always be copied to the other parties to the proceedings. It is inappropriate, and unjust, to seek to communicate with the Court without this transparency.’
This principle is now taken up and emphasised in Chief Coroners Guidance for Coroners on the Bench in which the Chief Coroner reminds all coroners and inquest lawyers how important it is that written submissions are served on other interested persons (IPs) at the same time as they are they are filed with the court: [4]
“14. It is an important principle of open justice that any written submission or application on matters of substance made to a coroner (indeed submissions made to any judge in any court) should be served on all other IPs at the same time as they are filed with the court. It should be the primary responsibility of the person making the submission or application to serve their own submissions on all the other IPs. IPs should not expect the coroner’s office to carry out that administrative task for them”.[5]
The inappropriate practice that had crept into some inquests with interested persons serving their written submissions unilaterally on the court alone, perhaps expecting the coroner to complete the task of disclosing them onwards to others, should now no longer be seen.
Cecily White of Serjeants’ Inn appeared for the Met Police Commissioner in this case.
Footnotes
[1] Dring §36
[2] Dring §29
[3] Dring §§42-43
[4] PIRH Chapter at §14-16
[5] The Bench guidance makes clear at §15 that this principle should apply to any communication in which any representation is made to the court on a matter of substance or procedure, but does not apply to communications that are purely routine, uncontentious and administrative. In addition an IP should not be required to disclose or copy a communication to other IPs if there is a compelling reason for not doing so – but where service is withheld on this basis the IP filling a unilateral communication with the court should make the reason for this clear to the coroner within their communication.