AC-2025-LON-000553 - [2025] EWHC 2616 (Admin)

Ground 3, as pleaded, is as follows: “the PCA decision was unlawful because no, or no proper reasons, were given for it”.

Mr Fazli did not press this point at the substantive hearing, and in my Judgment he was right not to do so. The PCA committee’s decision was set out in a 53-page document. There was extensive and close reasoning, including in relation to the critical issue of temperature control. The relevant public law requirement is, in essence, for the reasons provided to be intelligible and adequate. The reader must be able to understand why the decision was made, and how any principal controversial issues were resolved: see e.g. South Bucks DC v Porter [2004] 1 WLR 1953 per Lord Brown at paragraph 36. As Fordham J noted more recently in R (Alnoor) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWHC 922 (Admin) at paragraph 28(ii), adequate reasons can require “clarity which eliminatesgenuine doubtsas to what was decided and why”, and “grappling with the principal controversial issues”. In my Judgment, the committee’s reasons in this case did all of those things, both generally and in relation to the particular concerns which led to the outcome. The reasoning in the decision, as already set out, conveyed an unanswered concern about how the drivers would know whether relevant medicines had been exposed to temperatures outside the recommended limits; the unacceptable risk of patients receiving medicines that had not been kept at the correct temperatures during the delivery process; and the lack of adequate information about how couriers or post office drivers might deal with the problem of missed deliveries. I find it impossible to accept the contention that this reasoning (which is also, in my Judgment rational – see above) is legally inadequate.

Ground 3 does not succeed.