AC-2025-LON-000559 - [2025] EWHC 1984 (Admin)

As the IPT explained in the Decision, the background is explained in paragraphs 1-6 of the IPT’s ruling (‘the Ruling’). In a (relatively) recent case, this court had quashed search warrants issued and executed against the Claimants’ business premises and home. The IPT also issued a decision quashing authorisations, and an approval for property interference.

Later proceedings in the IPT, in which HMRC was an Interested Party, were held in private at the request of the Claimants (initially under rule 9 of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal Rules 2000 (SI 2000/2665), and then under the replacement provisions, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal Rules 2018 (SI 2018/1334). They resulted in a decision of the IPT dated 25 September 2019 which was handed down in private. The Claimants also brought proceedings against in the IPT against HMRC (as an interested party) which were based upon breaches of orders made against the NCA in 2015 and 2016 (‘Order 1’ and ‘Order 2’). Those proceedings resulted in orders in 2018 and 2019 (‘Order 3’ and ‘Order 4’), and in decisions dated 25 September and 9 December 2019 (‘Decision 1’ and ‘Decision 2’). Decisions 1 and 2 were also handed down in private.

Some of the Claimants then brought separate proceedings in the Administrative Court in which they challenged HMRC’s decision. We have already referred to this as ‘the claim’. Their case was that HMRC had relied on information which the NCA had obtained in the course of its unlawful activities. It is common ground that proceedings in the claim are currently governed by an order of Supperstone J (‘the Privacy Order’). Paragraph 11 of the Privacy Order provides that all proceedings in the claim, ‘including future hearings, are to remain in private and all documentation referred to will not be published or listed on the Court record’.

On 10 March 2023, HMRC wrote to the IPT asking for permission to rely, in the Administrative Court, on the IPT’s Decision 1. The Claimants did not object, as long as there were appropriate protections for confidentiality. They argued that HMRC should apply for permission for the parties to rely on all the documents disclosed in the IPT proceedings.

The President of the IPT required the Claimants to submit a list of the documents on which they proposed to rely in the claim. They submitted two lists (‘the Lists’). In its ruling of 18 April 2023 (‘Decision 3’), the IPT gave the parties permission to rely on and cite the Decision 1, and subject to appropriate protections, the documents in the Lists. Until that point, the claim had been heard in private.

The Judge then decided that he wished to consider whether some or all of the claim could be heard in public. On 23 November 2023, he made Order 5. In Order 5, the Judge asked the IPT for its opinion on whether neither the existence nor content of Decision 1, Decision 2, and Orders 1-4 could be referred to in a public hearing or in a publicly available judgment, despite, in short, various aspects of the dispute already being in the public domain (question A). He asked similar questions about the Lists (question B). He also asked, if there was no general prohibition on publication, whether or not there was any specific prohibition affecting individual documents or parts of documents in the Lists (question C). Order 5 was in the bundle for this hearing, and was quoted in full by the IPT in paragraph 1 of the Decision.

The Claimants appealed against Order 5. Falk LJ refused permission to appeal in Order 6.