[2024] UKUT 126 (AAC)

“The Upper Tribunal is entitled to make a finding that an appellant’s denial of wrongdoing is credible, such that it is a mistake of fact to find that she did the impugned act. In so doing, the Upper Tribunal is entitled to hear oral evidence from an appellant and to assess it against the documentary evidence on which the DBS based its decision. That is different from merely reviewing the evidence that was before the DBS and coming to different conclusions (which is not open to the Upper Tribunal).”

That is in my view an accurate description of the mistake of fact jurisdiction and corresponds with the guidance given by the Presidential Panel of the Upper Tribunal in PF, approved by this court in Kihembo.

[…]

It seems to me plain that the Presidential Panel in PF were saying that where relevant oral evidence is adduced before the UT in an appeal under s 4(2)(b) of the 2006 Act the Tribunal may view the oral and written evidence as a whole and make its own findings of primary fact. I would add that whether or not A stole money from B cannot be considered a matter of “specialist judgment relating to the risk to the public” engaging the DBS’s expertise.

Turning to the decision of this court in JHB, Ms Patry prays in aid the observation in [93] that “on the authorities a disagreement in the evaluation of the evidence is not an error of fact”. But that must be read in the context of the statement in the previous paragraph that it was a case where the UT was looking at “very substantially the same materials as the DBS”. In contrast with the present case, JHB had given very limited oral evidence, which did not have a direct bearing on the decision to place him on the lists (see paragraph [90] of the judgment, cited above).

The ratio of JHB is difficult to discern, partly because this court found that the UT had erred in several respects any one of which might well have vitiated the decision. I venture to suggest that it may be authority for the proposition that if the UT has exactly the same material before it as was before the DBS, then the tribunal should not overturn the findings of the DBS unless they were irrational or there was simply no evidence to justify the decision. The same rule may apply where, as in the JHB case itself, oral evidence is given but not on matters relevant to the decision to place the appellant on one or both of the Barred Lists.

I reject Ms Patry’s submission that the Upper Tribunal is in effect bound to ignore an appellant’s oral evidence unless it contains something entirely new. Such an approach would be anomalous and unfair. It would be anomalous because, as Males LJ pointed out during oral argument, an appellant who attended the Upper Tribunal hearing and stated that she was innocent but was not cross-examined, would be liable to have her appeal dismissed because no item of fresh evidence had been put forward, whereas if she was cross-examined, and in the course of that cross-examination mentioned a new fact, that would confer on the UT a wider jurisdiction to allow the appeal on mistake of fact grounds. Usually courts and tribunals (and juries) think more highly of parties who have maintained a consistent account than those who come up with a new point for the first time in the witness box.

Such a technical approach would also, in my view, be clearly unjust. The DBS has draconian powers under the 2006 Act. A decision to place an individual on either or both of the Barred Lists is likely to bring their career to an end, possibly indefinitely. Parliament has given such a person the right of appeal to an independent and impartial tribunal which can hear oral evidence. It is in my view open to an appellant to give evidence that she did not do the act complained of and for the UT, if it accepts that case on the balance of probabilities, to overturn the decision.

I was unimpressed, indeed dismayed, by some of the policy arguments put forward in opposition to the UT having a broad jurisdiction to find a mistake of fact. One was that the DBS would have to devote greater resources to resisting appeals. Another is that the DBS might have to modify or abandon its policy of not calling complainants to give oral evidence before the UT.

As for the oral evidence of appellants before the UT, Ms Patry submitted that: “There is a danger of allowing people to turn up and say they are credible. The distinction on the case law is that those people may not give any new evidence – someone has already said everything [in writing], then they come on the day and they give oral evidence and the UT believes them.” I have to say that I found this argument chilling. Of course some offenders, particularly some sexual predators, are superficially plausible. But where Parliament has created a tribunal with the power to hear oral evidence it entrusts the tribunal with the task of deciding, by reference to all the oral and written evidence in the case, whether a witness is telling the truth.”.

The approach which an appeal court will take to decisions on questions of fact made by a lower court or tribunal varies according to the nature of the appeal, the practice of the appeal court and the policy considerations which give rise to the appeal right in question. At one end of the spectrum are cases where an appeal court has no power to review findings of fact at all, however obviously wrong they may be. An example is an appeal from an arbitral tribunal under section 69 of the Arbitration Act 1996, where the appeal is limited to a question of law arising out of the award. Even though in other legal contexts it is regarded as an error of law for a court to make a finding of fact for which there is no evidence, that is not so in arbitration cases as a result of the statutory policies of supporting arbitration, minimal court intervention, party autonomy and finality of awards (The Baleares [1993] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 215, 228 col 1). At the other end of the spectrum, an appeal may be a complete rehearing in which the appeal court makes up its own mind on the evidence and is not in any way bound by what the first instance court has decided. An example is an appeal in a criminal case from the Magistrates’ Court to the Crown Court under section 108 of the Magistrates’ Court Act 1980.

Appeals to the Court of Appeal in civil cases occupy an intermediate position. An appeal will be allowed if the decision of the lower court is ‘wrong’, but in general an appeal is limited to a review of the decision of the lower court (CPR 52.21). Because the Court of Appeal does not hear evidence, and in recognition of the position of the trial judge and the needs of the efficient administration of justice in the interest of the public as a whole, the decision of the lower court on a pure question of fact will only be held to be wrong if the decision is one which no reasonable judge could have reached (e.g. Volpi v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464 at [2], which is merely one of the latest cases to have emphasised this approach).

The principal question in this appeal is where on this spectrum an appeal on a question of fact from a decision of the DBS to the Upper Tribunal fits. That depends on the terms of the statute conferring that right of appeal; the procedure and practice of the Upper Tribunal which Parliament can reasonably be taken to have had in mind when passing that statute; and the need for an independent judicial consideration of allegations which may have a significant impact on all aspects of a person’s life.

An individual who is dissatisfied with a decision of the DBS to include them on a barred list has a right of appeal on the ground that the DBS ‘has made a mistake … in any finding of fact which it has made and on which the decision [to include them in the list] was based’ (section 4(2)(b) of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006). Typically, a decision to include a person on a barred list will be based on a finding of fact that the person concerned has done some relevant act. In this case the act in question is that RI stole from a person in her care. In other cases it may be that the person concerned has acted in a sexually inappropriate way or has committed some form of physical abuse.

In conferring a right of appeal in the terms of section 4(2)(b), Parliament must therefore have intended that it would be open to a person included on a barred list to contend before the Upper Tribunal that the DBS was mistaken to find that they committed the relevant act – or in other words, to contend that they did not commit the relevant act and that the decision of the DBS that they did was therefore mistaken. On its plain words, the section does not require any more granular mistake to be identified than that.

That conclusion is reinforced in the light of the ability of the Upper Tribunal to hear oral evidence, as occurred in the present case. Parliament must have contemplated that an appellant would be able to give evidence to the effect that ‘I did not do it’; that the Upper Tribunal would be entitled to evaluate that evidence, together with all the other evidence in the case; and that if the Upper Tribunal was persuaded accordingly, the appeal would be allowed, without the Upper Tribunal needing to find any other mistake on the part of the DBS. Of course, the evidence might not be believed, but if evidence stands up well to cross examination, that must be a factor which Parliament expected and intended the Upper Tribunal to take into account. It is inconceivable that Parliament intended to place the Upper Tribunal in a position where, having considered all the evidence and despite being satisfied that the finding of the DBS was wrong, the Upper Tribunal was powerless to allow an appeal, for want of being able to identify any other mistake made by the DBS apart from the fact that it had reached the wrong conclusion.

In my judgment this follows from the terms of section 4(2)(b), and is also in accordance with the approach of the Upper Tribunal in PF v DBS [2020] UKUT 256 which, as confirmed in Kihembo v DBS [2023] EWCA Civ 1547 at [26], remains good law, despite what I would regard as the problematic decision of this court in DBS v JHB [2023] EWCA Civ 982. On behalf of the DBS, Ms Patry seized on a sentence in PF at [38] that ‘It is not enough that the Upper Tribunal would have made different findings’, but that sentence must be seen in the context of the decision as a whole, including the summary at [51] and the broad and general statement at [39]) that:

What then of the decision in JHB? It is not easy to discern the ratio of the decision, but it appears to have been along the following lines: (1) the only ‘mistake’ found by the Upper Tribunal ‘was that the DBS had a mistaken view of the facts because the UT happened to differ from the DBS in its assessment of the same or very nearly the same materials’ (see at [90]); (2) there is no ‘mistake’ by the DBS if it makes a finding which is open to it on the material before it ([93]); and (3) the proper approach of the Upper Tribunal to an appeal on a question of fact is as explained in cases such as Volpi v Volpi and Subesh v SSHD [2004] EWCA Civ 56, [2004] INLR 417 ([95]).

I would respectfully suggest that these cases are irrelevant to an appeal under section 4(2)(b) of the 2006 Act. They describe the approach of an appeal court which does not hear evidence for itself to a factual decision by a lower court which (usually but not always) has heard such evidence. But an appeal under section 4(2)(b) will generally involve the opposite situation, i.e. the DBS will have made a decision on the papers after considering written representations, while the Upper Tribunal is able to hear oral evidence. Moreover, the Upper Tribunal is the first independent judicial body to consider what will often be serious allegations against the barred person and its ability to determine the facts for itself (as distinct from whether those facts make it appropriate to include the person on the barred list, which is exclusively a matter for the DBS) is an important procedural protection (cf. R (Royal College of Nursing) v SSHD [2010] EWHC 2761 (Admin), [2011] PTSR 1193 at [102] and [103]).

It may be, nevertheless, that JHB is binding for what it decides. I would respectfully suggest, however, that its ratio must be confined to cases where the Upper Tribunal either hears no oral evidence at all, or no evidence which is relevant to the question whether the barred person committed the relevant act – in other words, where the evidence before the Upper Tribunal is the same as the evidence before the DBS. That was the position in JHB, where Lady Justice Elisabeth Laing explained at [90] that ‘the UT heard very limited evidence from JHB, for example, that he had not been interviewed by the police about the allegation on which finding 3 was based’; and that ‘The UT does not seem to have heard much evidence which had a direct bearing on the matters on which the DBS relied in making findings 2 and 3, let alone any significant evidence’.

JHB will not apply, therefore, when the appellant does give oral evidence. I accept Mr Kemp’s submission that, when this happens, the evidence before the Upper Tribunal is necessarily different from that which was before the DBS for a paper-based decision. Even if the appellant can do no more than repeat the account which they have already given in written representations, the fact that they submit to crossexamination [sic], which may go well or badly, necessarily means that the Upper Tribunal has to assess the quality of that evidence in a way which did not arise before the DBS.

Finally, I too record my gratitude to Mr Kemp and Mr Gillie for their assistance in this case.”.

In line with Leggatt J, I prefer to try to determine the truth by applying the dissenting speech of Lord Pearce in Onassis and Calogeropoulos v Vergottis [1968] 2 Lloyd's Rep 403, HL:

“'Credibility' involves wider problems than mere 'demeanour' which is mostly concerned with whether the witness appears to be telling the truth as he now believes it to be. Credibility covers the following problems. First, is the witness a truthful or untruthful person? Secondly, is he, though a truthful person, telling something less than the truth on this issue, or, though an untruthful person, telling the truth on this issue? Thirdly, though he is a truthful person telling the truth as he sees it, did he register the intentions of the conversation correctly and, if so, has his memory correctly retained them? Also, has his recollection been subsequently altered by unconscious bias or wishful thinking or by over-much discussion of it with others? Witnesses, especially those who are emotional, who think that they are morally in the right, tend very easily and unconsciously to conjure up a legal right that did not exist. It is a truism, often used in accident cases, that with every day that passes the memory becomes fainter and the imagination becomes more active. For that reason, a witness, however honest, rarely persuades a Judge that his present recollection is preferable to that which was taken down in writing immediately after the accident occurred. Therefore, contemporary documents are always of the utmost importance. And lastly, although the honest witness believes he heard or saw this or that, it is so improbable that it is on balance more likely that he was mistaken? On this point it is essential that the balance of probability is put correctly into the scales in weighing the credibility of a witness. And motive is one aspect of probability. All these problems compendiously are entailed when a Judge assesses the credibility of a witness; they are all part of one judicial process. And in the process contemporary documents and admitted or incontrovertible facts and probabilities must play their proper part.””.