High Court chastises defence secretary over repeated deadline failures

Repeated failures by the Ministry of Defence to adhere to time limits set by court directions has led the High Court to advice that ‘parties should familiarise themselves with the principles’ as ‘deadlines set by the court…must be met’.

Ruling in R v FRY, Mr Justice Chamberlain said it was ‘difficult to avoid the impression that the secretary of state and his representatives in this case came to regard procedural directions as optional, assuming that … the court will have no option but to excuse default’.

The cases involve challenges to decisions in relation to Afghan nationals seeking relocation to the UK. The cases ‘raise issues which are likely to be of relevance not only to the claimants but also to others in a similar position’.

However, repeated failures to adhere to deadlines and ‘very many applications’ for extensions of time to file evidence and other documents, ‘many of them made after expiry of the relevant deadline’.

An application for a further extension of time was referred to Mr Justice Chamberlain because the Administrative Court lawyer dealing with it considered it was likely to imperil the hearing date. The judge said: ‘Even if the secretary of state’s team had been doing their best throughout, their conduct was characterised by an apparently total lack of planning or organisation, reflected in the late stage at which the applications were made.'

This included repeated failures to give notice to the other parties of the MoD's inability or unwillingness to comply with directions until after the deadline had passed.

'There is no evidence that [the MoD legal team] had any regard for the effect that their delay would have on the other parties or their representatives,' the judge said. 'They simply assumed that those other parties would have to modify their own working plans, irrespective of any other commitments, to fit the convenience or capacity of the secretary of state’s team.’

Ending his judgment with some ‘general observations’, the judge said: ‘Parties should familiarise themselves with the principles in the March 2026 Practice Statement. Deadlines set by the court (including by court lawyers acting under delegated powers), or by the CPR or Practice Directions, must be met. An extension of time has the potential to cause unfairness to the other party because it disrupts the plans of the other party and their legal team and may also disrupt the court’s business, with knock-on adverse effects for other litigants.’