Medical member of mental health review tribunal being employed by trust detaining patient - member not working in detaining hospital - medical member sufficiently independent

R(PD) v West Midlands and North West Mental Health Review Tribunal: QBD (Mr Justice Silber): 24 October 2003

The claimant was a patient detained under section 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983.

He applied to the mental health review tribunal for discharge and failed.

He then applied for judicial review on the ground that the medical member of the tribunal was insufficiently independent, as he was employed as a consultant psychiatrist by Mersey Care NHS Trust, which was responsible for detaining him, and the decision was incompatible with article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights and with natural justice and in particular, the common law test of bias.

Hugh Southey (instructed by Peter Edwards Law, Hoylake) for the claimant; Nathalie Lieven (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the tribunal.

The interested party, Mersey Care NHS Trust was not represented.

Held, dismissing the appeal, that a medical member of a tribunal would not be subject to disciplinary action by the trust for any decision that he took; that any person who sought to influence the decision of the medical member would be at risk of prosecution for perverting or attempting to pervert the course of justice; that the medical member had no connection with any hospital run by the trust, and, more specifically, had no relationship whatsoever with the hospital in which the claimant was detained; that the position of the medical member of the tribunal had many attributes relating to independence that were possessed by a member of the court-martial in R v Spear [2003] 1 AC 734; that therefore, a fair-minded and independent observer would conclude that there was no real possibility of bias on the part of the consultant; and that, accordingly, the claimant had had a fair trial in conformity with the requirements of common law and those of article 6(1).