M v Home Office

M v Home Office [1993] UKHL 5 is a UK constitutional law case concerning the rule of law.

Facts
An action for judicial review of the actions of the Home Secretary was brought by M, a deported teacher from Zaire. The Home Secretary, Kenneth Baker, had been told by the High Court to return a Zaire teacher to the United Kingdom on refugee status, after being deported.

Court of Appeal
Nolan LJ held that the teacher had to be returned, and said the following.

"The proper constitutional relationship of the executive with the courts is that the courts will respect all acts of the executive within its lawful province, and that the executive will respect all decisions of the courts as to what its lawful province is."

House of Lords
The House of Lords held that the Home Secretary acted in contempt of court, and had to return the teacher.

Lord Templeman said the following: "For the purpose of enforcing the law against all persons and institutions ... the courts are armed with coercive powers exercisable in proceedings for contempt of court ...

...

My Lords, the argument that there is no power to enforce the law by injunction or contempt proceedings against a minister in his official capacity would, if upheld, establish the proposition that the executive obey the law as a matter of grace and not as a matter of necessity, a proposition which would reverse the result of the Civil War. For the reasons given by my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf and on principle, I am satisfied that injunctions and contempt proceedings may be brought against the minister in his official capacity and that in the present case the Home Office for which the Secretary of State was responsible was in contempt. I am also satisfied that Mr Baker was throughout acting in his official capacity, on advice which he was entitled to accept and under a mistaken view as to the law. In these circumstances I do not consider that Mr Baker personally was guilty of contempt. I would therefore dismiss this appeal substituting the Secretary of State for Home Affairs as being the person against whom the finding of contempt was made."