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The 'Crown Proceedings Act 1947' (1947 c. 44) is an Act of Parliament passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom that allowed, for the first time, civil actions against the Crown to be brought in the same way as against any other party. The Act also reasserted the common law doctrine of Crown privilege but by making it, for the first time, justiciable paved the way for the development of the modern law of Public Interest Immunity.
The Act received the Royal assent on 31 July 1947 but did not fully come into force until 1 January 1948.^[1] It remains substantially in force in the UK.

Contents

Background

The Act

References

Bibliography

Background

Before the Act, the Crown could not be sued in contract. However, as it was seen to be desirable that Crown contractors could obtain redress, they would otherwise be inhibited from taking on such work, so a petition of right came to be used in such situations, especially after the Petitions of Right Act 1860 simplified the process.^[2]
Before the petition could be heard by the courts, it had to be endorsed with the words ''fiat justitia'' on the advice of the Home Secretary and Attorney-General.
Simlarly, the Crown could not be sued in tort. The usual remedy was for the complainant to sue the public servant responsible for the injury. A famous example was the case of ''Entick v. Carrington''. The Crown usually indemnified the servant against any damages.
Henry Brougham called for equality between Crown and subjects in a House of Commons motion in 1828 but it was to be a further century before the proposal was realised.^[3]

The Act

Section 1 of the Act allows claims, for which a petition of right would previously have been demanded, to be brought in the courts directly as against any other defendant. However, a petition and ''fiat'' still appear to be necessary for personal claims against the monarch.
Section 2 renders the Crown liable as though it were a natural person for:

★ Torts committed by its servants and agents;

★ Common law duties of an employer to its servants and agents; and

★ Common law duties as an owner or occupier of property.
S.2(2) provides that the Crown is liable for breach of statutory duty so long as the statute binds both the Crown and private persons.
Section 28 gave the courts, for the first time, the power to order disclosure of documents by the Crown and require the Crown to answer requests for further information. This new power is subject to important qualifications in s.28(2) including the proviso that the Crown can resist disclosure where this could be “injurious to the public interest”. This reasserted the traditional doctrine of Crown privilege but also made the issue justiciable, ultimately giving rise to the doctrine of Public Interest Immunity.

References

1. SI1947/2527, art.1
2. Bradley & Ewing (2003) ''pp''700-701
3.

Bibliography

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★ Constitutional and Administrative Law, Bradley, A.W. & Ewing, K.D., , , Pearson, 2003, ISBN 0582438071