A precedent was set 50 years ago that still influences decisions today
The council and Government fell out over education policy
Fifty years ago, Tameside Conservatives seized power at the local elections. What happened next changed UK case law forever.
The 1976 elections saw a shift in power from Labour to the Conservatives in Tameside. At the heart of their campaign was opposition to an unpopular new education policy from the then-council.
The previous Labour administration had planned to abolish grammar schools in the borough despite significant opposition from local parents. Court records from the time state a ‘large number’ had signed a petition opposing the policy.
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It became one of the most strongly fought issues of the election, held on May 6. Residents ultimately backed the Conservative group.
The new leaders moved quickly to formulate a new education approach. They kept much of the original plans, including proposals for three new comprehensive schools in the borough.
However, they opted to postpone action to do away with local grammar schools. The new approach aimed to ‘maintain the status quo with the least disturbance and disruption of the children’s education’, court documents state.
Then-education secretary Fred Mulley had supported the previous Labour plan, however, and opposed a change in direction which was finalised in June – just three months before the start of the new school year.
The secretary of state accused the council of acting ‘unreasonably’ in trying to reverse the policy so late in the day. He tried to oblige the authority to go through with the abolition through an order mandamus – a court order obliging certain action to be taken.
Meetings between the council and Whitehall did not seem to have been ‘amicable’ or ‘successful’, court records state.
The spat ended up in the House of Lords, the highest UK court at the time. The final ruling creating a precedent that still influences cases to this day – The Tameside Duty.
The Tameside Duty requires a decision-maker to have asked themself ‘the right question and take reasonable steps to acquaint [themself] with the relevant information to enable [them] to answer it correctly’.
The Lords ruled the secretary of state had not done this because he failed to properly enquire whether the council’s policy was genuinely not doable. His position that the council’s plan was ‘unreasonable’ was therefore considered a material mistake of fact.
The House ruled that this could not be interpreted as simply being ‘wrong’ in the secretary of state’s opinion. Instead, it had to be defined by what is known as the Wednesbury sense – that no reasonable person could reasonably arrive at that position.
The Tameside Duty has played a part in numerous legal cases in the half-century since it was established.
In 2021, then-home secretary Priti Patel was judged to have breached the duty when she reduced trafficking support payments for victims. The case, brought by a recipient, found she had not properly inquired into the impact on victims.
The case law was also cited in Shamima Begum’s bid to overturn the Government’s decision to deprive her of her British citizenship after she left the UK for Syria, ultimately becoming an ISIS bride. Whitehall was accused by Begum’s legal team of not undertaking proper enquiries into the possibility she was trafficked, and of not undertaking sufficient enquiries over whether she was a sufficient threat to national security to justify the measure taken against her.
The court ultimately ruled that there was a ‘credible suspicion’ she had been trafficked. However, it did not agree that this was a ‘mandatory relevant consideration’ or that Begum’s case had to be viewed through that lens rather than with the primary focus being on national security.
It also said it did not agree that decision-makers had not been given a ‘fair and balanced picture’ of the situation. As such, the Government was not found to have breached its Tameside Duty.
