The Administrative Division of the High Court has ruled that the prohibition of smoking in certain premises, places and vehicles applies to state prisons for which the Crown is responsible.
The case was taken by Paul Black, a prisoner at HMP Wymott since 2009. Mr. Black, convicted in 2007, is serving a sentence of indeterminate detention for public protection for sexual assault and outraging public decency. Mr. Black is a non-smoker with a history of serious health problems including angina and dysphnoea. In 2009 he required surgical intervention for an anterior myocardial infarction.
Three submissions were made on behalf of Mr. Black. The third submission, that the failure to enforce Rule 20(1) and Rule 34(2) of the Prison Rules 1999 is a breach of Mr. Black's expectations and the public law duty on the Secretary of State, was rejected because:
[...] the concept of legitimate expectation has nothing to do with the present case. As I understood it, reliance upon that concept was fairly abandoned at the hearing before me. The reason for this is that the present case does not concern a policy; it concerns a rule of law [...]The second submission, that the Smoke Free Compliance Line be accessible, confidential and anonymous under Article 8 and Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, was also rejected:
In my judgment, the difficulty with [Mr. Black's] submission on this narrower ground is that there is no authority to support it, whether in the European Court of Human Rights or in the domestic Courts.However, Mr. Justice Rabinder Singh did accept that Chapter 1 of Part 1 the Health Act 2006 applies to prisons for which the Crown is responsible:
In my judgment, the Secretary of State has proceeded on an erroneous understanding of the law. In my view, Chapter 1 of Part 1 of the Health Act 2006 does apply to prisons and in particular to state prisons, for which the Crown is responsible.The appropriate form of relief is yet to be decided by Mr. Justice Singh.
