Case Facts
The claimant, George William Leonard Pickin, purchased from the owner of land adjoining a disused railway track all his estate and interest in the railway land and the track itself. His claim to ownership derived from s 259 Bristol and Exeter Railway Act 1836, a private Act which provided that if the railway were abandoned, the lands acquired for the track would vest in the owners of the adjoining land. That provision had subsequently been incorporated into a further private Act of 1845, under which additional lands were acquired for a branch line, and both lines eventually became vested in the British Railways Board.
The British Railways Board promoted an unopposed private Bill which became the British Railways Act 1968. s 18 British Railways Act 1968 cancelled the effect of s 259 of the 1836 Act and vested in the Board the lands over which the abandoned track passed. The practical consequence was that Pickin's claimed entitlement to the land was extinguished by the 1968 Act.
In his reply, Pickin pleaded in paragraphs 3 and 4 that the Board had misled Parliament. Specifically, he alleged that the Board had inserted a false recital in the preamble to the 1968 Act regarding the deposit of the requisite plans and documents, and had procured the passage of the Bill as an unopposed measure without giving notice to the owners of adjacent land, including Pickin himself.
The Board applied to have paragraphs 3 and 4 of the reply struck out under RSC Ord 18 r 19 as frivolous, vexatious, and an abuse of the process of the court. Master Elton struck them out, and that decision was affirmed by Chapman J. The Court of Appeal reversed those decisions, holding — in a judgement delivered by Lord Denning MR, Edmund Davies LJ, and John Stephenson LJ — that Pickin's allegations could proceed. The Board appealed to the House of Lords.
Held
The House of Lords allowed the appeal and restored the order striking out paragraphs 3 and 4 of Pickin's reply.
The House held that it is not lawful for a litigant, in the course of litigation, to impugn the validity of a statute by seeking to establish that Parliament was misled — whether by fraud or otherwise — when passing it. Equally, a litigant may not seek to establish a claim in equity by showing that the opposing party, by fraudulently misleading Parliament, had inflicted damage upon him. The function of the court is to consider and apply the enactments of Parliament, not to investigate the process by which those enactments were produced. Any remedy for misleading Parliament in the passage of a private Bill lies within Parliament itself, and not before the courts.
Ratio Decidendi
The ratio of this decision is the affirmation of the enrolled bill rule in the context of parliamentary sovereignty: once an Act of Parliament appears on the parliamentary roll, courts will not go behind it to investigate whether the correct parliamentary procedures were followed or whether Parliament was deceived in the course of the legislative process. The court's role is to apply Acts of Parliament as enacted, not to scrutinise the manner of their enactment.
This principle rests on the constitutional relationship between Parliament and the courts. Any judicial investigation into the manner in which Parliament exercised its legislative function would or might result in an adjudication by the courts that brought them into conflict with Parliament. Such conflict is constitutionally impermissible. The separation of powers demands that matters concerning the internal proceedings of Parliament — including whether a Bill was properly promoted or whether Parliament was misled — are for Parliament alone to determine.
The House of Lords applied Edinburgh & Dalkeith Railway v Wauchope (1842) and Lee v Bude and Torrington Junction Railway Co (1871) as the principal authorities for the enrolled bill rule and the absolute nature of parliamentary sovereignty. In those cases it had been established that courts must give full effect to Acts of Parliament without inquiring into the circumstances of their enactment. The House also explained and distinguished Mackenzie v Stewart (1752), clarifying that that authority does not support any proposition that courts may investigate parliamentary proceedings.
Obiter Dicta
Their Lordships observed that the constitutional basis for the enrolled bill rule was not merely procedural formalism but reflected a deep-rooted principle concerning the respective functions of Parliament and the courts. The concern was that permitting courts to examine whether Parliament had been misled would create a direct conflict between the judicial and legislative branches. It was emphasised that any investigation into Parliament's exercise of its legislative function would or might result in adjudication that brought the courts into conflict with Parliament — an outcome fundamentally at odds with the constitutional order.
It was further observed that the position would be the same even where the alleged misleading was by means of fraud. The strength of the allegation against the opposing party could not, of itself, justify a court in departing from the constitutional rule that the validity of an Act of Parliament is not open to challenge in litigation. If Parliament had been improperly dealt with in the promotion of a private Bill, the appropriate forum for redress was Parliament itself, acting through its own procedures and privileges.