The Supreme Court has handed down its judgment in Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and Sea Fish Industry Authority v Bloomsbury International Limited, finding unanimously in favour of DEFRA, represented by Hugh Mercer QC, Tim Eicke QC and Iain Quirk.
This was a case about the power of the Sea Fish Industry Authority to charge levy on imports of fish. It (and its predecessors) had been doing so since 1935, without challenge. Since the vast majority of fish now eaten in the UK is imported, the Authority relied on levy from imports for its existence. Whilst Hamblen J found for DEFRA and the Authority, the Court of Appeal overturned that decision. This meant that the Authority (and perhaps the Government) was at risk of having to pay back years of collected levy. Importers of fish up and down the country began protests against the levy, and the job security of the Authority’s 96 employees in Edinburgh and Grimsby was uncertain. Considerable sums, reputational damage and the future of the Sea Fish Industry Authority were at stake in what became a very long-running and complex matter. That was the background against which this came to the Supreme Court in March of this year.
The Claimants argued that under the relevant Act (the Fisheries Act 1981) the levy only applied to fish “landed” in the UK and that imports were not in any sense landed when arriving by truck, ferry etc. It also argued that the levy was contrary to European law because it charged a levy unfairly on fish products (such as fish cakes) produced overseas but not those produced in the UK, thus allegedly favouring domestic producers even though the fish contained in UK produced fishcakes had already borne the levy.
The Supreme Court recently handed down judgment in an important decision on both the facts and the law:
1. The Supreme Court by unanimous decision held that the Court of Appeal’s reasoning was flawed both as to English and EU law and overturned the judgment.
2. The Sea Fish Industry Authority, whose very existence had been threatened, was saved.
3. The Supreme Court, and in particular Lord Phillips, spelt out new law arising from what he called “the unusual feature” of this case. That was that for nearly thirty years (since the Fisheries Act 1981 was passed) everyone concerned had proceeded on the basis that the phrase “landed” included imports of seafish. In those circumstances there is, as Lord Phillips said “at the very least, a powerful presumption that the meaning that has customarily been given to the phrase in issue is the correct one”. This is a very important and powerful message to those who challenge Acts of Parliament in future where those Acts have been interpreted in a particular way for a long time. Lord Phillips decried the approach to interpreting a statute which involves “narrow textual analysis”, when the purpose of the statute is clear. This decision is likely to feature prominently in future cases on interpretation of Acts of Parliament.
