Graham v East London and City Mental Health NHS Trust

LORD JUSTICE SEDLEY: This is an application for permission to appeal, out of time as it happens, against a decision of Sullivan J. Sullivan J gave his decision on 17 March this year, dismissing a renewed application by Miss Graham for permission to apply for judicial review and for interim relief.

Before me today Miss Graham has been most helpfully and courteously represented by Dr Hassib-Jensen, to whom I am very grateful for his clear submissions. Miss Graham has been active in an organisation which is well-known, the International Council of Christians and Jews. She believes (and it is not for me to say whether she is right or wrong in her belief) that she has been persecuted by some sinister forces in consequence of this.

What triggered these proceedings was that, in February of this year, employees of the Health Authority told her that unless she agreed to take medication for schizophrenia she would be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. In response to this threat, as she perceived it to be, Miss Graham issued these judicial review proceedings.

The claim form was filed on 24 February 2004. It seeks an order to stop the two intended respondents, the local social services authority and the local mental health trust, from interfering in any way with her liberty without permission of the court, together with damages.

Pausing here, I do not exclude the possibility that, if an applicant were able to show convincing evidence that a public authority was proposing to abuse its powers, and by so doing to deprive her of her liberty, the court could intervene to prevent it happening. But to achieve this, there has to be cogent evidence before the court of such an unlawful intent. That is the problem in this case.

What Miss Graham alleges in her grounds is that the diagnosis of schizophrenia is part of a plot involving the Russian Mafia and directed at persons like herself, who are tenants of Follingham Court in Hackney.

Dr Hassib Jensen points out to me today that access to the very documents which Miss Graham believes would prove her case has been thwarted by the failure of these authorities, notwithstanding her payment of a £10 fee, to produce her files to her. But I cannot decide a case on this basis. It may be that the files contain the material that she expects; it may be that they do not; but I cannot proceed on the assumption that it is the one rather than the other. I think both Miss Graham and Dr Hassib-Jensen understand that. Dr Hassib-Jensen says that what is described by Miss Graham amounts to harassment by the authorities, and to a non-compliance with Article 10 of EC Directive 95/46/EC, which is the Directive on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. Article 10 reiterates that the object of the national laws on the processing of personal data is to protect fundamental rights and freedoms, notably the right to privacy. This emphasises, no doubt, the importance of Miss Graham's desire to know what is on file about her, but it cannot advance the present application for the reason that I have given.

What lent force to Miss Graham's fears was that, on 17 March 2004, she was sectioned. She was detained in Homerton Hospital and on her behalf, very promptly, a writ of Habeas Corpus was sought. By the time the application came before Goldring J on 30 March, Miss Graham had already been released, so that the Habeas Corpus proceedings ran out of steam. It was in the light of her fear that she would be sectioned again that Miss Graham initiated the present proceedings on 6 April.

The answer that Sullivan J gave to the application when it came before him was that the Mental Health Act itself has its own checks and balances, including of course provisions for discharge, and that there was the supervening right of Habeas Corpus if the Act has not been followed at all. Nevertheless, as I said at the beginning of this judgment, I accept that all of those remedies presuppose that there has been a detention which possibly should not have taken place in the first place. That is why in an appropriate case I do not doubt that the courts may intervene to stop it happening, but they do need hard evidence that something wrongful is in progress or being planned.

For the reasons I have given, the evidence is simply not there. The court cannot act on speculation. So with, I hope, some understanding of what it is that moves Miss Graham to have her concerns, and those of Dr Hassib-Jensen on her behalf, I am afraid I nevertheless have to refuse permission to appeal in this case. Nothing that this court did could take things any further forward than the position that was reached before Sullivan J.

I can only express the hope that for the future Miss Graham's health will be such that she attracts no further attention from the intended respondents. If that involves taking medication, then I am sure that she will do it because it will be for her own good as well as for the good of others.