7. Duty to inquire
There is no duty on a decision-maker to make a specific number of inquiries before coming to a decision, nor is it a valid reason for a court to intervene in a decision if further inquiries would have been sensible or desirable before it is made. However, if a situation arises where no reasonable public authority could have been satisfied, on the number of inquiries made, that they possessed sufficient information to make a reasonable decision, then a decision made on that basis may be quashed. The duty ultimately boils down to whether a reasonable public authority could have reached a rational decision with the number of inquiries that it had made, based on the specific context of each case.
The Court has summarized the principles as follows:
(1) The obligation upon the decision-maker is only to take such steps to inform himself as are reasonable;
(2) Subject to a Wednesbury challenge, it is for the public body, and not the court to decide upon the manner and intensity of inquiry to be undertaken;
(3) The court should not intervene merely because it considers that further inquiries would have been sensible or desirable. It should intervene only if no reasonable authority could have been satisfied on the basis of the inquiries made that it possessed the information necessary for its decision;
(4) The court should establish what material was before the authority and should only strike down a decision by the authority not to make further inquiries if no reasonable council possessed of that material could suppose that the inquiries they had made were sufficient;
(5) The principle that the decision-maker must call his own attention to considerations relevant to his decision, a duty which in practice may require him to consult outside bodies with particular knowledge or involvement in the case, does not spring from a duty of procedural fairness to the applicant, but from the decision-maker’s duty so to inform himself as to arrive at a rational conclusion; and
(6) The wider the discretion conferred on the decision-maker, the more important it must be that he has all relevant material to enable him properly to exercise it. See the discussion in Deng Suet Yan v Housing Authority [2017] 4 HKLRD 73.
Print
Email