Neil Martin – gone, but not forgotten

With attention focused on the Arctic Systems appeal being heard by the House of Lords this week, we should not forget that the Court of Appeal is also due to deliver its hitherto reserved judgment in Neil Martin Limited v HMRC. If the timing and the judgment are favourable, we could find ourselves going Arctic who ?

For those not familiar, Neil Martin Limited was a small company operating in the construction sector. The company needed an exemption ticket, but the rank incompetence of the Revenue and its protracted delays in processing the company's application led to every contractor's worst nightmare; the absence of a ticket meant the company could not get paid, the company could not, in turn, pay its own suppliers and the company folded.

The company sued the Revenue for damages. The High Court, whilst acknowledging the Revenue's incompetence, nevertheless held there was no duty of care owed at common law by the Revenue and, therefore, no negligence.

As a public body, the Revenue has become a shambles with, in the everyday sense at least, negligence now being accepted by most practitioners as the norm. Yet, at the same time, the Revenue has awarded itself an enabling and facilitating function, and unilaterally rebranded the lucky taxpaying public as customers. Any business which assumed such a responsibility to its customers and then acted with such institutionalised incompetence and arrogance would be held negligent.

The policy that public bodies owe a duty of care only to the public at large, and not to individual members of the public, has been overridden elsewhere in situations where a specific relationship was established between the public body and a member of the public, e.g., an individual in police custody.

The Revenue had just such an equivalent relationship with, and a responsibility to, Neil Martin, and put the company under (so much for enabling !). Let us hope that the Revenue are now held to have owed Neil Martin a duty of care, that that duty was breached and the company gets justly compensated. The rest of us could then see the benefit of a sea change at the Revenue. It could be heaping optimism on top of more optimism but, if a politician has to get in the neck, we could also finally, fingers crossed, be rid of Dawn Primarolo.