Attorney General V Blake House of Lords

Attorney General v Blake, [2001] 1 A.C. 268 (2000)
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What then was left? First there was the public law
claim to an interim injunction as awarded by the Court
of Appeal. Second there now is the claim not made as
such in the Court of Appeal but now fully argued in
your Lordships' House as a cross-appeal by the Crown
for restitutionary damages.
The public law claim
I agree that the decision of the Court of Appeal
cannot be sustained. I agree with the reasoning of my
noble and learned friends save in so far as it seeks
to pray in aid their conclusion on the cross-appeal.
The injunction was granted in aid of preserving a
power later to confiscate the relevant sum of money.
The Attorney General has the locus standi to make
such an application. He did not seek to rely on Chief
Constable of Kent v V [1983] QB 34 and there has
been no need to consider that case. The reason why
the grant of the injunction cannot be sustained is that
there is no common law power to confiscate as such
the earnings of even convicted criminals ( Malone v
Metropolitan Police Comr [1980] QB 49 ) and, if there
was any such power, the field is now fully occupied
by statutory provisions which proceed on the basis that
there is no such general power and make express and
defined provision for a qualified grant of such a power
(cf Attorney General v De Keyser's Royal Hotel Ltd
[1920] AC 508 ). The Crown accepted that it could
not realistically say that it would ever be in a position
to invoke the statutory powers. The injunction was
an interim one and unless it is in support of some
sustainable further remedy it was wrong in principle
and must be set aside.
The private law claim: restitutionary damages
It is with some hesitation that I enter upon this field
at all in view of your Lordships' so far unanimous
opinion save so as to record my dissent. The subject
is a profound one which has attracted much attention
among the academic writers for some time. Neither
the subject nor the opinions of my noble and learned
friends, Lord Nicholls and Lord Steyn, could be done
justice in many fewer pages than their opinions will
occupy. However I do not believe that it is helpful (or
courteous to Mr Clayton) that I should add nothing at
all. Exceptional though this case is, courts hereafter
will have to consider its relevance to the decisions
of other cases which will surely come before them. I
will however confine myself to what I regard as the
minimum of explanatory comment (with the inevitable
consequence of some simplification).
The concepts of restitution and compensation are not
the same though they will on occasions fulfil the same
need. Restitution is analogous to property: it concerns
wealth or advantage which ought to be returned or
transferred by the defendant to the plaintiff. It is a
form of specific implement. Its clearest form is an
order for the return or transfer of property which
belongs in law or in equity to the plaintiff. Property
includes an interest in property. Then there are rights
recognised in equity such as those which arise from
a fiduciary relationship. These rights give rise to
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restitutionary remedies including the remedy
of account which, depending on the circumstances,
could also derive from a common law relationship
such as agency. Then, again, there are the rights now
grouped under the heading of the law of restitution or
unjust enrichment. These are still truly restitutionary
concepts leading to restitutionary remedies. Typically
they require the payment of money by the person
unjustly enriched to the person at whose expense that
enrichment has taken place. In so far as the appropriate
remedy is the payment of money or the delivery up of
a chattel or goods is concerned the common law could
provide it; insofar as it required some other remedy
or the recognition of an equitable right, the chancery
jurisdiction had to be invoked.
The essential of such rights and their enforcement was
the procuring by the courts of the 
performance
by
the defendant of his obligations. The plaintiff recovers
what he is actually entitled to not some monetary
substitute for it. If what the plaintiff is entitled to is
wealth expressed in monetary terms, the order will
be for the payment of money but this does not alter
the character of the remedy or of the right being
recognised. He gets the money because it was his
property or he was in some other way entitled to it. It

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