X (minors) v Bedfordshire County Council is by far the most important decision on the liability in negligence of public authorities since Anns v Merton London Borough Council. These two authorities, along with Dorset Yacht Co v Home Office, furnish the ground rules for such actions. The leading judgment in X v Bedfordshire CC, in which all his brethren concur, is given by Lord Browne- Wilkinson; the only other judgment being given by Lord Jauncey. The common thread running through this trilogy of cases is the emphasis on the significance of the element of discretion in the exercise of the statutory functions of a public authority: ‘Most statutes which impose a statutory duty on local authorities confer on the authority a discretion as to the extent to which, and the methods by which, such statutory duty is to be performed’.

Schemes for compensating injury which operate alongside each other call for important policy decisions to be made concerning their inter-relationship. Are they to take account of one another and, if so, to what extent? These issues can arise in a variety of contexts. Within particular regimes they are the concern, for example, of the overlapping benefit regulations in social security law and the rules relating to contribution in insurance law. However, the focus of this article is upon personal injury litigation. It examines the policy reasons which have been used to justify the different results reached by the law when faced with the problem of ‘collateral benefits’ received by an accident victim also seeking damages. Typically, these benefits are received from the state, or an employer, or an insurer.

In 1629 Jones, the registrar to the court of the Bishop of Gloucester, suffered so from the smoke emanating from a nearby brewhouse that he brought an action in nuisance before the Court of Kings Bench. At the time, as water was unsafe to drink, beer and ale were staple beverages. Inclined to reject the claim, Whitelock J pronounced that ‘what is necessary for the commonwealth can never be called a nuisance to any private person.’ His colleague on the bench, Dodderidge J, was more cautious, concluding that, had the brewery been a long-established enterprise, no action would have been available, as one who comes to live near an existing brewhouse must take it as one finds it. However, where - as was true of this case - the brewhouse was a relatively new operation, the matter was less clear.

In 1970, when commenting on the law's progress in dealing with negligently inflicted psychiatric damage that does not result from physical injury (hereinafter ‘psychiatric damage’), Windeyer J delivered a famous ‘backhanded’ compliment, by observing ‘[l]aw, marching with medicine but in the rear and limping a little’. At the risk of straining that metaphor by re-casting it into a medical perspective, the purpose of this article is to provide a diagnosis and prognosis as to the current state of that legal limp. It would conclude: ‘legal patient now seems docile and uncharacteristically compliant, makes right noises but limp no better. Query whether symptomatic of more serious problem requiring radical surgery?’

This rather negative assessment is acknowledged to be somewhat at odds with a more optimistic prognosis that could be derived from recent trends that seem generally to signify a growing ditente between law and medicine.

The role of independent institutions, the relationship between independence and accountability, and the meaning and significance of these concepts in terms of democratic ideals, are issues that constitutional analysis of modem government can hardly avoid. The institutions and practice of government audit provide concrete illustrations of the complexities and dilemmas involved in such analysis.

Auditors themselves conventionally distinguish internal from external audit. A widely accepted definition is that external audit means the examination of accounts and other activities, conducted from outside an organisation by an independent review body for the purpose of holding managers to account. In contrast, internal audit takes place within an organisation, to review accounting and other operations as a service to management. An internal audit unit normally operates separately from those within the organisation who are responsible for the activities under review.