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6. Can the Crown unilaterally alter its contract with public officers?
We have found the following
(a) There is a contract between the Crown and a public officer.
(b) That contract contains, by incorporation, G.Rs (which include
C.S.Rs), plus other orders and instructions which are not
relevant to this appeal but not Col. Regs.
There remains the question of whether C.S.R. 3ll forms
part of the contract of service of the appellants?
The Crown faces no difficulty in applying C.S.R. 611
to public officers appointed to the public service after the
issue of C.S.R. 611, since it was in effect when they joined
the public service. But the appellants were already
members of that service before C.S.R. 611 was promulgated.
they accepted offers of appointment, C.S.R. 611 did not form
part of their contracts.
When
The Crown, therefore, has to show that it was entitled
to vary the contract of service of serving public officers
unilaterally, by introducing a form of summary suspension from
office without pay which had not existed before.
The trial judge observed that he found it difficult
to view as part of a true contract provisions which can be
changed at will by one party alone. Thus stated, we agree with
him. In this instance, however, the contract itself contains,
as one of its express terms, a right in one of the parties to
vary any of its conditions. So the public officer, when accepting
the offer made to him, does so in the knowledge that any of its
terms can be varied by the Crown, without his agreement, whether
to his benefit or to his detriment.
It is not unusual for contracts to contain some
terms which can be altered at the option of one party only,
for example, many leases allow for an increase of rent at the
option of the landlord alone. There to trun no objection in
principle to a provision in a contract whereby one party can