Burma Oil Company v Lord Advocate [1965] AC 75
PREROGATIVE POWERS – EXECUTIVE
Facts
The claimant, Burma Oil Company, brought proceedings against the UK government (who were represented in the case by the Lord Advocate) seeking compensation for the destruction of oil fields in Burma by British forces in 1942 (during the Second World War). The destruction had been considered necessary to prevent the installations from falling into the hands of the Japanese, which would have been devastating to the Allies war effort.
Issues
There were two questions at stake in the case: firstly, whether the destruction had been within the limits of the prerogative powers of the executive and therefore lawful; secondly, whether the government was liable to pay compensation for the damage to the claimant.
Decision/Outcome
The House of Lords held by a majority of 3 to 2 that although the damage was within the executive’s prerogative powers and was therefore lawful, the power in question required the payment of compensation as it was equivalent to requisitioning the property. Any act of requisition was done for the good of the public, at the expense of the individual proprietor, and for that reason, the proprietor should be compensated from public funds.
(It should be noted that the specific decision on the compensation issue was subsequently frustrated by a retrospective legislation the War Damage Act 1965, which was passed retrospectively to exempt the British Government from liability for damage caused during war. However, the House’s comments on the scope of the royal prerogative remain good law and were cited by the Supreme Court as recently as this year in Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5).
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Updated 19 March 2026
This case summary remains broadly accurate. The core legal principles are correctly stated: the House of Lords held by a 3–2 majority that the destruction was within the prerogative but that compensation was owed, and the War Damage Act 1965 was duly passed retrospectively to reverse that compensation finding. The summary’s statement that the House of Lords’ observations on the scope of the royal prerogative were cited in Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5 is correct. One point of clarification for readers: at the time of the article’s publication, Miller [2017] UKSC 5 had only recently been decided, and the reference to it as decided ‘this year’ is now dated. That judgment is now several years old. Subsequent royal prerogative litigation, notably R (Miller) v Prime Minister [2019] UKSC 41 (concerning prorogation of Parliament), has further developed the law on the limits of prerogative powers, and students should be aware of that case alongside the 2017 Miller decision. The article does not address those later developments, but its treatment of the Burmah Oil case itself remains accurate.
