By: Rosalind English
10 November 2025 by Rosalind English
In this episode three environmental law experts gather to discuss how people without deep pockets can avail themselves of the Aarhus Convention to take legal action in respect of environmental harms like pollution and sewage. Environmental law, a subject that barely existed thirty years ago, is now an established part of English law and is where international law, government policy and public interest litigation often meet head-on. Rosalind English introduces the panel moderator, Richard Wald KC, who chairs ELF. Emma Montlake, an executive director of the charity, helps to ensure that environmental decision making is both robust and transparent. And Carol Day of Leigh Day solicitors is one of the most experienced lawyers in bringing environmental challenges through the courts. The full citations of the cases discussed in this episodes is set out below.
River Action intervention in The National Farmers’ Union v Herefordshire Council & Ors [2025] EWHC 536 (Admin) (10 March 2025) (Admin)
The King (on the application of) The Badger Trust, Wild Justice v Natural England and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [2025] EWHC 2761 (Admin)
Wildlife & Countryside Link intervention in C G Fry & Son Limited (Appellant) v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (formerly known as Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) and another (Respondents) UKSC/2024/0108
Council for National Parks intervention in New Forest National Park Authority v (1) Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (2) Mr Simon Lillington [2025] EWHC 726 (Admin)
HM Treasury v Global Feedback Ltd [2025] EWCA Civ 624 (Global Feedback Ltd has now changed its name to Foodrise Ltd and PTA to Supreme Court granted on 31 October 2025 (see here)
Wild Justice v Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority and Adventure Beyond Ltd (Interested Party) [2025] EWHC 2249 (Admin)
Venn v SSCLG [2014] EWCA Civ 1539
10 November 2025 by Rosalind English
We all want to know about American libel law, now that President Trump has launched his pre-action missile at the BBC. If he pursues his claim it will be under Florida law, where his defamation action will not be statute barred. In the UK such claims must be commenced within one year of publication; Florida allows two. There are other significant differences between English and American defamation systems, which I will explore in this and the following post. Whatever the outcome of Trump v the BBC, the question that is occupying libel lawyers in the US at the moment is not a human run journalistic enterprise, whatever its flaws. It is the collision between antiquated libel laws the world over and the runaway publication machine called Artificial Intelligence.
No UK court has yet issued a judgment in a libel or defamation claim concerning AI-generated content, but several cases and legal actions are emerging and the issue is widely anticipated to reach the courts soon. I will discuss these later. There is rather more activity on this front across the pond. American defamation law is very different from ours, but we can see the enormous problems that arise when a technology provider is presented with a libel writ in respect of a statement that has been distributed by AI, if it has caused serious harm to a person’s reputation. A recent example is set out in an article in The New York Times by Ken Bensinger, who reports that a solar contractor in Minnesota, called Wolf River Electric, noticed a dramatic fall off in sales.
“When they pressed their former customers for an explanation, the answers left them floored.
The clients said they had bailed after learning from Google searches that the company had settled a lawsuit with the state attorney general over deceptive sales practices. But the company had never been sued by the government, let alone settled a case involving such claims.
Confusion became concern when Wolf River executives checked for themselves. Search results that Gemini, Google’s artificial intelligence technology, delivered at the top of the page included the falsehoods. And mentions of a legal settlement populated automatically when they typed “Wolf River Electric” in the search box.
Unsurprisingly, Wolf River executives decided they had no choice but to sue Google for defamation. This is just one instance of half a dozen libel claims filed in the US over the past two years over content produced by AI tools that generate text and images. Another case dating back to 2023 involved a talk radio host and a Second Amendment advocate (the right to carry a gun) who found out that AI had falsely accused him of embezzlement – this was discovered by a journalist looking up the radio presenter’s name on the internet.
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7 November 2025 by Rosalind English
Stability AI (Defendant) [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch)
The legal dispute between Getty Images (and its associated companies) and Stability AI revolves around complex issues of copyright infringement, database rights, trademark infringement, and passing off. The arguments centred on the use of Getty Images’ visual content in the training and operation of Stability AI’s generative AI model, Stable Diffusion. Media firm Mischcon de Reya has acclaimed this as the “one of the most anticipated cases in recent years.” The case has significant implications for intellectual property law as it intersects with the development and deployment of AI technologies in the UK.
Background and Parties
The claimants in the case are several related companies under the Getty Images brand. These entities collectively own or have exclusive licenses over millions of high-quality photographic and artistic images referred to as the “Visual Assets” or “Copyright Works.”
Stability AI Limited, the defendant, is a UK-based company that developed the Stable Diffusion AI model, which is a deep learning image generation tool that creates images based on text or image prompts, including around 12.3 million visual assets, together with associated captions, from the Getty Images websites, as well as publicly accessible third-party websites.
According to Getty Images Stability AI scraped millions of their copyright-protected images from its websites without authorisation.
The Core Claims
Getty Images initially brought a broad claim including allegations of primary and secondary copyright infringement, database right infringement, trademark infringement, and passing off. They argued that:
• Stability AI unlawfully used Getty’s copyrighted works without permission to train the AI model.
• The AI model outputs sometimes reproduced Getty’s images or bore their trademarks (watermarks), infringing Getty’s rights.
• Stability AI’s making of the model weights available for download constituted secondary copyright infringement. (Model weights are the values that determine how inputs are transformed into outputs in a neural network, reflecting the strength and direction of connections between artificial neurons after training. During training, optimisation procedures adjust these weights so the model improves at a task; the final set of weights effectively encodes the model’s learned “knowledge” from data. These “weights” are machine-readable parameters, distinct from source code text; they are large arrays of numbers that operationalise the model’s behaviour rather than human-authored narrative code.
• Use of Getty’s trademarked watermarks within generated images constituted trademark infringement.
As the judge observed,
Both sides emphasise the significance of this case to the different industries they represent: the creative industry on one side and the AI industry and innovators on the other. Where the balance should be struck between the interests of these opposing factions is of very real societal importance. Getty Images deny that their claim represents a threat to the AI industry or an attempt to curtail the development and use of AI models such as Stable Diffusion. However, their case remains that if creative industries are exploited by innovators such as Stability without regard to the efforts and intellectual property rights of creators, then such exploitation will pose an existential threat to those creative industries for generations to come.” [para 12]
In her summary of the judgment, Nina O’Sullivan of Mischcon de Reya observes that attention will now turn to the response to the government’s consultation on copyright and GenAI, as it faces pressure from creative industries opposing a general text and data mining exception that would allow AI companies to scrape copyright works unless rights holders expressly opt out.” Getty Images v Stability AI: Unpacking the High Court’s judgment
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4 November 2025 by Rosalind English
Readers of this Blog may think that I’m going through a bit of a simian crisis. And that would be understandable; perhaps I am. But close on the news about baboon trapping (my previous post on these animals) comes a different story, one that reflects our very complicated and hypocritical approach to wild animals and what we perceive to be appropriate protections for them under the law.
Who doesn’t love a goldfinch, or a hedgehog? Or a cheetah, bounding through the African dust? We all do!
Who loves a baboon? Nobody! Apart from South Africa’s equivalent of our RSPCA, or the Wildlife Animal Protection Forum South Africa (WAPFSA), which is at the centre of the following story, recently highlighted by the Daily Maverick, South Africa’s only independent newspaper.
I would urge readers to read the DM article first. The author, investigative environental journalist Adam Cruise, urges us to attend to the wider story.
This isn’t just about baboons in the Stormberg region. It’s a mirror on our relationship with our wildlife heritage. South Africa is home to a unique biodiversity. If indigenous primates are abandoned, sanctuaries collapse and killing is proposed as a solution, how can we claim to be custodians of our wildlife?
In this post I will attempt to disentangle some legal themes from the story which powerfully illustrates the inconsistency in legal protections afforded to different wild animal species, and exposes the structural problems within that country’s animal welfare and environmental law regimes.
Before reading on, be aware that there are 39 chacma baboons abandoned on a farm near Burgersdorp in the Eastern Cape, stranded after their sanctuary was dissolved by government fiat. The farm owner, whose property the animals occupy, requested their removal because the permit had lapsed. The provincial authority reportedly suggested that the animals be killed within 72 hours, and offered the “cost-effective” option that the landowner “open the cages, chase the animals out and have a competent hunter dispatch the animals as humanely as possible”. I put up a picture of a cute baby baboon because people tend to recoil from the adult version.
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3 November 2025 by Rosalind English
Readers of this blog as well as listeners to Law Pod UK may remember the European Court of Human Rights’ controversial ruling in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland. We have written about it on the UKHRB here, and it has come up in Law Pod UK epsiodes discussing the ECHR, both in our interview with Lord Sumption here and our discussion with Marina Wheeler KC and David Wolfson KC here.
The latest is an interesting and detailed post by Corina Heri, Charlotte E. Blattner and Tobias Cadalbert in the latest edition of the Blog of the European Journal of Interntional Law.
In it, the authors criticise the Committee of Ministers’ conclusion that Switzerland has effectively complied with the Strasbourg’s judgment in the Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz case. It will be recalled that the ECtHR found that Switzerland had failed to meet its obligations under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to respect for private and family life) by not taking adequate and timely measures to mitigate climate change. The ruling emphasised the role of national authorities, especially courts, in ensuring compliance with Convention obligations, clearly placing the onus on Switzerland to enhance its climate policy and implementation.
This ruling was reached despite the fact that Switzerland had held not one but two national referenda on what it its citizens expected the government to do in discharging the country’s obligations under the Paris agreement. The second referendum, in June 2021, rejected certain measures that would align national targets with the Paris Agreement.
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30 October 2025 by Rosalind English
Botha v Smuts and another [2024] ZACC 22
I recently came across this judgement by the South African Constitutional Court. As a “Saffa” myself, I rejoice in the case’s title, pairing the name of the penultimate prime minister of the old apartheid South Africa (Botha), and the name (Smuts) of a much earlier Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 to 1948.
But this case concerned two ordinary people, an insurance broker and an environmental activist, locking horns over their respective rights to privacy and freedom of expression under the South African Bill of Rights. The Constitutional Court judgment – running into nearly 100 pages in the Butterworths Human Rights Cases – is an interesting example of “salami slicing”, where the court takes apart a protected right and determines which bits of it can be upheld in the circumstances, and which can be set aside. It is also a fascinating insight into how information on social media platforms involves constant “re-publication”, and what that means for privacy and free speech rights. And finally, the judicial reflections on publication of someone’s personal address in the days of WFH show how far we have changed as a society since the pandemic.
The facts can be set out briefly.
Background facts and law
The applicant, Mr Botha, is an insurance broker who resides and conducts business in Gqeberha. He is also the owner of the farm Varsfontein situated in Alicedale in the Eastern Cape Province, a hundred kilometers away from his home.
The first respondent, Mr Smuts, is a wildlife conservationist, farmer, researcher and activist. The second respondent (amicus) is the Landmark Leopard and Predator Project – South Africa, a conservation non-governmental organisation focusing on human wildlife conflict management and leopard and carnivore conservation. It was founded by Mr Smuts who is its executive director.
A member of a group of cyclists who participated in an organised adventure ride that traversed Mr Botha’s farm (legally) encountered a dead baboon and porcupine in cage traps. The animals appeared to him to have been exposed to suffering and distress. Outraged by what he saw, the cyclist photographed the dead animals in the cages with the intention of sharing the photographs with an organisation capable of taking action. He shared them with Mr Smuts on 1 October 2019.
He also sent Mr Smuts a detailed map depicting the location of Mr Botha’s farm on which he indicated the place on the farm where the photographs were taken.
Mr Smuts published a post on the second respondent’s Facebook page which included, amongst others,
(a) a photograph of a baboon trapped in a cage;
(b) a photograph of a porcupine trapped in a cage;
(c ) a Google search location of Mr Botha’s insurance brokerage address (which turned out also to be Mr Botha’s residential address) and telephone number.
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17 October 2025 by Rosalind English
Rex v Hamit Coskun (Judgement on appeal), Southwark Crown Court
Hearing on 9th and 10th October 2025
It will come to the surprise of many that the common law offence of blasphemy in the UK was only abolished in 2008. It has no place in a secular society such as ours. However attempts have been made to use the Public Order Act 1986 to introduce blasphemy by the back door, by criminalising religious hatred offences.
This legislation excludes “antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religiions’ from its religious hatred provisions.
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7 October 2025 by Rosalind English
Update (10 October 2025): Kemi Badenoch has confirmed that Conservative Party policy will be to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and to repeal the Human Rights Act if they win the next general election. This was made clear in both her statements ahead of and during the annual Conservative Party Conference in October 2025, following a detailed legal review led by the Shadow Attorney General, Lord Wolfson, which found that remaining in the ECHR would fundamentally obstruct key party policies on immigration, veterans’ rights, prioritising citizens for public services, and reforming sentencing and protest laws. The Conservative Party leader explicitly stated in her conference speech: “We must leave the ECHR and repeal the Human Rights Act. The next Conservative manifesto will contain our commitment to leave. Leaving the Convention is a necessary step.”
Lord Wolfson’s advice was commissioned by the Conservative Party and is known as the Wolfson Report. It is important to note at the outset that, despite its title on the Party website, Lord Wolfson emphasises that this is “neither a policy paper nor a report. It is a legal analysis”, in other words, advice to the leader of the Conservative party. For reasons of economy in the following paragraphs I will refer to this 185 page document as a “report”.
David Wolfson KC is Shadow Attorney General Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, a prominent commercial lawyer and former justice minister. We have heard his views on the role of international law and his differences with government AG Richard Hermer domestic on Law Pod UK earlier this year.
In this paper he sets out an exhaustive examination of the relationship between the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and UK law, specifically focusing on areas where the ECHR constrains the government’s ability to enact domestic policies. This report could be pivotal in shaping the party’s commitment to leave the ECHR, as it concludes that such a move is necessary to fulfil a range of key policy priorities.
For balance, here is the late Conor Gearty’s column in the London Review of Books Unwelcome Remnant – the threat to the Human Rights Act , lamenting judicial avoidance of ECHR solutions to problems and relying on common law or UK legislative measures instead. Gearty cites many examples of this, most notably the Supreme Court’s ruling in the For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers which he says “completely ignores the impact of human rights law.”
Back to Wolfson.
Overview
The report scrutinises the effect of the ECHR in five core public policy areas: immigration control, prosecution of military veterans, prioritisation of British citizens in social policy, sentencing and protest laws, and economic growth impediments (particularly linked to climate-based challenges to infrastructure projects). Wolfson sets out a detailed legal analysis and a set of evaluative “tests” for national sovereignty, arguing that only by exiting the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act can the UK achieve these policy goals unimpeded.
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10 September 2025 by Rosalind English
Episode 227: It’s been an interesting year in the law, with Richard Hermer KC and the Shadow Attorney General Lord Wolfson of Tredegar joining battle on what constitutes the “thin” or “thick” concept of the rule of law. We interview Lady Hale on her long career in the law, the Law Commission and the Supreme Court. Lord Sumption speaks out on the need to withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights and Freedoms. We have speculations on the Assisted Dying Bill which has yet to make its way through the House of Lords, and an interview with a former barrister of 1 Crown Office Row and now MP on the potential implications of the Employee Rights Bill, also in the Lords.
Of course there are many more episodes to come as summer descends into autumn, but sit back and enjoy a leisurely review of the wide range of topics we have covered since 2025 was in its infancy.
27 August 2025 by Rosalind English
This judgment was handed down to parties via email at 3pm on 31st July 2025. A transparency order is in force. The judge has given leave for this version of the judgment to be published on condition that (irrespective of what is contained in the judgment) in any published version of the judgment the anonymity of Patricia must be strictly preserved.
Patricia’s Father & Ors v Patricia & Ors [2025] EWCOP 30 (T3)
This application was brought by the parents and aunt of a woman who has previously been anonymised to “Patricia”. Patricia, aged 25, had lived with anorexia nervosa since childhood, and was extremely malnourished with a BMI as low as 7, unable to walk unaided, and suffering severe complications like bed sores and osteoporosis. Diagnosed also with autism and pathological demand avoidance (PDA), Patricia’s condition was refractory despite years of efforts; she persistently refused to eat enough to sustain herself, though she voiced a desire to live and to travel. In 2023, the Court (Moor J) had ordered—after hearing her strongly expressed wishes—that Patricia should not be force-fed or receive medical treatment against her will, emphasising her autonomy in treatment decisions.
Throughout these proceedings Patricia was an in-patient at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She had said she wanted to go to a Specialist Eating Disorder Unit (SEDU) but when this case started she was not medically fit enough to go to one because of her low BMI and her lack of medical stability.
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13 August 2025 by Rosalind English
The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust v YD & Others (Refusal of Withdrawal of Treatment)
The Court of Protection has refused to let a hospital trust in north-west London withdraw life support from a 60-year-old man described as being in a permanent vegetative state after his two partners spoke about his strong belief in the power of spiritual healing.
Background facts and law
The patient, referred to as YD, suffered a bleed to the brain last October resulting in what’s now called a prolonged disorder of consciousness and leaving him in what his clinicians describe as a permanent vegetative state. YD was being provided with clinically assisted nutrition and hydration (CANH) at a specialist neuro-rehabilitation centre in north-west London.
The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, responsible for his care, applied to the Court of Protection seeking permission to withdraw CANH, which would lead to YD’s death. The Trust argued that continuing such treatment was not in YD’s best interests, given the medical prognosis and burdens of ongoing care. The application was opposed by YD’s two partners, JG and MB, who were both closely involved in his daily care and attuned to his needs, and by the Official Solicitor, who represented YD’s interests. Notably, YD’s partners spoke of his strong faith in spiritual healing, his value for life, and his belief in perseverance through adversity.
Best Interests Test:
Central to the Court of Protection’s task was the determination of YD’s best interests under the Mental Capacity Act 2005. The statute requires the court to take into account a range of views, including medical evidence, the patient’s own beliefs and values (as far as they can be discerned), the perspectives of family, and the overall balance between burdens and benefits of ongoing treatment.
There is a strong legal presumption in favour of preserving life, which may only be displaced by countervailing factors such as “the very profound brain damage,” absence of pleasure or awareness, and the absence of any prospect for improvement.
Role of Advance Decisions and Family Views
The Court examined whether YD had made any valid advance decision to refuse treatment (which would be binding under sections 24–26 MCA 2005). No such advance directive existed in YD’s case. The views of his partners were consequently given considerable weight—they described YD as someone who valued life strongly, believed in spiritual recovery, and would have wanted to persevere even in adverse circumstances.
Medical Evidence
Treating clinicians and an independent expert testified that YD’s prognosis was bleak: there was no realistic prospect of meaningful recovery or awareness, and he would not regain consciousness. The medical consensus was that continuing CANH would only prolong biological life, with no benefit or possibility of improvement in consciousness or quality of life.
The Official Solicitor’s Submission
Representing YD’s interests, the Official Solicitor argued that the dignity and meaning of YD’s current existence derived from the love and care provided by his partners, and that YD would wish to continue living in this way until a natural death occurred through another medical event (e.g., infection or heart attack).
The Court’s Decision
Mrs Justice Theis, Vice-President of the Court of Protection, refused the Trust’s application to withdraw life-sustaining treatment. In a detailed judgment delivered on 12 August 2025, the court emphasized the following:
• Presumption in Favour of Life: The court found that, despite the medical evidence of permanent vegetative state and the bleak prognosis, the presumption in favour of life had not been displaced by the Trust. The evidence from family and the Official Solicitor about YD’s values and perceptions of his dignity was compelling.
• Best Interests Not Demonstrated: The court concluded that withdrawal of CANH was not proven to be in YD’s best interests. The strong and heartfelt testimony of YD’s partners, coupled with their daily engagement with him, supported the continuation of care. The court was persuaded that YD’s sense of dignity and the meaning of his life could not be presumed to be absent or negative.
• No Valid Advance Decision: In the absence of a legally binding advance decision to refuse treatment, continued life-sustaining treatment was favored
Conclusion
The Court of Protection’s refusal to permit withdrawal of treatment in this case signals the ongoing primacy of the best interests test, fortifies the presumption in favor of life even against a grim prognosis, and puts significant weight on the genuine beliefs and wishes of those closest to the patient. Unless and until a court is satisfied, based on all the evidence, that ongoing treatment is not in the patient’s best interests, life-sustaining treatment will continue.
Comment
This is a surprising and unusual decision. Following the case of Airedale NHS Trust v Bland, where the House of Lords ruled that it was lawful to discontinue life support when it serves no useful therapeutic purpose and does not benefit the patient, the tendency has been to go along with the medical evidence that mere life without consciousness is of no benefit to the patient.
Here the Court of Protection upheld the continuation of artificial nutrition and hydration because of the evidence advanced by the patient’s partners, who cited his spiritual beliefs and the view that he would want to continue receiving treatment to try to “heal himself”. The evidence included declarations of spiritual communication, which led to the Court deciding that withdrawal of ANH would not be in line with the patient’s perceived best wishes and spiritual beliefs.
This is all very well, but as we know, the NHS is running out of money.
The average annual NHS cost to care for a patient in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) in a specialist nursing home is about £85,000–£91,000, which covers nursing care, medication, feeding (such as percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy), and, for some, tracheotomy. Occasionally, additional costs from emergency hospital admissions (“blue light events”) for infections or other complications add roughly £5,000 per year, bringing the typical annual cost close to £91,600.
Not now, or even in the near future, but one day it will occur to cancer patients being denied treatment or sufferers from severe cardiac conditions on never ending waiting lists for surgery that perhaps public money should be spent on them, rather than keeping PVS patients alive for years if not decades.
This will require a root and branch review of the “best interests” test and promote the absence of an Advance Decision to the same level as an Advance Decision not to prolong life. Simply saying that these decisions “should never be driven by resource allocation or staff burdens, but solely by robust best interests assessments” is no answer to the profound and continuing financial burden on the public purse for prolonging unconscious life at all costs.
For a nuanced discussion of the cost consequences of this case, read Alex Ruck-Keene KC’s post on the Mental Capacity Law and Policy blog.
11 August 2025 by Rosalind English
David Wolfson KC, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, Shadow Attorney General, and Michael Ellis KC, Attorney General from 2021 – 2022, have written to Labour’s Attorney General Richard Hermer KC regarding the government’s decision to recognise Palestine at the UN General Assembly meeting in September. We highlight this here because Lord Wolfson has recently given an interview on Law Pod UK setting out some of the differences between him and Richard Hermer on what they deem to be the proper boundaries of international law.
They commence their letter with the following statement:
“The recognition of a foreign state is a prerogative act, exercised by the Government. The long-standing position of the UK Government has been that the UK will recognise a state if four criteria are met, often referred to as the Montevideo criteria: ” it should have, and seem likely to continue to have, a clearly defined territory with a population, a government who are able of themselves to exercise effective control of that territory, and independence in their external relations”.
In their view, the position taken by successive UK governments until 2025 was that the Palestinian Authority has been both factually and legally unable to exercise a range of governmental functions in the West Bank,
The PA, they point out, has also, “of course, lost control of Gaza to Hamas”.
They therefore pose a number of questions, as to whether the government is applying a different basis of statehood and recognition, and on what basis.
“If the new policy is that protracted frustration of self-determination justifies recognition of statehood regardless of facts on the ground, why is the UK refusing, for example, to recognise Western Sahara as a state?”
They urge the Attorney General to explain how, as a matter of international law, steps taken by Israel can themselves lead to the non-recognition of Palestine. In this case it would seem to be that by declaring a ceasefire, Israel could avoid the “punishment” of Palestine being recognised as a state. This, in the authors’ view, is an incoherent interpretation of international law – “the Government, so vocal when it comes to public pronouncements of general legal principle, appears to lose its voice.”
They conclude their letter with the following paragraph:
“The position of the UK government in recognising Palestine while hostages remain in dungeons in Gaza is shameful. That is a matter for your private conscience. But we believe that the Government’s policy on this issue is also a significant change from the UK’s policy as long stated and understood. That is something which you ought to explain, in public, to Parliament.”
Whatever your position on the conflict, it is worth reading the letter in full, to understand the UK’s policy on statehood recognition as set out by a written answer in the House of Commons in 1986, and in several subsequent communications.
The response to the points raised in this communication will no doubt add to the warp and weft of international law and its varying interpretations in Westminster. There can be no doubt that policy on this issue is governed not by law, but by politics.
A debate in the House of Lords on this issue would be of considerable utility to all lawyers interested in this area.
The UK Human Rights Blog is now available on Substack – see our profile and subscribe here.
4 July 2025 by Rosalind English
The King on the Application of Al-Haq (Claimant) v Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Defendant) [2025] EWHC 1615 (Admin)
The Secretary of State for Business and Trade decided in September 2024 to suspend licences authorising the export of items that might be used in carrying out or facilitating military operations in the conflict in Gaza. He did so explicitly because the Government had formed the view that Israel was not committed to compliance with international humanitarian law (‘IHL’) in the conflict in Gaza and that there was therefore a clear risk that such items might be used in that conflict to commit or facilitate a serious violation of IHL. However, the Secretary of State excluded from that suspension licences for the export of components for F-35 combat aircraft which could not be identified as destined for Israel. In this claim for judicial review the Claimant, supported by the Interveners, challenged the lawfulness of this exclusion, which has been referred to as the ‘F-35 Carve Out’.
In reaching these decisions, together referred to as ‘the September Decision’, the Secretary of State received advice from the Defence Secretary and the Foreign Secretary. In short, the advice of the Defence Secretary, set out in a letter dated 18th July 2024, was that:
(1) the multinational F-35 joint strike fighter programme (‘the F-35 Programme’1) is significantly dependent on the United Kingdom as the largest national provider of component parts outside the United States;
(2) it was not currently possible to suspend licensing for export of F-35 components for use by Israel without having an impact on the entire F-35 Programme;
(3) a suspension of licensing for all F-35 nations would have a profound and immediate impact on international peace and security, would undermine US confidence in the UK and NATO at a critical juncture, would seriously undermine the credibility of the UK as a trusted partner on the international stage, and would undermine a key capability allowing the UK and its closest allies and partners to address current security challenges.
The Claimant “Al-Haq”, an independent Palestinian non-governmental human rights organisation based in Ramallah, contended that the F-35 Carve Out was unlawful. Al-Haq was supported by Oxfam, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. This was a “rolled up” hearing, in which permission to bring judicial review proceedings is considered at the same time as the merits of the claim.
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24 June 2025 by Rosalind English
In Episode 222 of Law Pod UK, Marina Wheeler KC and Rosalind English of 1 Crown Office Row are joined by Shadow Attorney General Lord Wolfson of Tredegar to discuss the legal challenges facing David Wolfson KC in his new appointment to the commission tasked with reforming the European Court of Human Rights.
During our conversation Lord Wolfson addresses the political sensitivities involved in reforming the ECtHR, particularly where it comes to the balance between national sovereignty and international human rights obligations, a topic on which he has been in public disagreement with the current government’s Attorney General Lord Hermer KC. We explore the legal questions that predate and would arise from those reforms, including the implications for the rule of law and the long term relationship between the UK and Strasbourg.
Lord Wolfson emphasises the importance of careful legal analysis and the need for clear, principled leadership in this sensitive area, since he is now tasked with reviewing how to prevent the ECtHR from blocking government policies, especially on contentious issues like immigration and climate change mitigation. Above all, he stresses that the rule of law must be observed by asserting parliamentary sovereignty over Strasbourg and other decisions by international institutions.
18 June 2025 by Rosalind English
In ALR and others v Chancellor of the Exchequer [2025] EWHC 1467 (Admin), the High Court has dismissed a challenge against the government’s manifesto policy of adding VAT to private school fees. The claimants were a group of students, parents, and schools. Some of the students required specific schooling because of (inter alia) special educational needs and religious convictions; all claimants sought a declaration that the VAT addition was incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights. Specifically, they argued that imposing VAT was incompatible with Article 2 Protocol 1 (right to education) and 14 (protection from discrimination).
This dismissal of the judicial review challenge represents a significant ruling on the interplay between fiscal policy, human rights law and the allocation of resources for education.
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