Monthly News Archives: October 2013
14 October 2013 by Sarina Kidd
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular full brass band of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found here. You can find previous roundups here. Post by Sarina Kidd, edited and links compiled by Adam Wagner.
This week, Lord Neuberger implied that even if the Human Rights Act were to be abolished, the court would continue to uphold human rights, perhaps foreshadowing the Supreme Court’s decision in Osborn. Meanwhile, the controversial Immigration Bill now has its overarching documents available, LSE are looking to create a written constitution and the Daily Mail are in trouble, again.
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14 October 2013 by Rosalind English
Delfi AS v Estonia (Application no. 64569/09) 10 October 2013 – read judgment
This case concerned the liability of an Internet news portal for offensive comments that were posted by readers below one of its online news articles. The following summary is based on the Strasbourg Court’s press release.
The applicant company owns one of the largest internet news sites in Estonia. In January 2006, Delfi published an article on its webpage about a ferry company. It discussed the company’s decision to change the route its ferries took to certain islands. This had caused ice to break where ice roads could have been made in the near future. As a result, the opening of these roads – a cheaper and faster connection to the islands compared to the ferry services – was postponed for several weeks. Below the article, readers were able to access the comments of other users of the site. Many readers had written highly offensive or threatening posts about the ferry operator and its owner.
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14 October 2013 by Rosalind English
Cossey, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Justice [2013] EWHC 3029 (Admin) – read judgment
The High Court has dismissed an “absolutely meritless” claim by a prisoner that, in serving the non-tariff part of his sentence, he should be afforded all the Convention rights enjoyed by prisoners on remand or those serving time for civil offences such as contempt of court. As he had been deprived of the full panoply of rights, he said, he was a victim of discrimination contrary to Article 14.
This, said Mostyn J, was
The sort of claim that gives the Convention, incorporated into our domestic law by the Human Rights Act 1998, a bad name and which furnishes its critics with ammunition to shoot it down.
Were the key architect of the Convention, Lord Kilmuir, alive today, continued the judge, “he would be amazed to be told that a claim for violation of Article 14 was being advanced on the facts of this case.”
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14 October 2013 by Isabel McArdle
Secretary of State for the Home Department v Al -Jedda [2013] UKSC 62 – Read judgment / press summary
In late 2007, the Secretary of State for the Home Department made an order depriving Mr Al Jedda, who had been granted British citizenship in 2000, of his citizenship, under the British Nationality Act 1981. Section 40(4) of the Act prohibits the deprivation of nationality where the effect would be to render the person stateless.
Not being a citizen of any state can have profound effects on a person’s ability to live a normal life, including being unable to obtain travel documents and facing difficulty settling and obtaining work, education and healthcare. However, the Secretary of State considered that taking away Mr Al Jedda’s nationality was conducive to the public good.
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13 October 2013 by Guest Contributor
Osborn v The Parole Board [2013] UKSC 61 – Read judgment / Press summary
1 Crown Office Row’s David Manknell acted as junior counsel to the Parole Board in this case. He had no involvement in the writing of this post.
Writing in his magisterial new work, Human Rights and the UK Supreme Court, Professor Brice Dickson noted that the Human Rights Act had created ‘an internationalized system of human rights protection rather than a constitutional one.’ Indeed, there had been a marked resistance on the part of the Supreme Court to use the common law to achieve the same goal of human rights protection. In Osborn v The Parole Board the Supreme Court seemed to resile from this position.
Osborn, and the co-joined appeals, concerned the circumstances in which the Parole Board is required to hold oral hearings. Osborn had been recalled to prison after an immediate breach of his licence conditions. Booth and Reilly had been sentenced to life imprisonment, and in both cases the minimum term had expired. The appellants sought early release and had been denied an oral hearing by the Parole Board under the operation of the statutory regime (detailed in paras 3-17). Instead their cases had been decided on paper by a single anonymous member of the Board.
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12 October 2013 by Adam Wagner
“Human Right to Make a Killing”, screamed the Daily Mail last week, publishing details from a “damning dossier” which showed “Judges in Strasbourg paid out £4.4m to some of Britain’s worst criminals”.
The figures were taken from the response to a Parliamentary question put by Conservative MP Philip Davies. You can hear me debating him about the issue on BBC Radio 5 Live by clicking here – from 1:41:15 – watch out for the ‘human rights gravy train’ steaming into the debate around half way through.
Here is the full table if you are interested in the facts, which the Mail, Telegraph and no doubt others were clearly not.
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12 October 2013 by David Hart KC
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami et al v. European Parliament, CJEU, 3 October 2013 (read judgment), following Advocate General Kokott, 17 January 2013, read opinion and my post
This important case is all about “standing” before the EU courts, namely the ability to complain about some EU act that affects you. Lack of standing means that even if a measure was wrong and unlawful, you cannot get your foot in the door of the court. Domestic rules are quite relaxed, though proposals by Government to make it more difficult to sue Government and other public authorities are currently being consulted upon. But you cannot say that an EU law is unlawful without going to Luxembourg.
The EU Courts have always been very restrictive about the circumstances in which an individual can do so. A brief blip (C-50/00 UPA) a few years ago by a UK Advocate-General suggesting that things be done differently was squashed by the Court. And since then it has been one-way traffic in the EU Courts, brushing off criticism from NGOs and indeed the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee in 2011 (see here). For a good summary of the EU case law up to 2011, see the ACCC at [20]-[31]
Recent Treaty amendments in Lisbon have, it will be seen, made little difference to the result.
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12 October 2013 by David Hart KC
Aarhus seems to seep into cases everywhere, so I thought it was about time to start from scratch.
1. What is Aarhus? Denmark’s second city. You can write it like Århus, if you want a bit more Jutland cred. Ryanair fly there-ish (45km away).
2. How do you say it? Something like Orr-hoose: Danes, any better transliteration?
3. Why do lawyers go on about it? Because the UN-ECE Aarhus Convention was signed there in 1998. It came into force on 30 October 2001.
4. UN-ECE? United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, a regional organisation made under Article 68 of the UN Charter
5. What is the Convention about? 3 things (or pillars, in treaty-argot).
- Access to environmental information
- public participation in environmental decision-making, and
- access to justice in environmental matters.
6. Is the UK signed up? Yes, founder member. It ratified it in 2005, when the EU did.
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9 October 2013 by Rosalind English
MF (Nigeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWCA Civ 1192 – read judgment
In what circumstances can a foreign criminal resist deportation on the basis of his right to family life under Article 8 of the Convention? Until 2012 this question was governed entirely by judge-made case law. Then rules 398, 399 and 399A were introduced into the Immigration Rules HC 395. I have posted previously on the interpretation of these rules here and here.
The rules introduced for the first time a set of criteria by reference to which the impact of Article 8 in criminal deportation cases was to be assessed. The intention of the legislature in introducing these rules was to state how the balance should be struck between the public interest and the individual right to family life:
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9 October 2013 by David Hart KC
R (on the application of LITVINENKO) v SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (2013) QBD (Admin) 4 October 2013, judgment behind Lawtel paywall UPDATED x 2
An extraordinary story which would have raised our eyebrows at its implausibility had it come from our spy novelists. In late 2006, Alexander Litvinenko was murdered by polonium-210 given to him in London. He was an ex-Russian Federation FSB agent, but by then was a UK citizen. He had accused Putin of the murder of the journalist Anna Politovskaya. He may or may not have been working for MI6 at the time of his death. The prime suspects for the killing are in Russia, not willing to help the UK with its inquiries. But rightly, in one form or another, we want to know what really happened.
Not entirely surprisingly, Marina Litvinenko said that her husband had been murdered on orders from the Russian Federation. An inquest started, though the UK Government said that much of what the coroner wanted to inquire was off limits because covered by public interest immunity. In the light of this stance, the coroner, Sir Robert Owen, a senior high court judge, had said that any investigation into Litvinenko’s death could only be adequately carried out by a public inquiry. The secretary of state refused to order such an inquiry, saying that it could take place after the inquest if necessary. The inquest continues, but it can therefore only look at part of the story.
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6 October 2013 by Daniel Isenberg
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular late summer bake off of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found here. You can find previous roundups here. Post by Daniel Isenberg, edited and links compiled by Adam Wagner.
Following the Tory Conference, commentators postulated on the topography of the human rights landscape in 2015. Meanwhile, more looming concerns have been raised about proposed reform of judicial review, while challenges have been raised to the bedroom tax, as well as the UK’s involvement in PRISM.
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3 October 2013 by David Hart KC
Mousa and others, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Defence [2013] EWHC 2941 (Admin) – read judgment
A postscript to Rosalind English’s post of today. In the substantive judgment (see Adam Wagner’s post on the order), the Divisional Court decided two main issues, one relating to the independence of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, and one relating to the extent to which an inquiry conducted through IHAT complied with Article 2 of the ECHR. The Secretary of State succeeded on the first issue, whereas the claimant succeeded substantially on the second issue relating to the need for a different form of inquiry. Hence there was no overall winner; the Secretary of State won on the first issue and the claimant succeeded substantially on the second issue. But more time was spent on the first issue.
What then to do about costs? And why is that interesting – promise you, it is important.
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3 October 2013 by Rosalind English
Mousa and others, R(on the application of) v Secretary of State for Defence [2013] EWHC 2941 (Admin) – read judgment
Earlier this year, the High Court ordered that an approach based upon a coroner’s inquest would be the most appropriate form of inquiry under Article 2 EHCR into claims of ill treatment or killings of civilians by the British armed forces in Iraq (see Adam Wagner’s post on this decision). Here the President of the Queen’s Bench sets out the Court’s views as to the form such inquiries should take.
- A designated Judge, Leggatt J, has been appointed to oversee the conduct of the inquiry.
- An inquiry ought to be commenced as soon as it is clear that there will be no prosecution in cases to which the Article 2 obligation to hold an inquiry attaches
- To ensure that the Inspector is able to determine how each death occurred, it should be open to the inquiry to have powers of compulsion over military personnel to give evidence and produce documents.
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2 October 2013 by Martin Downs
The recently released statistics from the Department for Education showing an increase of 15% in the adoption of looked after children in the last year further highlights the government’s preferred strategy for ensuring the welfare of children in care.
In my recent post, I considered the main thrust of the decision of the Court of Appeal in Re B-S which concerned the rigour which was expected of evidence, hearings and Judgments before a Placement Order was made.
However, the Court also dealt with the issue which had concerned Lord Justice McFarlane when he gave permission to appeal namely, where a Court has already made an order that a child may be placed for adoption and that has happened and the prospective adopter has applied for an Adoption Order, in what circumstances can a parent seek to stop it going ahead?
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2 October 2013 by Rosalind English
C-363/12: A Government Department and the Board of Management of a Community School – read AG Wahl’s opinion
Case C‑167/12 : C.D. v S.T. – read AG Kokott’s opinion
Two opinions from Luxembourg on exactly the same issue, with diametrically opposed conclusions. AG Wahl (male) says, in brief, that the Pregnancy Workers Directive does what it says on the tin. It does not apply to non-pregnant employees, even though one of these might be an “intended mother” i.e. a woman who for medical reasons cannot carry a pregnancy to term, who has commissioned a surrogacy. AG Kokott (female) concludes firmly that the Pregnancy Workers Directive was designed to protect the relationship between mothers and their unborn or newborn, whether naturally produced or arranged by surrogacy. These opinions were published on the same day, with no mention in either of the other case. We can only conclude that the AGs read each other’s drafts, and decided to go to press with them together, leaving the CJEU to reconcile them in some way or another.
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