Monthly News Archives: March 2020

Lack of gender neutral option on passport forms: no breach of human rights –

12 March 2020 by Guest Contributor

R (on the application of Christie Elan-Cane) v Secretary of State for the Home Department with Human Rights Watch intervening [2020] EWCA Civ 363 – read judgment

When we apply for a passport, we are generally asked to state on the form whether we are a man or a woman, and this is generally reflected in our passports. However, in our modern day and age, there are now more than two genders – some people can choose to define as gender neutral, essentially meaning that they don’t like to describe themselves using the normal terms of “man” or “woman”. MX Elan-Cane is one of those individuals. They sued the Home Office because there was no “X” (as in, no gender neutral) option on the passport form as it was a breach of their Human Rights. The High Court said that yes, this engaged Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention (the right to private and family life), but the current passport policy did not breach that right. The Court of Appeal agreed with the High Court, both that this engaged Article 8, but that the rights to a private life were not breached here. 

Loss from unlawful governmental action: the counterfactual?

11 March 2020 by David Hart KC

Vodafone et al v. Ofcom [2020] EWCA Civ 183

Ofcom make some unlawful regulations in 2015, under which telecom companies have to pay higher fees. The regulations were quashed in 2017. Four telecom companies want restitutionary damages, being the difference between the sums paid under the 2015 regulations and the sums they would have paid under their predecessors, the 2011 regulations.

Big money washing around: the claim was for over £200m.

Ofcom says – no, you are only entitled to the difference between the 2015 payments and the hypothetical fees which we could lawfully have charged had we done our job properly in 2017.

Sounds quite simple, but the answer goes deep into the intersection between public and private law.

The claim, as I have said, was restitutionary.

Ofcom said that the law of restitution is rooted in the private law of obligations. The private law approach (as with any tort claim) is to apply a “but for” test – what would the telecoms have paid but for the unlawfulness? This involves the counterfactual: what lawful fees could Ofcom have imposed?

The telecoms, and the Court of Appeal, disagreed. Ofcom’s argument offended the principles of legality, and parity (the principle that those who pay voluntarily should not be worse off compared to those who refuse to pay and litigate).

The Status Of EU Law During The Transition Period And Beyond – Law Pod UK 104

11 March 2020 by Emma-Louise Fenelon

The complexity of EU law, and its status during the Brexit transition period and beyond continues to puzzle many if not most of those tasked with understanding it. 

The Constitutional and Administrative Law Bar Association (ALBA) recently held a panel event tackling this very topic. The panel included Lord Anderson of Ipswich, perhaps better known as David Anderson QC, Professor Catherine Barnard, Professor of European Union law at Cambridge University   (who will be familiar to listeners from our Brexit series), and Alison Pickup, Legal Director at the Public Law Project. 

We are enormously grateful to the Committee and Chair of ALBA, as well as the speakers, for allowing us to reproduce their contributions on the podcast, as Episode 104. This talk is occasionally quite technical, and for this reason we have provided the powerpoint slides provided by each speaker (see the following attachments), which we hope will make it easier to follow along.

ALBA is the professional association for barristers in England and Wales practising in public law. Its members also include solicitors, academics and judges with an interest in public law. Details on joining ALBA can be found here, and their upcoming events here.

Law Pod UK is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Audioboom, Podbean, iHeart, Radio Public, Deezer or wherever you listen to our podcasts.

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False imprisonment not synonymous with breach of right to liberty

10 March 2020 by Shaheen Rahman

R (on the application of Jalloh (formerly Jollah)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] UKSC 4

In a pithy parting shot to the Home Secretary, Lady Hale has given the unanimous judgment of the Supreme Court on the question of whether a person subject to a home curfew under immigration powers had been falsely imprisoned at common law and whether that concept should now be aligned with the concept of deprivation of liberty in article 5 of the ECHR.  The Court decided the case against the defendant, as did every court below (the Blog covered the Court of Appeal’s decision here).  The defendant had been required to pay the claimant £4,000. 

False imprisonment at common law

The opening sentence sets the scene:

The right to physical liberty was highly prized and protected by the common law long before the United Kingdom became party to the European Convention on Human Rights.

The claimant had been subject to an overnight curfew, enforced by way of monitoring equipment and an electronic tag, under paragraph 2(5) of Schedule 3 of the Immigration Act 1971.

What’s in store for judicial review?

9 March 2020 by Matthew Flinn

Tucked away on page 48 of the Conservative Party 2019 election manifesto, the following passage could be found in a section entitled “Protecting our Democracy”: 

After Brexit we also need to look at the broader aspects of our constitution: the relationship between the Government, Parliament and the courts; the functioning of the Royal Prerogative; the role of the House of Lords; and access to justice for ordinary people. The ability of our security services to defend us against terrorism and organised crime is critical. We will update the Human Rights Act and administrative law to ensure that there is a proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government. We will ensure that judicial review is available to protect the rights of the individuals against an overbearing state, while ensuring that it is not abused to conduct politics by another means or to create needless delays. In our first year we will set up a Constitution, Democracy & Rights Commission that will examine these issues in depth, and come up with proposals to restore trust in our institutions and in how our democracy operates.

That is something of a laundry list of many of the most charged constitutional issues faced by the United Kingdom. But of all the matters cited, the one which has received perhaps the most attention of late is the Government’s apparent intention to consider changes to our system of judicial review. 

Weekly Round up : March Madness

2 March 2020 by Rosalind English

In the news 

National concern about coronavirus rose further this week, as the tally of UK cases rose to 36. The government has said that it will publish an emergency ‘battle plan’ for tackling the virus, based on existing contingency plans for responding to a pandemic flu outbreak. This will include ministers responsible for coronavirus in each department, as well as a public information campaign run from the Cabinet Office; if the virus spreads further, it could also include banning big events, closing schools, and advising against use of public transport. When questioned yesterday on whether cities will be isolated, as in China, Health Secretary Matt Hancock was emphatic that no tactics are “off the table” in the government’s coronavirus strategy.  

The Johnson government is facing major setbacks elsewhere this week.