The Weekly Round-Up: Greek Migrant Boat Tragedy, Italian pushback against Surrogacy, and Downstream Emissions in the Supreme Court

26 June 2023 by Orry Moore

In the news

Further details of the sinking of a Greek fishing boat carrying up to 800 people – including up to 100 children – have come out, placing the Greek authorities under intense scrutiny. The tragedy, which occurred on Wednesday 14^th June, has seen the confirmed deaths of at least 78 people and only 104 confirmed survivors – with no women or children surviving. The Greek authorities have so far claimed that the boat had no issues navigating until close to the time when it began to sink and that the people onboard had refused help from the Greek coastguard. However, marine tracking evidence obtained by the BBC suggests that the overcrowded fishing vessel was not moving for at least seven hours before it capsized. This has raised questions over the actions of the Greek coastguard, prompting the UN to call for an investigation into Greece’s handling of the situation amid claims more action should have been taken earlier to initiate a full-scale rescue attempt. Up to 500 people are still unaccounted for. In slightly more positive news, nine of the people traffickers involved in the disaster have been apprehended by Greek police and pled not guilty in a Kalamata court to trafficking charges.

The Italian prosecutor for Padua, Valeria Sanzari, has demanded the cancellation of 33 birth certificates of children born to lesbian couples dating back to 2017, saying the name of the non-biological mother should be removed. The mother whose name is eliminated will no longer be able to fulfil a series of tasks, including picking up her child from school without the written permission of her partner. If the legally recognised parent dies, the children could be taken from the family home and become a ward of the state. This comes against the backdrop of the election of Meloni’s right-wing government and a debate in Italy’s lower house on a new law that would make it a crime, punishable by up to two years in jail, for couples who go abroad to have a surrogate baby, even in places where it is legal. Critics of the move, such as Italian parliamentarian Alessandro Zan, have called the proposal “cruel [and] inhumane”, saying it will result in children being “orphaned by decree”.

A major suspect in the murder of Stephen Lawrence has been named by the BBC as Matthew White, who died in 2021. Aged just 18, Stephen was stabbed to death by a gang of young white men in Eltham, south-east London, in April 1993. He had been waiting for a bus with his friend Duwayne Brooks. David Norris and Gary Dobson were given life sentences for the murder in 2012. The other three – Luke Knight and brothers Neil and Jamie Acourt – have not been convicted of the crime. Cressida Dick ended the investigation in 2020, saying all lines of enquiry had been exhausted. However, following an investigation by the BBC which found that found that witnesses had said White told them he had been present during the attack, that evidence showed his alibi was false, and that police surveillance photos of White showed a resemblance to eyewitness accounts of an unidentified fair-haired attacker, the gross and repeated failures by the Metropolitan police have been exposed once more. The failure of the first police investigation prompted a landmark public inquiry which concluded the Met was institutionally racist.

In other news

• The so-called ‘serious disruption’ regulations, which greatly increase the scope of police powers to place conditions on protest by lowering the threshold to those protests which ‘may’ result in a ‘more than minor’ disturbance, are being challenged by Liberty in the courts. This is on the basis that the substance of the regulations has been previously rejected by Parliament, and that Suella Braverman now seeks to bring them in the back door via statutory instrument. A legal opinion on the lawfulness and implications of the regulations by human rights barrister Adam Wagner can be found here.

• A large number of environmental NGOs have called on the government to retain EU-derived environmental law to ensure that the UK’s protections do not fall below our European neighbours. The government has previously pledged that environmental protections will never be downgraded but whipped its MPs to vote against an amendment by the Lords to ensure that this is the case. This comes against a backdrop of widespread, illegal dumping of sewage into our rivers and oceans by water companies that has gained public attention over the past few years.

• The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, has warned that adopting the Northern Ireland Legacy Bill will undermine the human rights of the victims, as well as truth-seeking and reconciliation efforts. Concerns have also been expressed by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Special Rapporteurs, national human rights institutions, parliamentary committees and civil society organisations, including victims’ groups. A poll commissioned by Amnesty has also revealed that a majority of the public is opposed to the measures in the Bill. The Bill is due to be debated in the House of Lords this week.

In the courts

• The Supreme Court has finished hearing submissions in the case of R (Finch) v Surrey County Council. The case, which could have major implications for planning law, turns on whether the council was obliged to consider the carbon impact of burning oil, not just extracting it, when deciding to grant an oil drilling permit – i.e., ‘downstream emissions’. The case has seen an unusually wide range of interveners, such as West Cumbria Mining and the Office for Environmental Protection.

• Serial killer Levi Bellfield will be able to marry his girlfriend behind bars after prison chiefs were forced to concede they could not stop him under existing laws. His application to marry her was originally blocked by the prison governor, but after a threat of legal action based on Article 12 ECHR and the Marriage Act 1983. Alex Chalk KC, the new Justice Secretary, has been urged to quickly enact legislation to prevent this happening in similar cases in the future.