Weekly Round-up: Presidential assassination; sewage lawsuit; lefty lawyers

14 August 2023 by Hal McNulty

In the news

One of the candidates running in Ecuador’s upcoming presidential election has been assassinated. Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead at a campaign rally in Quito. His election platform addressed the issues of corruption and government links to organised crime. There is speculation that the powerful Los Lobos gang is behind the killing. This follows the news two weeks ago of the fatal shooting of Agustín Intriago, a popular city mayor. Formerly hailed as one of the safest countries in South America, Ecuador has been overrun in recent years by organised crime and international drug cartels, while democratic rights of protest have been rolled back by the political establishment.

British water companies are facing lawsuits valued at £800 million for failing to report pollution. Class actions claims are being brought against six water companies on behalf of the public. The claimants allege that the companies’ failure to report the discharge of raw sewage into the supply is a breach of competition law and should have lowered the consumer price. Carolyn Roberts, the environmental and water consultant bringing the claims at the competition tribunal, contends that customers have been overcharged as a result of the water companies abusing their power as privatised monopolies.

 A group of asylum seekers which refused to board the Bibby Stockholm barge was warned on Monday that government support would be withdrawn if they did not move onto the accommodation. The Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk, commented that the illegality of the proposal was “something that the courts would have to consider” but that it was “unlikely” to be illegal, also remarking that the asylum accommodation was “sparse and […] a bit austere but, frankly, that is not unreasonable.” The charity Care4Calais have criticised the scheme as likely to cause vulnerable people emotional distress. On Thursday, however, all migrants were removed from the vessel after it was discovered that Legionella bacteria had entered the water supply.

In other news

Conservative MPs have signalled that part of their election platform next year may be leaving the European Convention on Human Rights. These politicians cite the power of the European court to oppose the Rwanda flights in 2022 as an indication that Britain needs to regain control of its borders. In June, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Rwanda deportation scheme is unlawful, but the government has lodged an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Leading lawyers, the Law Society, and the Bar Council have criticised the Conservative Party for briefing right-leaning newspapers against “lefty lawyer” Jacqueline McKenzie. A dossier sent from the Conservative Party HQ was entitled ““Revealed: senior Labour adviser is lefty lawyer blocking Rwanda deportations”. In a joint statement, Lubna Shuja, the president of the Law Society, and Nick Vineall KC, the chair of the Bar Council, pushed back against CCHQ’s apparent attempt to politicise the legal profession: “it is a United Nations basic principle that lawyers should not be identified with the causes of their clients as a result of representing them.” Dominic Grieve and Edward Garnier, respectively the former attorney general and the solicitor general in David Cameron’s government, have also criticised the trend of associating lawyers with political causes as damaging to Britain’s institutions.

In the courts

In R v Malkinson, the Court of Appeal found the conviction of a man who spent 17 years in prison to be unsafe. Andrew Malkinson had been sentenced in 2004 for rape and related assault. He had unsuccessfully applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) twice, but fresh DNA analysis prompted the CCRC to apply for further scientific investigation, which implicated another man. The criminal records of the original witnesses and photographs of the victim had been kept from the defence, despite having been requested, limiting the defence’s ability to doubt the identification of the defendant. Lord Justice Holroyde, determining that the Greater Manchester police’s disclosure failures had breached the defendant’s right to a fair trial, remarked that “the jury’s verdict may have been different”.