The Weekly Round Up: Asylum centre legal actions, Supreme Court rule on homeless housing, Trump’s ICC sanctions challenged, ECtHR decision on parliamentary privilege
14 April 2025
In UK News
Asylum seekers held at the Manston holding facility in Kent are bringing legal action against the government for unlawful detention and other rights violations. The claims stem from a period between June and November 2022 in which the centre meant for a maximum of 1,600 people was holding more than 3,000 in unsanitary, overcrowded conditions. Described as a ‘humanitarian crisis on British soil’ by one union official as well as a solicitor for the claimants, detainees suffered outbreaks of infectious disease such as norovirus, scabies and even diphtheria, from which one man died. The conditions left the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration ‘speechless’. The claimants include a Syrian woman who, having arrived at the centre with her husband and five young children, suffered a miscarriage while unable to access medical care at the centre. Another is a 19-year-old Sudanese victim of trafficking and torture. He was left regularly hungry and only allowed one shower during his 33 day detention, during which no attention was paid to his particular vulnerabilities. A 17-year old Kurdish teenager from Iraq was detained for 12 days, with his age recorded as five years older despite his protestations, also joins the action. The government has faced many legal challenges of a similar nature, such as the recent High Court ruling that three vulnerable asylum seekers were unlawfully housed at former RAF base Wethersfield.
The UK Supreme Court ruled last week on the scope of a local authority’s duty to secure temporary accommodation for qualifying homeless people in Scotland. Giving the court’s unanimous judgment, Lady Simler distinguished between the local authority’s duties relating to interim as opposed to permanent housing. These duties are respectively imposed by section 29 and section 31 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987. At the interim stage, the local authority is under a duty to take a household’s needs into account but is not required to meet all those specific needs. The latter requirement only applies at the permanent stage. This reasoning led to the dismissal of the appeal, in which the appellant contended that the four-room temporary housing provided by Glasgow City Council was ‘unsuitable’ for the needs of her family of six considering her son’s autism and special needs, relying on s.39(3) of the 1987 Act and article 4(b) of the Homeless Persons (Unsuitable Accommodation) (Scotland) Order 2014. Lady Simler explained that the obligation to secure permanent accommodation is necessarily more onerous and outcome-specific than the duties at the interim stage.
In International News
Trump’s sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor are to be challenged by two human rights advocates representing the American Civil Liberties Union. These sanctions were issued under an executive order in February 2025 following the ICC’s arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and former Defence Minister. The order imposes civil and criminal penalties against any American who provides services to the Prosecutor, Karim Khan. The US government’s position is that the arrest warrants threaten US allies and undermine its sovereignty. The advocates, Matthew Smith and Akila Radhakrishnan, argue that the sanctions are unconstitutional and unlawfully restrict their First Amendment rights, by impeding their ability to engage with the ICC to support victims of human rights abuses. Smith has previously provided evidence of crimes against Myanmar’s Rohingya minority, while Radhakrishnan advised on violence against women in Afghanistan under the Taliban. The lawsuit seeks to block the enforcement of the executive order.
ECtHR
In its recent judgment Green v the United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights has unanimously held that whether parliamentary privilege can be used to reveal information subject to privacy injunctions is a matter for the respondent state. Chairman of multinational retail giant Arcadia group, Philip Green, had obtained a injunction against the Telegraph to prevent it from identifying him as the subject of bullying and sexual misconduct allegations by former employees. However, a member of the House of Lords, Lord Hain, relied on parliamentary privilege to defy the injunction and name the businessman. Wide press coverage of the comments rendered the injunction redundant. Green alleged that the UK state’s failure to ensure parliamentary privilege was not used to violate the court order had breached his rights to respect for his private life under Article 8 ECHR. While a formal complaint was made against Lord Hain, the matter was not within the remit of the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards. This is because the rule requiring Members of the House of Lords to give 24hrs notice before referring to a matter before the courts had not been incorporated into the Code of Conduct. Further, a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament had considered – and rejected – the need for further controls of parliamentary privilege in 2011. The Strasbourg court held that while the interference with Green’s Article 8 rights had been serious, the UK was not under an obligation to restrict parliamentary privilege from being used to circumvent court orders. The principle of the autonomy of Parliament meant that any decision to restrict MPs conduct was a matter for the state. Other member States have given similar protection to parliamentarians and only a small number have restricted parliamentary privilege to prevent certain types of statements being made.
