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On Tuesday, the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, announced that the Government would scrap plans to bring in mandatory digital ID. The policy, announced under the Starmer administration, was intended to help tackle illegal migration and working, as well as improve access to public services.
However, the plan received considerable criticism at the time, in particular from human rights charities, being described by Amnesty International UK as ‘a serious cause for concern’, which carried with it ‘new risks of discrimination … including racialised policing.’ The development of the policy was later characterised by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, Dame Karen Bradley as a ‘fiasco’ which ‘raised fears of government over-reach into people’s lives’.
Burnham styled his move to ditch the plans as a ‘reprioritisation of public resource’ but notably refrained from criticising the policy on rights grounds. Although the plans had already been watered down somewhat, Burnham’s recent decision has received immediate praise. Akiko Hart, a Director at Liberty commended the move as ‘a victory for civil liberties in the UK’.
Charity Commission investigates Amnesty International UK:
On Tuesday, the Charity Commission opened a compliance case into Amnesty International UK. This followed Amnesty’s self-referral to the Commission following the significant backlash it received for a now-withdrawn report published on its website. That report had sparked controversy for labelling over one-hundred gender critical organisations as being part of an ‘Anti-Rights Movement’.
One such organisation listed by the Amnesty International UK in the report was Beira’s Place – a female-only sexual violence support centre founded by JK Rowling in 2022. Following the publishing of the report, Beira’s Place threatened to take legal action against Amnesty, alleging the report to have been defamatory and demanding a retraction and apology. JK Rowling herself then offered legal funding to any groups that had been named by Amnesty in the report.
Amnesty swiftly withdrew the report, explaining that it had failed to go ‘through the established internal review processes that are in place to ensure consistency, accuracy and alignment with Amnesty International UK’s position.’ It has added that it is ‘engaging fully’ with the Charity Commission’s investigation.
In Westminster: Parliament rises for summer recess, Immigration and Asylum Bill latest, and FAC inquiry into UK-Russian long-term relationship launched
The House of Commons adjourned on Thursday for the summer recess and will not sit again until Tuesday 1st September. It rose with the Immigration and Asylum Bill, debated at second reading the previous Monday, fresh in its wake, and with the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ (‘JCHR’) legislative scrutiny of the Bill under way.
The JCHR has invited written submissions on the Bill’s compatibility with domestic and international human rights obligations until 1st September, so the recess will be no quiet interlude for those preparing evidence.
On Wednesday, the Chair of the JCHR, Lord Alton of Liverpool, welcomed the Bill’s strengthened safeguards against forced labour in UK supply chains. The Committee’s July 2025 report on the same had warned that the UK risked becoming a ‘dumping ground’ for goods made using forced labour, and called for mandatory human rights due diligence and improved access to justice for victims in the UK courts. That report is to be debated in the House of Lords on Friday 4th September. Lord Alton’s welcome of these safeguards is notable for its selectivity: the Committee’s scrutiny of the Bill’s more contested provisions, not least the proposed restriction of Article 8 claims in immigration appeals, continues.
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Elsewhere in Westminster, the Foreign Affairs Committee (‘FAC’) launched an inquiry into Russia, which will consider the UK’s bilateral relationship and ask whether the UK’s long-term strategic approach to a post-conflict Russia is clearly defined.
A challenging week for the International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court (‘ICC’) has had a week of striking contrasts. As the week opened, the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, announced a campaign to ‘dismantle’ the Court, contending that it had strayed beyond its mandate in pursuing American personnel. The United Nations responded the same day by defending the Court’s critical role in the global fight against impunity and, on Wednesday, a resolution urging the United States to join the Court was introduced in the House of Representatives.
The diplomatic pressure formed the backdrop to the Court’s Security Council briefing on Darfur (on which, see below).
The ICC’s difficulties are not only external. On Tuesday, the Bar Standards Board confirmed that the ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan KC, has been suspended from practice as a barrister pending the outcome of disciplinary proceedings arising from allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denies. Mr Khan was separately suspended by the ICC’s governing body in June.
In the Courts
R v McCafferty and others: the Supreme Court narrows statutory public nuisance
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court handed down judgment in R v McCafferty and others [2026] UKSC 20, unanimously allowing the appeals of six Animal Rising (then Animal Rebellion) protestors, with the result that they stand acquitted. Lord Leggatt gave the main judgment, with which Lord Reed, Lady Simler and Lord Doherty agreed; Lord Sales concurred in the result.
On the morning of 8th September 2022, the six defendants obstructed the entrance to a dairy works owned by Müller UK, chaining themselves to temporary fencing and gluing themselves to the surface of Pointon Way — a private road providing the only access to the site — so that for some four hours no vehicle could enter or leave. They were charged under the second limb of the statutory offence of public nuisance (Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, s.78): an act which obstructs the public, or a section of the public ‘in the exercise or enjoyment of a right that may be exercised or enjoyed by the public at large.’
The trial judge found no case to answer, on the basis that the defendants had obstructed a private road leading to private premises. The Court of Appeal reversed that ruling, and certified a question of general public importance: whether those who go to private business premises — as employees, customers or suppliers — are a section of the public exercising such a right when they approach, enter or leave.
The Supreme Court’s answer was no. A ‘right’ within s.78(1)(b)(ii) means a genuine public right — the paradigm being the right of passage along the highway — and is to be distinguished from a mere licence or permission granted by a landowner, which confers no right at all. There was no evidence that the public at large had been granted permission to use Pointon Way, let alone a right to do so. Lord Leggatt invoked the principle that a criminal penalty — particularly one carrying a potential loss of liberty — should not be imposed on a doubtful construction of a statute.
The Crown’s fallback argument, that the protestors had at least obstructed the right of those inside to leave the premises, fared no better: a trespasser does not cease to be a trespasser upon making for the exit. Nor could the prosecution salvage matters by pointing to offences it had never charged: no application had been made to amend the indictment to allege the first-limb offence or aggravated trespass, and there was accordingly no basis for disturbing the judge’s ruling.
The judgment substantially narrows the reach of the second limb of s.78 as applied to protest at private premises, and channels such conduct towards the offences Parliament actually designed for it. Coming a month after the Court of Appeal upheld the proscription of Palestine Action, it is a reminder that the law of protest continues to develop in both directions at once: the courts will uphold broad executive and legislative measures where lawfully made, but will not stretch penal statutes beyond their terms to catch disruptive protest.
S.T. v. the Czech Republic: a death in police custody and the duty to investigate
On Thursday, the Strasbourg Court gave judgment in S.T. v the Czech Republic, finding several violations of the Convention arising from the death of the applicant’s brother, a Roma man, following a police intervention in 2021, and from the ensuing investigation. The Registry’s summary is stark: the use of the prone position by police was followed by the man’s death, and the authorities failed both to protect his life and to investigate effectively the use of force and its potential discriminatory motives (see the Court’s press release).
The case arises from the death of Stanislav Tomáš in Teplice in June 2021, after an officer knelt on him in the course of his restraint: an incident captured in footage and circulated widely which drew comparisons, at the time, with the death of George Floyd. The domestic authorities had concluded that there was no causal link between the police intervention and the death. Strasbourg’s insistence that allegations of racially discriminatory motives in policing must themselves be effectively investigated continues a line of authority of obvious relevance on this side of the Channel, where the disproportionate use of force against minority communities remains under scrutiny.
Bazhenov and Others v. Russia and Ukraine: property rights in occupied Crimea
Between 2015 and 2017, the Russian authorities cancelled the applicants’ titles to plots of land in Sevastopol, Crimea, which had originally been transferred into private ownership by the Ukrainian authorities. The plots were reclaimed as public property on the footing that they were forest lands which ought never to have been privatised.
The Court held that there was no legal basis for the Russian authorities to deprive the applicants of their ownership. The applications were directed against both Russia and Ukraine, though the findings summarised by the Registry concern the acts of the Russian authorities.
The judgment adds to the growing body of Strasbourg case law on the consequences of the occupation of Crimea for private rights, following the Grand Chamber’s judgment in Ukraine v. Russia (re Crimea), and is a further instance of the Court adjudicating upon the acts of an occupying administration against Convention standards notwithstanding Russia’s expulsion from the Council of Europe.
In The Hague: The ICC’s first Libya case goes to trial, Darfur update, and Rome Statute anniversary
On Wednesday, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC rejected the defence challenge to the Court’s jurisdiction in The Prosecutor v. Khaled Mohamed Ali El Hishri, holding unanimously that the Court may exercise jurisdiction over the case.
The majority reasoned that the alleged conduct remains covered by the Security Council’s referral of the situation in Libya under Resolution 1970 (2011), notwithstanding Libya’s more recent acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction by declaration under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute.
The following day, the Chamber unanimously confirmed all charges against Mr El Hishri and committed him to trial. The Chamber found substantial grounds to believe that Mr El Hishri — alleged to have been one of the most senior officials at Mitiga Prison in Tripoli — is responsible for seventeen counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against thousands of detainees between May 2014 and June 2020, comprising torture, cruel treatment, imprisonment, outrages upon personal dignity and other inhuman acts; rape, attempted rape and other forms of sexual violence; murder and attempted murder; enslavement; and persecution.
Mr El Hishri was arrested in Germany on 16 July 2025 and surrendered to the Court in December 2025, with the confirmation hearing held in May of this year.
This is the first case in the ICC’s Libya situation to be sent to trial in fifteen years of investigation; Human Rights Watch described the decision as a ‘milestone for justice’ in Libya.
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Meanwhile, regarding the situation in Darfur, the Office of the Prosecutor announced on Tuesday that it seeks to withdraw the charges against Abdallah Banda — a request originally filed confidentially in October 2023 and made public only this week — drawing the curtain on one of the Court’s longest-dormant cases. The charges against Mr Banda, arising from an attack on African Union peacekeepers in 2007, were confirmed in 2011, and he has been at large under a warrant of arrest since 2014.
On Wednesday, the Deputy Prosecutor, Nazha Shameem Khan, briefed the UN Security Council on the situation in Darfur pursuant to Resolution 1593 (2005), against the backdrop of continuing atrocities in the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces — and of the week’s diplomatic assault on the Court itself.
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The week closed with the President of the ICC, Judge Tomoko Akane, marking the Day of International Criminal Justice on Friday: the anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute in 1998, an occasion which this year found the Court as productive as it is embattled.
Described by the government as “a framework of new, enhanced powers and offences to improve UK border security and to strengthen the asylum and immigration system”, the Bill contemplates a raft of reforms which have been summarised in a previous post on this blog.
Launching the JCHR’s inquiry into the Bill, Lord David Alton said:
We need to make sure that, as the Government sets out to deal with long-term issues such as the asylum backlog, costly asylum accommodation and low public confidence in the asylum and immigration processes, it does not come at the cost of the human rights of those engaging with the system.
The JCHR invites written submissions until 1st September 2026 on a number of issues relating to the Bill’s compatibility with domestic and international human rights obligations.
UNHRC concludes 62nd regular session
The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) concluded its 62nd regular session on 8th July, having adopted 28 resolutions on a range of country-specific and thematic issues.
The UNHRC adopted resolutions relating to the current human rights situations in Sudan, Myanmar and Eritrea and on a variety of thematic issues, including:
freedom of expression;
the rights of women and girls in humanitarian situations;
forced marriage;
protection of healthcare in armed conflict;
judicial independence; and
extreme poverty.
Calls for ICO to be investigated for eVisa oversight failures
The Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee has been asked to open an investigation into the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for alleged failures in upholding data protection law in relation to the Home Office’s eVisa scheme.
In a letter to the Committee’s chair, a group of 20 immigration, data protection and human rights organisations assert that the eVisa scheme has been affected – since its rollout – by systemic data protection and accessibility issues.
The signatories note that these issues have had a “high and unjustifiable” price, preventing individuals from proving their immigration status, applying for jobs, enrolling in education, and claiming benefits.
Against this background, the signatories criticise the ICO’s failure to take any action as part of its oversight responsibilities, despite being approached in November 2025. They ask the Select Committee to consider whether institutional changes are needed at the ICO, as well as investigating the specific eVisa issues.
Concerns over facial recognition technology in UK shops
Civil liberties groups have described a “dangerous escalation” in the use of facial recognition technology in UK shops – such as Sainsbury’s, B&M and Spar – to monitor shoplifting.
The technology, known as Facewatch, is expected to alert police in real time to the presence of known offenders based on live facial recognition matching.
Critics say this raises proportionality issues given the risks of misidentification, as well as threatening infringements of data and privacy rights as people’s faces will be scanned and their features stored without meaningful consent.
In defence of the technology, Facewatch’s CEO has said:
This is about the people who commit dozens and, in some cases, hundreds of offences, not the millions of people who simply want to do their shopping. If technology can help protect retail workers, prevent further crime and support policing, we believe it has a responsible role to play.
How was your last lobster bisque or thermidor? What is a crayfish anyway, a sentient animal with feelings to be regarded, or just a large marine woodlouse to be tossed into a pot of boiling water, alive, because they’re quite complicated and sometimes expensive to kill humanely?
Under the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 the government gave legal recognition to decapod crustaceans as sentient beings. The Animal Law Foundation has now written to the Welsh Government to advise on what this means for the killing of crabs and lobsters in Wales.
Summary
The letter reproduced below, addressed to Mr Gruffydd, cabinet minister in the Welsh Government on behalf of The Animal Law Foundation and co-signatory animal protection organisations and legal experts, calls for urgent regulatory guidance on the killing of decapod crustaceans (such as crabs and lobsters) in Wales.
The letter’s central argument rests on the legal recognition of decapod crustaceans as sentient beings under Section 5(1)(c) of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022. The authors argue this recognition has direct legal implications for how these animals must be treated under the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (Wales) Regulations 2014 (WATOK).
Specifically, the letter notes that Schedule 4 of WATOK already extends welfare protections at the time of killing to invertebrates including decapod crustaceans. Paragraph 4 of that Schedule makes it an offence to restrain, stun, or kill such animals in ways causing avoidable pain, distress, or suffering, and requires that anyone carrying out these acts have the necessary knowledge and skill to do so humanely.
The letter draws on the London School of Economics review that underpinned the original sentience recognition, which identified humane killing methods for decapods—such as double spiking for crabs, whole-body splitting for lobsters, or specialist electrical stunning devices—as being fast (whole-body splitting taking no more than 10 seconds when performed competently). By contrast, the letter highlights that boiling crustaceans alive, a widespread practice in restaurants and homes, can take several minutes and causes significant suffering. Since humane alternatives exist, the authors argue boiling alive constitutes “avoidable” suffering, and is therefore already unlawful under the combined effect of sentience recognition and WATOK’s existing provisions.
The letter strengthens this argument by pointing to the UK Government’s Animal Welfare Strategy commitment (as of December 2025) to publish guidance on which killing methods for decapods comply with existing welfare-at-time-of-killing law, explicitly including clarification that live boiling is unacceptable. Because Wales operates under the same underlying legal framework as England on this point, the authors contend that this UK-level interpretation is highly relevant and should be mirrored in Wales.
In its concluding “next steps” section, the letter appeals to the newly elected Welsh Government and its manifesto commitment to produce a renewed Animal Health and Welfare Plan. It urges the government to act urgently by issuing clear guidance confirming that decapod crustaceans are protected under WATOK, and that consequently they should not be boiled alive. The letter frames this as a long-overdue reform and calls on the government to take decisive action.
In essence, the letter is a legal and evidentiary appeal urging Welsh ministers to formally clarify—via guidance rather than new legislation—that existing animal welfare law already prohibits the live-boiling of crustaceans, using the precedent of sentience law, scientific evidence on humane slaughter methods, and an emerging parallel commitment from the UK government as its main pillars of support.
On Tuesday, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood introduced the Immigration and Asylum Bill to Parliament. The Bill reforms the interpretation of the right to family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), changes the Modern Slavery regime, establishes a new Independent Immigration Appeals Authority and provides for the recovery of asylum support costs.
According to the accompanying Explanatory Notes, the Bill aims to establish “a firm but fair immigration system” by bringing into effect the Restoring Order and Control reforms announced in November 2025.
The Bill defines ‘family life’ for the purposes of Article 8 of the ECHR as “normally limited to their core cohabiting family” (clause 18(4)).
Section 117B of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 is also amended in the Bill to provide that it will only be unreasonable to expect a child to leave the UK where the child would: (1) receive no education in the new country; (2) face very significant obstacles to integration; or (3) experience a very significant and long-lasting adverse effect as a result of the relocation (clause 19(7)).
The Bill further provides that delays in disclosing modern slavery experiences and material inconsistencies in the information provided will damage a person’s credibility as a victim of modern slavery (clause 36).
It also establishes a body corporate called the Independent Immigration Appeals Authority to determine all types of immigration appeal (clause 1). While senior adjudicators must have practised law for at least two years or have experience in law-related activities, there is no such requirement for executive adjudicators (clause 2).
Additionally, the Bill introduces a new power for the Secretary of State to require people who have received asylum support to contribute to the costs of providing support (clause 23).
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