By: Guest Contributor
16 November 2015 by Guest Contributor
Lord Carlile QC, former Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, has said that in the aftermath of the Paris attacks last weekend, Parliament should fast-track the Investigatory Powers Bill into law. Given his extensive experience in the field, Lord Carlile’s views should not be taken lightly. But Lord Carlile is wrong. To fast-track the Investigatory Powers Bill is undesirable and unnecessary. It would also end a crucial public conversation in a wrong-headed paroxysm of governmental action.
An Undesirable Response
Fast-track national security law is undesirable for (at least) two reasons. First, legislatures tend not to function well in the aftermath of any emergency. If they legislate immediately, the result is often not just overreach, but legislation that is bad in technical terms. Second, these general concerns are of especial significance in this field of law, because existing flaws in our investigatory powers law are a result of failures of scrutiny in the past.
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5 November 2015 by Guest Contributor
On behalf of Professor Van Bueren and the Human Rights Collegium at the School of Law, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) is featuring a theatre play and expert discussion on child refugees to honour the life of Lisa Jardine (pictured).
The Human Rights Collegium is hosting this event with the theatre group Ice and Fire to raise awareness about the situation of child refugees in the current refugee crisis. This multimedia initiative, featuring a theatre performance followed by discussion and Q&A, offers an opportunity to reflect upon the journeys of children in flight, from the moment they start their journey to the point they reach their destination in Europe and the UK, tracing their experiences of the asylum process and their life after status recognition and/or as failed applicants.
Details:
Tuesday 17 November 2015, 6:30-9pm
Arts Two Lecture Theatre
Queen Mary University of London
Mile End Road, E1 4NS
To register for this event, please visit the QMUL Department of Law Eventbrite page.
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5 November 2015 by Guest Contributor
Cian C. Murphy & Natasha Simonsen
The Government has published a draft Bill on Investigatory Powers that it hopes to see through Parliament within a year. If it becomes law, the Investigatory Powers Bill will replace much, but not all, of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, as well as the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014.
It is the Government’s response to the Edward Snowden revelations, and to three different reports that made almost 200 reform recommendations between them.
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3 November 2015 by Guest Contributor
A quick post to announce that the UK Human Rights Blog has now been optimised for mobile use.
We hope this will mean a slicker (and less eye-straining) experience when accessing the latest human rights news and analysis on your smartphones and tablets.
You shouldn’t have to download anything to access the site in its new format – just go to ukhumanrightsblog.com from your hand-held device!
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30 October 2015 by Guest Contributor
Marina Wheeler
Remember the three girls from Bethnal Green Academy, who in February slipped through Gatwick security to join so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)? If, watching the footage, you exclaimed, “how can we stop this?”, then read on. Eight months and a massacre in Tunisia later, the Courts have intervened in more than 35 cases to prevent the flight of children to Syria or to seek their return.
In the very first cases, in which Martin Downs of these Chambers appeared, the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction was invoked to make the children wards of court. The value of this mechanism, previously used in child abduction cases and to thwart forced marriages, is that the ward requires permission of the Court to leave the jurisdiction, and passports can be seized. (See, for example, Re Y (A Minor: Wardship) [2015] EWHC 2098 (Fam)).
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23 October 2015 by Guest Contributor
Those who want change should have to make the case for it, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC challenged her fellow panellists, at a recent event jointly organised by the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and British Institute of International and Comparative Law, and hosted by Bindmans. The panel was one of the most stimulating contributions of the year to the debate over the proposed repeal of the Human Rights Act and its replacement with a British Bill of Rights, featuring contributions from three members of the 2012 Commission on a Bill of Rights, a number of comparative perspectives including one from Australia, and even a call for what appears to be a written constitution.
Professor Jeffrey Jowell gave some preliminary remarks to set the scene for the panel discussion. He noted that the Bingham Centre had not adopted any particular position on the proposed repeal of the Human Rights Act (HRA) and its subsequent replacement with a British Bill of Rights, since the Conservative Government had not yet published its proposals. He then quoted a recent report that the Government was planning to publish its consultation paper within the next two months, and then seek to legislate rapidly to get the British Bill of Rights on to the statute books by the end of next summer. Given this, he felt that the time was therefore right to hear a spectrum of views on the subject to assist the Bingham Centre in forming its position.
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19 October 2015 by Guest Contributor
Photo credit: Guardian
Emma-Louise Fenelon is a Pupil Barrister at 1 Crown Office Row
‘Eavesdropping, sir? I don’t follow you, begging your pardon. There ain’t no eaves at Bag End, and that’s a fact.’ (J.R.R Tolkein)
Introduction
If parliamentarians are seen to be taking a more forensic interest in matters of surveillance in the coming weeks and months, the reason is unlikely to be purely down to the publication of the greatly anticipated surveillance legislation. Last week’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal judgment has sent ripples of discontent through both Houses of Parliament, evidenced in immediate calls for an emergency debate on the subject (scheduled to take place in the House of Commons later today).
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14 October 2015 by Guest Contributor
Credit: guardian.co.uk
What is the role of parliament in the protection and realisation of the rule of law and human rights? Should there be a set of internationally agreed principles and guidelines on this issue to help parliaments develop their role? If so, what should be the content of any internationally agreed principles and guidelines? And how do we get international agreement on them? These were some of the questions posed and addressed at a recent high-level international conference held last month at Westminster.
The conference heard about the growing international consensus about the importance of the role of parliament in the protection and realisation of the rule of law and human rights, which has emerged over the last five years. International and regional institutions, including the United Nations General Assembly, the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), the Council of Europe and the Commonwealth Secretariat, have taken a number of active steps to increase parliament’s role. Just last week, the HRC passed a third resolution at the close of its October 2015 session, addressing the “contribution of parliaments to the work of the HRC and its Universal Periodic Review” (link here).
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13 October 2015 by Guest Contributor
Those charged with the task of protecting the public from harm resort to assertion similar to that here attributed to a GCHQ spokesperson:
Our work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight.
I was the Chief Surveillance Inspector at the Office of Surveillance Commissioners for eight years until August 2013. My own view is that the legal and policy framework is not strict and that oversight is not rigorous. Until they are, we should not blame public authorities for exploiting opportunities that enable them to meet their operational and investigative objectives.
Regardless of one’s views on the actions of Mr. Snowden, public knowledge of covert capabilities has encouraged those who engage in covert conduct to explain what it is they require and why. The reports published by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, the Intelligence and Security Committee and RUSI make important contributions but tend, in my view, to focus on the effect of technology and the impact of so-called mass surveillance. All agree that the law and oversight should be improved. Here’s my take on those two fundamentals.
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6 October 2015 by Guest Contributor
Image: Guardian
H H Keith Hollis
There has been further consideration of potential post-adoption Article 8 rights for natural parents in a judgment by Peter Jackson J in the case of Seddon v Oldham MBC. There are no surprises in the conclusions he reaches.
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6 October 2015 by Guest Contributor
Image credit: Guardian
This week’s round-up is brought to you by Charlotte Bellamy
Instead of reparations and an apology for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, David Cameron is to bestow Jamaica with £25m (or 40%) towards the cost of a new prison – an offer which is “an insult to the people of Jamaica”, according to Jamaican MP Mike Henry, who had led the effort to force a vote on reparations which took place in the Jamaican Parliament in January and passed unanimously. The motion stated that Jamaica would be entitled to receive reparations equivalent to what former slave owners received after abolition.
Prior to Cameron’s visit, Sir Henry Beckles, the chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, called on the PM to acknowledge his responsibility for his share of the situation and to contribute to a “joint programme of rehabilitation and renewal”. He described the PM as “a grandson of the Jamaican soil who has been privileged and enriched by your forebears’ sins of the enslavement of our ancestors”. The Cameron family was said to have reaped “bonanza benefits”. During his visit, however, Cameron announced that financial reparations “were not the right approach”.
Is a UK-subsidised prison the right approach? BBC political correspondent Carole Walker suggested that some eyebrows may be raised by such an allocation of the Foreign Aid budget. Frances Crook, the CEO of the Howard League, has raised not just her eyebrows, but also concerns that building a prison in Jamaica is “not the answer to the UK’s prison problems”, not least because it is “wrong to spend British aid on building a prison” when “refugees in camps are facing winter and the budget is stretched”. In addition, the Jamaican prison would only take 300 men by 2020, when prison numbers in this country are going up by more than 300 every month.
Other news
- In the week that saw the Human Rights Act turn 15, Sir Simon McDonald, the British Foreign Office Chief, inauspiciously commented that human rights are “no longer a top priority” for the Government. Resources will be funnelled into trade deals ahead of fighting injustice in other parts of the world, as part of the Conservatives’ “Prosperity Agenda”, the Independent reports. This perhaps explains George Osborne’s recent silence on human rights abuses during his “trade mission” to China, for which he has been praised by a grateful if somewhat surprised Chinese Government, and criticised by Amnesty International.
- More fuel was thrown on the fire of the UK’s tangled relationship with Saudi Arabia when it emerged last week via leaked Saudi Foreign Ministry files that the UK made a secret deal with the Saudis to bag themselves both countries seats on the UN Human Rights Council in 2013. Saudi Arabia – who has sanctioned more than 100 beheadings this year – now chairs a UNHRC panel that selects senior officials to draft international human rights standards and report violations. Allan Hogarth, Amnesty International UK’s Head of Policy and Government Affairs, described the revelation as “a slap in the face for those beleaguered Saudi activists who already struggle with endemic persecution in the kingdom”.
- The daughter of a man who committed suicide in 2013 after being declared fit to work by an Atos ‘heathcare professional’ is compiling a dossier of information on her father’s case to assist the imminent UN investigation into whether Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms have led to “grave or systematic violations” of disabled people’s rights. This follows a coroner’s conclusion that Mr O’Sullivan’s suicide was a direct result of the outcome of the assessment. The coroner reported found that the Atos healthcare professional (an orthopaedic surgeon in this case) had failed to take into account the views of any of the deceased’s doctors, who had diagnosed him with recurrent depression, panic disorder and agoraphobia.
- The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has called for “firmer measures” against States ignoring judgments of the Strasbourg Court, urging Council of Europe ministers to make use of the 2010 “infringement procedure” (a tool “as yet untried”) which allows the Court to rule on whether a State has breached its obligation to abide by the Convention. This recommendation was based on a report focused primarily on nine countries responsible for 80 per cent of the 11,000 unimplemented cases (Turkey, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Romania, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Ukraine), though the UK received a special mention (Appendix 1, s10) for “unresolved issues” relating to “significant implementation problems” specifically in relation to prisoner voting rights, following Hirst v UK (No 2) and the pilot judgments Greens and MT v UK where the UK’s blanket ban on prisoner voting was found to be a violation of Article 3.
In the Courts
- Bouyid v Belgium: slapping by law enforcement officers of individuals under their control was degrading treatment under Article 3 ECHR. Two brothers had alleged that police officers in Belgium had slapped them in the face whilst at a police station in Brussels. The Court found that this had undermined their dignity. The Court emphasised that in a democratic society ill-treatment was never an appropriate response by the authorities, explaining that “a slap to the face affects the part of the person’s body which expresses his individuality, manifests his social identity and constitutes the centre of his senses”.
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If you have a human rights event you would like to publicise on the UK Human Rights Blog, please email Jim Duffy at jim.duffy@1cor.com
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21 September 2015 by Guest Contributor
On 7th September 2015, Judge Robert Spano (of the European Court of Human Rights) spoke at a high-level international conference on “The Role of Parliaments in the Realisation and Protection of the Rule of Law and Human Rights”, organised by Murray Hunt, Legal Adviser to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights. This was his second public intervention in the United Kingdom since his seminal speech on “Universality or Diversity of Human Rights: Strasbourg in the Age of Subsidiarity” delivered at Oxford in 2014, the first having been covered by UK Human Rights Blog here, and built upon his earlier speeches by elaborating on four post-Brighton Declaration cases in which the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (the European Court) applied the principle of subsidiarity to find no violation of human rights, considering that the cases fell within the national margin of appreciation, after having examined evidence demonstrating that the national Parliaments had considered the human rights issues. Taken collectively, the four cases demonstrate that Strasbourg is well and truly in the age of subsidiarity, deferring to the decisions of national Parliaments, provided those Parliaments had considered the human rights implications of legislation. Whether this will satisfy Conservative Party concerns that membership of the European Convention on Human Rights is incompatible with the doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty will be explored at the end of this post.
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18 September 2015 by Guest Contributor
Kent County Council v G & others [2005] UKHL 68 involved an appeal by a local authority on a matter of principle.
In the course of care proceedings, they had been compelled to pay about £200,000 to provide a therapeutic residential placement for a family pursuant to section 38(6) of the Children Act 1989. The case had a happy ending; the family stayed together. But the local authority wanted to make it clear for the future that this had been an improper use of section 38(6) of the Children Act 1989 and argued that the court could not compel a local authority to pay for therapy for parents under a statutory provision directed at assessments of the child.
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13 September 2015 by Guest Contributor
In the news
Comparisons to Orwell’s dystopia have inevitably been drawn with the drone strikes recently carried out by the UK in Syria that killed two British IS fighters, Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin. Amnesty reacted with alarm at the news that remote control drones had been used as vehicles of execution – action they say “is difficult to conceive as being a feature of the present” – but particularly against a country with which we are not at war.
Controversy is certainly brewing over what Michael Fallon’s critics have termed a US-style “kill-list” and the legality of the government’s action, which David Cameron initially justified as an act of UK self-defence in his address to the Commons last Monday, necessary to protect the UK from an “imminent threat” – action which is permitted under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
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30 August 2015 by Guest Contributor
Western governments are increasingly concerned to establish that they have the power to prevent individuals from traveling to the Middle East to engage in terrorism-related activity (see Rosalind English’s recent post on Jihadi Brides). This has resulted in a spike in passport seizures, especially on the domestic level. Under Chapter 1 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 the UK government has the authority to seize UK passports
where a person is suspected of intending to leave Great Britain or the United Kingdom in connection with terrorism-related activity.
These events encouraged me to revisit a 2010 publication I co-authored with my colleague Jason Reed Struble, entitled ‘The Nature of a Passport at the Intersection of Customary International Law and American Judicial Practice’ (16 Ann. Surv. Int’l & Comp. L. 9 (2010)). In that piece we discussed the very nature of a passport and its role in both international and United States domestic law. This article focussed on the seizure of foreign passports by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the subsequent tribulations that follow. Thus, the work focused on a different spectrum of passport seizures, i.e. a government seizing another government’s passport, as opposed to a government seizing passports of its own nationals.
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