By: Adam Wagner
9 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated | The Select Committee on the Constitution has published its report on the Public Bodies Bill, and has expressed concern that the Bill as proposed will impose “Henry VIII” powers on the Executive.
The Bill, which has already attracted attention for seeking to abolish 192 quangos, is currently making its way through Parliament (track its progress here) and has its second reading in the Lords on Tuesday 9th November. You can watch a recording of the debate here. The committee reports:
When assessing a proposal in a Bill that fresh Henry VIII powers be conferred, we have argued that the issues are ‘whether Ministers should have the power to change the statute book for the specific purposes provided for in the Bill and, if so, whether there are adequate procedural safeguards’. In our view, the Public Bodies Bill [HL] fails both tests.
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9 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
The debate over whether control orders will survive the anti-terrorism review has been rumbling on for the past weeks, with a surprising amount of internal discussions being aired in public.
The human rights organisation Liberty, which opposes the orders, has posted a useful summary of the recent back and forth, which it calls (allegedly quoting the Prime Minister) a “car crash”. Reading the summary, it seems clear that there are a number of strongly held but opposing views within the coalition, apparently split down party lines. There also appears to be no clear picture from within the security services either.
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8 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated | For those looking for clues as to how the Ministry of Justice will prioritise its funding after the impending 25% budget cut, it has just released its 2011-15 business plan.
The MoJ’s ‘vision’ is certainly ambitious. Despite the cuts, there will be “better law“. This will come from a programme of “fundamental reform” which will cure the problems of “too much litigation, too many people reoffending and too much money spent on systems”.
Under the heading “Coalition Priorities”, the MoJ provides its plans for structural reform. It is not clear whether these are in order of priority:
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8 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Today marks the beginning of National Pro Bono Week, with events being held across the country to celebrate the range and impact of pro bono work undertaken by solicitors, barristers and legal executives. A calendar of events can be found here.
How much pro-bono, or free, work should a lawyer do? This is a question which I have heard asked surprisingly rarely. I cannot recall the topic being addressed during my legal training, although pro-bono work was generally encouraged not just as charity but also as an excellent way of gaining legal experience with a view to finding a job. This was certainly my experience, and I cannot stress enough how valuable my work at the Free Representation Unit was in providing an interesting and valuable insight into representing real clients.
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5 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
In
Updated | Today the UK courts have made two decisions in relation to radical Muslim clerics. The score card reads: Abu Hamza can keep his passport and stay (for now), but Dr Zakir Naik, an Indian preacher who was excluded from the UK by the Home Secretary in June, will remain unwelcome.
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission has ruled that Abu Hamza can keep his UK passport as if a deprivation order were made, he would be made stateless, as he claimed he had already been stripped of his Egyptian citizenship. By section 40 of the British Nationality Act 1981, the Secretary of State cannot make a person stateless. The UK is trying to deport him altogether, but his claim is being heard at the European Court of Human Rights (see our post).
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5 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated | For your weekend reading pleasure, some of this week’s human rights news, in bite-size form. The full list of our external links can be found on the right sidebar or here.
Abu Hamza wins passport appeal – BBC: Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza has won his appeal in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission against government attempts to strip him of his British passport. Apparently he won as taking his passport away would have rendered him “stateless”. We will comment on the case once the judgment is released (update – judgment is here and our post is here). In the meantime, you can read the background to his extradition appeal here.
A breathtaking Bill of which even Henry VIII would have been proud – Law and Lawyers: The Public Bodies Bill is making its way through Parliament, and the Law and Lawyers blog has sounded the alarm that the bill, if passed into law, will amount to a “permanent extension to Ministerial powers exercisable with quite minimal Parliamentary oversight.” It is “replete” with so-called Henry VIII clauses, which could provide unchecked power to the Executive. I discussed the issue of Henry VIII clauses in July, in light of the Lord Chief Justice’s comments on the issue.
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5 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
In a new article, Afua Hirsch discusses the difficult question of the place of religion in our courts, in light of comments made by a judge sentencing Roshonara Choudhry, a radicalised Muslim woman, for the murder of a Christian man.
The writer compares this case to Lord Carey’s recent appeal in a same-sex counselling case that religious cases be heard by religion specialists (see our post), as well as the official censure of a judge in a criminal damage case who made overtly political comments about the 2008/9 Israel-Gaza war (our post here). Hirsch argues that religious courts may be the answer to these problems, although this may be unfair to other groups affected by discrimination such as women and ethnic minorities.
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4 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the signing of the European Convention on Human Rights on 4 November 1950. This comes hot on the heels of the tenth birthday of the Human Rights Act, which we celebrated on October 2nd.
The European Convention on Human Rights, which came into force on 3 September 1953, guarantees a range of political rights and freedoms of the individual against interference by the State. Before the incorporation of the Convention, individuals in the United Kingdom could only complain of unlawful interference with their Convention rights by lodging a petition with the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg. That all changed on 2 October 2000 when the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force, allowing UK citizens to sue public bodies for breaches of their Convention rights in domestic courts.
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4 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated | The dust has hardly settled on the government’s decision to allow prisoners to vote when, with uncanny timing, the European Court of Human Rights has denied the Austrian government permission to appeal in a similar case involving prisoners’ voting rights.
The Strasbourg court has notified Austria that its request for referral of the case of Frodl v Austria to the Grand Chamber has been rejected. This is likely to have a significant impact on the UK’s implementation of the prisoner voting system, as the court in Frodl effectively ruled that the disenfranchisement of prisoners could only happen on rare occasions: namely, where a prisoner was detained as a result of the abuse of a public position or a threat to undermine the rule of law or democratic foundations. As I said in Monday’s post:
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3 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated | Manchester City Council (Respondent) v Pinnock (Appellant) [2010] UKSC 45 On appeal from the Court of Appeal [2009] EWCA Civ 852 – Read judgment / press summary
The following is based on the Supreme Court press summary. Our full case comment is to follow.
The Supreme Court has ruled that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to family life) requires that a court, when asked by a local authority to make an order for possession of a person’s home, must have the power to assess the proportionality of making the order.
The 9-strong court departed from a series of House of Lords (its predecessor’s) decisions in order to follow a strong line of European Court of Human Rights authority (summarised at para 45 of the decision). The judgment was unanimous, and follows the important recent decision of the European court in Kay and Others v United Kingdom (see our post), as well as that in Connors v UK and others. The decision represents a welcome clarification of the rights of council tenants facing eviction, following a long and tortuous line of conflicting decisions from both the UK and European courts.
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1 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated | According to the Daily Telegraph, the prime minister has conceded that the government has no choice but to comply with a five-year-old European Court of Human Rights judgment and grant prisoners voting rights in the next general election.
The Telegraph reports:
on Wednesday a representative for the Coalition will tell the Court of Appeal that the law will be changed following legal advice that the taxpayer could have to pay tens of millions of pounds in compensation.
The decision, which brings to an end six years of government attempts to avoid the issue, opens the possibility that even those facing life sentences for very serious crimes could in future shape Britain’s elections.
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1 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Campaigners are seeking to challenge the rules against gay marriages and straight civil partnerships in the UK.
If they succeed then this would resolve the somewhat jumbled present position, where gay couples can form civil partnerships – which look almost exactly like marriages but aren’t – whereas straight couples are barred from doing the same.
As I posted here, the legalisation of gay marriage may be close at hand, and campaigners have chosen Reverend Sharon Ferguson and Franka Strietzel’s impending marriage application as one of eight test-cases to push through the final barrier for same-sex couples.
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27 October 2010 by Adam Wagner
Jack Straw, the former New Labour Justice Secretary, has marked the 10th anniversary of the passing into law of the Human Rights Act with an article in the Guardian.
There are two points of interest from the article. The first is that, by my reading at least, the article runs close to an apology for the previous government’s much-criticised anti-terrorism policies. Straw, who amongst other front line roles was Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001 and Justice Secretary from 2007 to 2010, says “It is hard to exaggerate the pressures that those with responsibility encounter when a population, or part of it, is scared.” This meant that the government were under pressure and “sometimes the same people who might have been seeking greater controls on the intelligence services will want to know why we didn’t have more intelligence”.
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26 October 2010 by Adam Wagner
Cadder (Appellant) v Her Majesty’s Advocate (Respondent) (Scotland) [2010] UKSC 43 – Read judgment / press summary
The UK Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that Scottish criminal law, which allows a person to be detained and questioned by the police for up to six hours without access to a solicitor, breached the European Convention on Human Rights. The decision will not allow closed cases to be reopened but will affect cases which have not yet gone to trial.
The court ruled that whilst the Scottish High Court’s decision was entirely in line with previous domestic authority, that authority cannot survive in the light of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights’ decision in Salduz v Turkey (2008) 49 EHRR 421 and in subsequent cases. Properly interpreted, Salduz requires a detainee to have had access to a lawyer from the time of the first interview unless there are compelling reasons, in light of the particular circumstances of the case, to restrict that right.
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22 October 2010 by Adam Wagner
For your weekend reading pleasure, some of this week’s human rights news, in bite-size form. The full list of our external links can be found on the right sidebar or here.
The Inevitable Racial Effect: Counter-Terror Stop and Search Powers – Human Rights in Ireland: Rachel Heron, a PHD candidate at Durham Law School, argues that stop and search power under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 has failed to yield significant results, except one: it has provided a further example of how racially neutral laws have a seemingly inevitable racial effect. Our most recent post on stop and search, which has been the subject of a decision of the European Court of Human Rights followed by a climb-down by the UK government, is here.
Case Law: Bernard Gray v UVW – privacy injunctions and anonymity – Henry Fox – Inforrm’s Blog: Mr Justice Tugendhat has returned to the subject of anonymity in privacy actions. These cases consistently test the interrelationship between Article 8 (right to privacy) and Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
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Updated | The Select Committee on the Constitution has published its report on the Public Bodies Bill, and has expressed concern that the Bill as proposed will impose “Henry VIII” powers on the Executive. 
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