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A recent decision of the High Court concerning the Manchester Arena Inquiry highlights an interesting question about public inquiries, the role of survivors and the protections offered by the European Convention.
A succinct summary of the decision and its context is set out by Matthew Hill here. As he explains, permission was refused on a number of grounds, including that the challenge was brought late. But it is the Court’s analysis of the obligations imposed by Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”) which is of interest to this article.
Following the sad news of the first death in custody from COVID-19, a question arises: what are likely to be the issues at inquests into the deaths in custody from COVID-19?
Article 2 and the central issues
Not all deaths in custody mandate an Article 2 inquest (see R (Tainton) v HM Senior Coroner for Preston and West Lancashire [2016] EWHC 1396 (Admin); R (Tyrell) v HM Senior Coroner for County Durham and Darlington [2016] EWHC 1892 (Admin)). An Article 2-compliant inquest must be undertaken when there has been an arguable breach of the substantive obligation to protect life. When a death occurs in custody, Article 2 will be engaged if there have been any arguable failings in the care provided.
The announcement of a statutory inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal may be a major step towards uncovering the truth for those affected. But an inquiry into historical events has its own unique challenges and potential pitfalls. Before it even commences, can the Government ensure the inquiry retains the confidence of victims, families and the public?
Historical events
As Jim Duffy explains here, the scandal goes back to events of the 1970s and 80s. Around 7,500 patients suffering with haemophilia were treated within the NHS with contaminated blood products from the United States and elsewhere. Many died and many remain terminally ill. Since then, many of the victims and families have been left dissatisfied by the government’s response. Can the inquiry resolve their concerns?
Given the length of time since the events in question, it is no longer enough to narrowly examine the facts of what happened to individual victims. Time is no healer when spent in the dark. Rather, more questions require answers, emotions become fraught, and distrust is entrenched. Wider issues have come to the fore. In particular, as former-MP Andy Burnham stated in Parliament, there is a belief that there has been a “criminal cover-up on an industrial scale”. Earlier inquiries suggest there is a delicate path to tread.
TLT and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWHC 2217 (QB)
How do you quantify damages for data breaches? Is the distress caused by an accidental data breach comparable to phone-hacking? Should damages for distress be equivalent to damages for psychiatric injuries?
In October 2013, the Home Office published statistics on its family returns process, the means by which children with no right to remain in the UK are sent back to their country of origin. In addition to anonymised statistics uploaded onto the government website, the Home Office mistakenly uploaded the spreadsheet of raw data on which those statistics were based. That spreadsheet included personal details such as names and rough geographical locations of applicants for asylum or leave to remain, though not their addresses. The data was online for 13 days before being removed, but a number of IP addresses in the UK and abroad visited the relevant web page. Those concerned were notified, and brought claims under the Data Protection Act 1998 and the common law tort of misuse of private information.
As far as privacy breaches go, this appears less sinister than having the contents of your private telephone conversations splashed across the front pages. But consider the effect on these individuals at a time when their residence status is uncertain. Taking one example, an Iranian man – referred to as TLT – had applied for leave to remain with his family. They had been told that a member of their family had been detained in Iran and questioned about them. They reasonably believed that the Iranian authorities would have looked at the published details and, as a result, they feared for their lives if they were returned to Iran, their security in the UK and their extended family in Iran. A significant issue is how to quantify ‘distress’ of that nature for the purposes of claims brought.
Judgment
It was not in dispute that the inadvertent publication of the information constituted misuse of private information and a breach of the first, second and seventh principles of the Data Protection Act. Neither was it in dispute that, following the Court of Appeal decision in Vidal-Hall v Google Inc [2015] EWCA Civ 311, a claimant can recover damages for ‘distress’ for such a breach.
But Mitting J’s judgment is interesting for two reasons. First, it tackled four questions which will provide guidance for similar claims in the future. Secondly, and perhaps more controversially, he considered the quantification of damages for individual breaches in this new and developing area of law.
Can individuals who were not named in the data, but who were identifiable as family members, recover?
Simply, yes. Given that the data related to family asylum or leave to remain applications, Mitting J found that anyone with knowledge of the family would be able to identify the children and other family members from the lead applicant.
Is there a level of distress which is below the threshold for the recovery of damages?
Again, and perhaps unsurprisingly, yes: the de minimis threshold which applies in personal injury cases also applies to data breaches.
Should the courts take guidance from the damages awards in the phone-hacking cases – or, as Mitting J referred to them, “cases involving deliberate dissemination for gain by media publishers or individuals engaged in that trade, such as Max Clifford” [16]?
Without going into any detail, this idea was dismissed by Mitting J. The distress described by the claimants was comparable to a psychiatric injury suffered as a result of an actionable wrong.
Can you recover damages for the loss of the right to control private information?
Yes – a claimant can recover for the loss of control of personal and confidential information but there is no separate and additional award. Rather, the judge takes it into account when making an award for distress.
Damages awards and Gulati
Mitting J made awards ranging from £2,500 to £12,500 for each claimant, using psychiatric and psychological damage cases as guideline comparators after carefully assessing the evidence of the applicants and the distress caused by the data breaches. In Gulati v MGN [2015] EWCA Civ 1291 – one of the phone-hacking cases – the Court of Appeal affirmed the principle that damages for non-pecuniary loss for the misuse of private information should have some “reasonable relationship” with damages for personal injury. Arden LJ explained the reason for this [61]:
“if there is no such consideration or relationship, the reasonable observer may doubt the logic of the law or form the view that the law places a higher value on a person’s right to privacy than it does on (say) a person’s lifelong disability as a result of another’s negligence, and this would bring the law into disrepute and diminish public confidence in the impartiality of the legal system.”
However, this rationale also undermines the very basis on which Mitting J made awards. A claimant in a psychiatric personal injury case must demonstrate that they have suffered a recognised psychiatric injury; simple distress is not sufficient. The awards in TLT take into account the loss of control of private information, but are predominantly awards for distress. None of the individuals were shown to have suffered a recognised psychiatric injury as a consequence of the publication of their details, yet their damages awards were made by comparison to those for recognised and diagnosed psychiatric injury.
In seeking consistency, this judgment sits uncomfortably with psychiatric damage cases. Was Arden LJ’s warning prophetic? If Mitting J’s approach is followed in the future, will the reasonable observer form the view that the law places a higher value on a person’s right to privacy than a lifelong disability?
Oliver Sanders and Michael Deacon of One Crown Office Row acted for the Defendants in this case. This blog post was written independently by Gideon Barth.
Court of Appeal decides, in the absence of an application under the Dublin III regulations, asylum seekers can only succeed on article 8 ECHR grounds in “exceptional circumstances”
Four asylum seekers, namely three unaccompanied minors and one disabled adult, were in “the jungle” – the (increasingly permanent) temporary refugee and migrant camp in Calais – since October 2015. Having fled from war-torn Syria, they were trying to join their siblings in the UK. The problem was that the French system for processing asylum claims under EU rules would involve considerable delays and the evidence showed that the conditions in the camp were wholly inadequate: these children experienced physical violence and their medical needs were unmet. So they ignored the EU rules and issued a claim in the UK.
R (on the application of Public Law Project) v Lord Chancellor [2016] UKSC 39
Supreme Court bins the Government’s residence test for legal aid as ultra vires: just as the latest non-lawyer assumes the role of Lord Chancellor, the reforms made by the first non-lawyer to assume that role continue to fade away.
In April 2013, the Government announced it would introduce a residence test for civil legal aid funding under the provisions of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (“LASPO”) 2012. If you were not lawfully resident in the UK (or a Crown Dependency or British Overseas Territory) at the time of your application for legal aid, or for the last 12 months, you would not be eligible for legal aid.
The Public Law Project (“PLP”) challenged this residence test on two grounds: (i) the secondary legislation was ultra vires; and, (ii) the test was unjustifiably discriminatory, and has now been successful before the Supreme Court in doing so.
After a topsy-turvy trip through the courts, the case ended up before the Supreme Court who, in an apparently unprecedented step, announced it had decided the case after day one of the two-day hearing, and did not need to hear the discrimination issue. The judgment, written by Lord Neuberger, with whom the other six justices agreed, has now been handed down.
A child (SM) who was adopted in Algeria by a French couple living in the UK was refused an application for a right of entry as a family member. Having been overturned in the Upper Tribunal, the Entry Clearance Officer (ECO) successfully appealed to the Court of Appeal. SM was not, the court held, a family member of Mr M. A keen human rights observer might think this was an apparent infringement of article 8 ECHR (the right to family life). Continue reading →
How far are the courts willing to go to intervene in matters of foreign affairs in order to protect human rights? Spoiler: they’re not. Continue reading →
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