The Weekly Round Up: Sussex ‘Closed Mind’ Quashed, Skinner Article 10 Acquittal, and the Palestine Action Appeal Heard
5 May 2026
4 May 2026 by Harry Camp
In the News
Court of Appeal hears Palestine Action proscription challenge
From Tuesday to Thursday, the Court of Appeal heard the Home Secretary’s appeal against the Divisional Court’s ruling in R (Ammori) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWHC 292 (Admin) regarding the proscription of Palestine Action under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Two days of open hearings were followed by a closed hearing on 30 April. Judgment was reserved.
The Divisional Court below (whose decision was covered on this blog) had held the proscription unlawful on two grounds: first, that the Home Secretary had failed to follow her own published proscription policy; and second, the proscription was a disproportionate interference with the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly under Articles 10 and 11 ECHR.
The Home Secretary now appeals both of those findings. Ms Ammori cross-appeals (on a rolled-up application) on the two grounds dismissed below: first, that the Home Secretary acted unlawfully in failing, before laying the Order, to give Palestine Action the opportunity to make representations; and second, in proscribing in a manner that was discriminatory contrary to Article 14 ECHR. The proceedings represent the most consequential test of the proscription regime in years: the Court below was told that, by November 2025, over 2,000 people had been arrested under section 13 of the 2000 Act for holding signs reading “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”; of those, approximately 700 had been charged, and none yet convicted.
The Court of Appeal’s reserved judgment will shape both the lawfulness of the Home Secretary’s decision and the operational practice of the criminal courts.
Northern Ireland Troubles Bill: Commons carry-over motion
On Monday, the Commons passed a carry-over motion in respect of the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, ensuring that the legislation will not fall on prorogation and may continue into the new session.
The Bill, introduced by the Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn on 14 October 2025 and given Second Reading on 18 November 2025, would repeal and replace the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, much of which was disapplied, at first instance, by Colton J in Re Dillon [2024] NIKB 11.
The Bill removes the conditional-immunity scheme, restores the right to bring civil claims for Troubles-related conduct, and reconstitutes the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery as a ‘Legacy Commission’ with a statutory oversight board, two Co-Directors of Investigations, a Victims and Survivors Advisory Group and conflict-of-interest safeguards. It implements the UK-Ireland Joint Framework on the Legacy of the Troubles, announced in September 2025.
The legislative process now runs in tandem with the Supreme Court’s pending judgment in the linked appeals of Martina Dillon, John McEvoy, Brigid Hughes and Lynda McManus, expected to be handed down on 7 May 2026. The Government’s appeal challenges the Court of Appeal of Northern Ireland’s ruling that, first, Colton J was entitled to disapply provisions of the 2023 Act for incompatibility with Article 2(1) of the Windsor Framework; and second, the ICRIR could not, in its present form, comply with Articles 2 and 3 ECHR.
The respondents’ cross-appeal in turn challenges the Court of Appeal’s departure from Colton J’s further disapplication of provisions of the 2023 Act for breach of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Snowden LJ to the Supreme Court
On Thursday, His Majesty The King approved the appointment of Lord Justice Snowden as a Justice of the UK Supreme Court. Sir Richard Snowden, a chancery specialist promoted to the Court of Appeal in October 2021, was Vice-Chancellor of the County Palatine of Lancaster and Supervising Judge of the Business and Property Courts for the Northern and North-Eastern Circuits, as well as Lead Judge for International Relations from March 2025. He will be sworn in on 15 June 2026, replacing Lord Richards of Camberwell on his retirement.
Draft HRA Remedial Order laid
On Tuesday, the Government laid the Draft Human Rights Act 1998 (Remedial) Order 2026, accompanied by the Government’s response to the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ report of 27 October 2025.
The Order amends section 9(3) of the Human Rights Act 1998 to add a further exception to the prohibition on damages for judicial acts done in good faith, allowing damages to be awarded where a judicial act is incompatible with Article 8 ECHR by reason of a procedural defect amounting to a breach of the requirements of procedural fairness.
The Order responds to the ECtHR’s judgment in SW v United Kingdom (Application no. 87/18, 22 June 2021), in which the Court found violations of Articles 8 and 13 ECHR arising from a Family Court judge’s adverse findings of fact made against a non-party social-worker witness without procedural protections, the Article 13 violation flowing from the inability under section 9(3) HRA to recover damages. The amendments will apply retrospectively as well as prospectively.
The Order now proceeds to debate under the affirmative-resolution procedure in Schedule 2 to the Human Rights Act 1998.
In the Courts
Sussex v Office for Students: a regulator with a ‘closed mind’
On Wednesday, the High Court quashed the Office for Students’ decision that the University of Sussex breached its registration conditions, and the £585,000 monetary penalty imposed on it. The case is The University of Sussex v The Office for Students [2026] EWHC 984 (Admin). The Free Speech Union intervened, contending – in support of the OfS’s position – that no proportionality assessment was required.
The University challenged the OfS’s Final Decision of 27 March 2025, which had held it in breach of registration conditions E1 (governing documents to uphold the public-interest governance principles, including freedom of speech and academic freedom) and E2(i) (governance arrangements) by reference to the 2018, 2022 and 2023 versions of the University’s Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement (‘TNBEPS’). The investigation was prompted by the October 2021 protests targeting Professor Kathleen Stock. Lieven J was emphatic that the Court was “not adjudicating on any issues relating to the events surrounding Professor Stock” ([17]).
The University’s grounds succeeded almost entirely across the board.
First, the OfS had no jurisdiction to find a breach of condition E1, because the TNBEPS was not a “governing document” within the meaning of section 14(1) of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017: the ordinary and natural meaning of the phrase, supported by the legislative history, points to a narrow construction capturing instruments that “had some governing effect, rather than simply setting out a policy” ([150]).
Secondly, the OfS had misdirected itself on the meaning of “freedom of speech within the law”: it had treated any restriction on lawful speech as a breach despite the regulator’s own Regulatory Advice 24 acknowledging that lawful speech may, in appropriate circumstances, be lawfully restricted, and had failed to read the TNBEPS alongside the University’s Freedom of Speech Code of Practice ([246]).
Thirdly, the OfS had misdirected itself on academic freedom, wrongly treating the prospect of disciplinary proceedings as in itself jeopardising academic posts ([266]).
Fourthly, although the OfS did have jurisdiction in respect of condition E2(i) – which encroaches on the visitorial jurisdiction (a jurisdiction of ecclesiastical origin) of fourteen universities and colleges, including Sussex – it had been wrong in law not to consider whether the breaches had been remedied by the time of the Final Decision ([305]).
The Court held that the entire Final Decision was “vitiated by bias” ([455]) because the OfS had approached its decision-making “with a closed mind” and had unlawfully predetermined the outcome. The Court traced the institutional approach from the OfS Board’s resolution on 23 September 2021 to “[p]roactively seek cases to pursue using [their] investigatory powers” ([366]); the then Chief Executive Susan Lapworth’s witness-statement evidence that initiating investigatory work on a free-speech case would send “a strong signal” to the sector ([367]); the OfS’s settlement-stage approach (assuming a breach before the Provisional Decision was issued) ([433]); and the OfS’s writing to other higher education providers using identical Advance HE template policies only after the Final Decision had been published, in order to highlight the breach and the fine ([435]).
Notably, the Court rejected allegations of personal apparent bias against Dr Arif Ahmed, the OfS’s Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom: he had not been the decision-maker and had joined the investigation team only after the Provisional Decision was issued ([420]-[426]). The unlawfulness lay with the institution, not the individual.
The OfS’s interim chief executive said the regulator would “carefully consider the consequences of the judgment before deciding on next steps”; the Free Speech Union described the decision as “disappointing”. The judgment is an unusually pointed criticism of a regulator’s procedural fairness, with sweeping consequences for OfS enforcement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 regime. As recently confirmed by the Government, the Act’s substantive enforcement machinery – the complaints scheme and the new condition of registration – will not commence until 1 September 2026 and 1 April 2027 respectively.
R v Skinner: Crown Court allows Articles 9 and 10 appeal
A High Court judge sitting in the Crown Court at Bournemouth has quashed the conviction of an 80-year-old appellant under section 127(1) of the Communications Act 2003, holding that conviction would be a disproportionate interference with his rights under Articles 9 and 10 ECHR. The case is R v Skinner (Case Ref: 55CH0180823, Saini J sitting with Mr N. Butler JP and Mr J. Griffin JP, hearing 23 April 2026, oral judgment 24 April 2026, on appeal from Poole Magistrates’ Court).
The appellant, Mr David Skinner, had been convicted at Poole Magistrates’ Court on 1 May 2024 of two offences under section 127(1) and ordered to pay fines, compensation orders to the recipients, prosecution costs and a victim surcharge. The communications were two identical letters, attached as documents to emails sent on 28 April 2023, addressed to Temporary Inspector Fern Graham of Dorset Police and to the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (‘PCC’) for Dorset, David Sidwick: the latter opened by an employee in the PCC’s office, Ms Yvonne Fenwick.
The letters, entitled “Reporting mass murder in Ophir Road”, contained graphic photographs of aborted foetuses interleaved with photographs of victims of Nazi concentration camps, set in the context of Mr Skinner’s strenuous opposition to the abortion-clinic public spaces protection order (“buffer zone”) imposed in October 2022 around the BPAS clinic on Ophir Road, Bournemouth. The Court accepted that the elements of section 127(1) were technically made out: the images were “grossly offensive”, and Mr Skinner himself accepted in evidence that they were so. The decisive question was whether conviction was a proportionate interference with Convention rights.
Applying the principles set out in Cobban & Borders v Director of Public Prosecutions [2024] EWHC 1908 (Admin) at [111] (reproduced at [17] of the present judgment), and focusing on the fourth limb of the Bank Mellat proportionality test, the Court held that the Crown had not met the demanding standard required to justify a conviction restricting political speech ([33]-[34]). Three reasons were given. First, the letters were political speech entitled to the highest form of Article 10 protection ([35]). Second, images – however shocking – may legitimately be used to make political points: the Court found persuasive Mr Skinner’s own evidential analogies of the open-casket photographs of Emmett Till during the US 1950s civil rights movement and the use of distressing medical images on cigarette packets ([36]). Third, the intended recipients were public officials: Inspector Fern “can be expected to have a higher tolerance”, the PCC was “plainly a political actor”, and as to Ms Fenwick, Mr Skinner had “no way of knowing that anyone other than the PCC would open this correspondence” and should not be held responsible for an administrator opening it ([37]).
The Court distinguished Connolly v DPP [2007] EWHC 237 (Admin), in which a section 1 Malicious Communications Act 1988 conviction had been upheld in respect of letters with similar imagery sent to pharmacy staff, those recipients having no role in the public debate on abortion. The present case is, by contrast, important Article 10 authority for protest correspondence with public-official recipients, and is being treated as a meaningful rebuke to the use of communications offences in protest contexts. It takes its place alongside the recent decision in DPP v Coskun [2026] EWHC 427 (Admin), referred to at [35] of the present judgment, in shaping the Article 10 jurisprudence on offensive expression in political and religious contexts.
Strasbourg: Article 8 violation in Kanev v Bulgaria; upcoming Yasak v Türkiye judgment
On Tuesday, the ECtHR held, by 5 votes to 2, that Bulgaria violated Article 8 ECHR in respect of the lack of effective oversight of personal data processed by its State Agency for National Security (“SANS”). The case is Kanev and Bulgarian Helsinki Committee v Bulgaria (45864/22, judgment of 28 April 2026, Third Section).
The first applicant – Mr Krasimir Kanev, chair of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee – sought to ascertain in 2021 whether SANS had gathered intelligence on him or the Committee, after the then caretaker Minister of Internal Affairs had publicly stated that SANS had conducted secret surveillance of civil-society activists during the 2020-21 protests. SANS refused to disclose; Mr Kanev’s domestic challenges failed.
The Chamber held that Bulgarian law contained insufficiently clear rules and effective safeguards governing SANS’s processing of personal data. None of the potential oversight mechanisms (the Commission for the Protection of Personal Data; reporting to Parliament or to government) appeared in practice to scrutinise how SANS processed operational data. The Court directed Bulgaria to bring its law into conformity with the Convention, in continuation of the line of authority running from Association for European Integration and Human Rights and Ekimdzhiev v Bulgaria (62540/00, 28 June 2007), through Ekimdzhiev and Others v Bulgaria (70078/12, 11 January 2022), and most recently Green Alliance v Bulgaria (6580/22, 17 February 2026). A modest sum was awarded by way of just satisfaction.
Kanev is a notable restatement of the principle that the absence of effective independent oversight is fatal to the ‘quality of law’ requirement under Article 8. It is also an important case for practitioners working on the UK Investigatory Powers regime, intelligence-services subject access, and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.
Additionally, the Grand Chamber will hand down its judgment in Yasak v Türkiye (17389/20) on Tuesday 5 May 2026: a follow-on to Yalçınkaya v Türkiye on the foreseeability of liability under Article 7 for membership of FETÖ/PDY, an armed terrorist organisation.
On the UKHRB
Rosalind English speaks with Edie Bowles of the Animal Law Foundation and Veronica Wiggins (Ad-Free Cities and Badvertising) about consumer-protection enforcement around misleading representations of farm-animal welfare, and the recent challenge to the labelling of Scottish farmed salmon, in Episode 237 of Law Pod UK: “Humane-washing” (28 April 2026).
Recent comments