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On 5 April 2023 the High Court handed down judgment in Adil v General Medical Council [2023] EWHC 797 (Admin). The case examined the extent to which a professional regulator can interfere with the right to freedom of expression of an individual subject to its regulation, as well as the circumstances in which the Court should accept challenges to decisions made by regulators in the performance of their duties. It is the first case decided by the High Court concerning anti-vaccination statements made by a doctor in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the actions of the General Medical Council (“GMC”) in response.
Factual Background
Mr Adil is a consultant colorectal surgeon. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, he posted multiple videos on social media in which he, amongst other things, made statements to the effect that:
COVID-19 did not exist;
the pandemic was a conspiracy brought about by the United Kingdom, Israel and America;
the pandemic was a scam which was being manipulated for the benefit of Bill Gates and pharmaceutical companies;
Bill Gates infected the entire world with COVID-19 in order to sell vaccines; and
COVID-19 vaccines would be given to everyone, by force if necessary, and could potentially contain microchips that affect the human body.
The Court of Appeal dismissed a set of claims for psychiatric injury on the basis of prior binding authority, but indicated that the issue is suitable for consideration by the Supreme Court.
Background
The judgment concerns three linked appeals regarding the circumstances in which relative(s) of somebody injured or killed by alleged clinical negligence (the secondary victim(s)) can claim damages in respect of a psychiatric disorder caused by having witnessed the death or suffering of their loved one (the primary victim).
For a defendant to be liable for a secondary victim’s psychiatric illness, the claimant needs to show the necessary legal proximity between themselves and the defendant. In Alcock v Chief Constable of the South Yorkshire Police [1992] 1 AC 310, Lord Oliver identified five elements which form the essential requirements of such a relationship:
the secondary victim is in a marital/parental relationship with the primary victim;
the psychiatric illness for which damages are claimed arises from a sudden and unexpected shock to the secondary victim’s nervous system;
the secondary victim was personally present at the scene of the accident or was in more or less the immediate vicinity and witnessed the aftermath shortly afterwards;
the psychiatric illness arose from witnessing the death of, extreme danger to, or injury and discomfort suffered by the primary victim; and
there was not only an element of physical proximity to the event but a close temporal connection between the event and the secondary victim’s perception of it.
These elements were applied in Crystal Taylor v A. Novo (UK) Ltd [2013] EWCA Civ 194. The secondary victim claim of a daughter who witnessed her mother’s death three weeks after an accident at work in which negligently stacked racking boards fell on her failed despite her death having been caused by the accident. The Court of Appeal held that as she was not present at the accident, she lacked the necessary legal proximity.
Image: Screenshot of the Home Office’s twitter feed (now deleted).
It was not an overly exerting bank holiday weekend for the author of this week’s round-up. The influence of the summer holiday appears to have resulted in relatively few judgments from the senior courts, with particularly little in the field of human rights law. However, the week was not wholly without incident…
In response to the growing numbers of migrants seeking to cross the English Channel in small boats, the Home Office tweeted a short video explaining that “current return regulations… (allow) activist lawyers to delay and disrupt returns”. The video was helpfully illustrated with little pictures of planes taking off from the English coast bound for Europe, although why the Home Office would seek to return migrants to Europe following the UK’s withdrawal from the Dublin Regulations was unclear.
In the interests of fairness, despite being removed from the Home Office’s twitter feed following numerous complaints, the video can still be viewed here. Readers will without doubt form their own opinions. It is submitted however, that the following statements are uncontroversial:
British SAS soldiers in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Credit: The Guardian
The final week of the legal term was set against the backdrop of new restrictions on the ability of different households to meet across a large part of northern England. The main restriction takes the form of a prohibition on individuals entering households other than their own to visit friends and family. As has become traditional over the last few months, the guidance was announced with a promise to bring forth new laws in the future, to confer actual powers of enforcement.
In addition, many of the week’s dominant news stories carried a prominent legal flavour:
It has been a quiet week in the courts from a human rights perspective. The Supreme Court gave judgment on a divorce case and a social security fraud, and whilst the Court of Appeal and High Court were more forthcoming in terms of the number of decisions made, family law and commercial cases dominated. Legal buffs may however be interested to note Scales v Motor Insurers’ Bureau [2020] EWHC 1747 (QB), in which the High Court applied Spanish law in a road traffic accident case, whilst celebrity watchers and students revising for their civil litigation exams may appreciate seeing how the court applied the test from Denton to grant Johnny Christopher Depp II relief from sanctions (who knew there was a Johnny Christopher Depp I?) – Depp v News Group Newspapers Ltd & Ors [2020] EWHC 1734 (QB).
A quiet week in the courts did not however extend to a quiet week in the news…
Protesters in Los Angeles on Saturday. Credit: The Guardian.
The usual purpose of these round ups is to try and avoid repeating the headline news of the previous week whilst instead summarising the key legal developments. There are some weeks, however, in which events tend to put the judgments of the Court of Appeal into the shade.
The death of George Floyd on May 25th not only placed concerns about policing attitudes and deaths in custody onto the front pages, but also shone a light on to wider systemic racism. Protests in response were ongoing as of Sunday, both in the USA and around the world. The use of force by police in the aftermath of demonstrations has been widely reported upon, particularly in the United States, where the extent of force deployed against the British media led to a formal raising of the matter by the British embassy in Washington. Continue reading →
The bandstand on Clapham Common, fenced off while people use the area for daily exercise. Photograph: Guy Bell/REX/Shutterstock. Credit: The Guardian.
Needless to say, the impact of Covid-19 dominated all aspects of life over the past seven days. Given that the week saw the Prime Minister admitted to intensive care with the virus before ultimately being discharged home, this is unlikely to be much of a revelation. The UK Human Rights Blog has published many articles looking in detail at some of the legal challenges posed by Covid-19 and the Government’s response to the pandemic. Of note this week:
Dominic Ruck Keene looks at potential legal challenges to Government policy in respect of coronavirus – here;
Robert Craig considers whether the Coronavirus Regulations might be ultra vires – here;
Darragh Coffey explores the provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020 – here;
Rosalind English reviews a paper published by the Society of Conservative Lawyers on the consequences of coronavirus for the traditional principle of rule of law – here;
The Royal College of Nurses issued guidance to its members advising them that they could “as a last resort” refuse to treat patients suffering from Covid-19 if they are not given adequate personal protective equipment; and
Police came under increased scrutiny with regards to the exercise of their powers to enforce social distancing measures. The Chief Constable of Northamptonshire had to clarify statements that suggested officers may resort to checking the trolleys of grocery shoppers to determine if items purchased were “essential” or not.
Thomas Hayes is a specialist registrar in vascular surgery and forthcoming pupil at 1 Crown Office Row
As teased earlier, the Covid-19 pandemic gives rise to such a volume of material as to justify a slightly more detailed examination of its consequences. In time, the response of governments across the globe to the disease will no doubt be the subject of detailed study by academics across the fields of biology, history and law. For the time being, however, blog readers will have to tolerate the following words of speculation, much of which will probably suffer the cruel fate of being shown to be out of date and/or inaccurate within hours of publication…
The government has announced its intention to bring before Parliament this week emergency laws to help control the outbreak. Whilst at the time of writing, such draft legislation had not been published, press reports suggested it would include new powers to allow the police to detain those breaking quarantine measures. Where the police might take such recalcitrant citizens is not known, however the prospect of detaining in close proximity those suspected of carrying the highly infectious airborne disease presumably fills neither the police nor public health officials with much joy…
The worsening of the Covid-19 pandemic seemed to relegate all other business to a position of relative insignificance this week. Undoubtedly the human, economic and social cost of the outbreak is already severe, with its impact increasingly felt across the globe. However, perhaps more than any other conceivable event, the progression of the disease casts a spotlight on numerous areas of legal controversy. It is hard to recall a post-war phenomenon which so frequently pits the rights and interests of individuals against those of broader society (more here). Indeed, the potential material for upcoming pupillage interview questions seems virtually inexhaustible, assuming that they too don’t fall victim to social distancing measures.
I will be posting a longer article on Covid-19 later today.
Demonstrators protest government deportation flights outside Downing Street. Credit: The Guardian.
The last week provided no shortage of legal controversy, and posed the author of this blog considerable difficulty when trying to identify which developments deserved the most prominence. In analysing this avalanche of legal news, however, certain key themes started to develop.
Protestors demonstrate outside the Famagusta district court in Paralimni, Cyprus, at the trial of a 19-year old girl convicted of public mischief after withdrawing a rape allegation in contested circumstances. Credit: The Guardian.
A quick look at the “recent decisions” page of the British and Irish Legal Information Institute’s (BAILII) website did not, at first glance, give this author much cause for optimism in the preparation of this blog. However, a more careful reflection on the week’s events provided a plethora of material to consider, notwithstanding the absence of any recent decisions from the Supreme Court or civil Court of Appeal.
When the domestic courts go on leave, it falls to their European counterparts to pick up the slack and churn out judgments to help keep us occupied. It was with surprise however, that a hopeful scroll through the week’s European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decisions revealed not only the familiar names paying a visit to Strasbourg (ahem, Russia), but also that our own United Kingdom had put in an appearance at Europe’s legal naughty corner. Some further creative searching on BAILII revealed that the UK paid nine visits to the ECtHR last year, compared to Russia’s one-hundred and seventy-three.
In Yam v United Kingdom [2020] ECHR 41, a former MI6 informant and Chinese dissident failed in his attempt to have the ECtHR rule that his 2009 murder trial had been prejudiced by virtue of parts of it being held in camera, rather than in public. The applicant had relied upon the provisions of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, specifically 6(1) and 6(3)(d):
“1. In the determination of … any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing … [T]he press and public may be excluded from all or part of the trial in the interests of morals, public order or national security in a democratic society, where the interests of juveniles or the protection of the private life of the parties so require, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice.
3. Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights:
(d) to examine or have examined witnesses against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him;”
The court held however that these provisions did not prohibit domestic courts from derogating from public hearings where special circumstances justified it. The measures adopted during his trial had met the requirement of necessity. Furthermore, the ECtHR considered itself poorly equipped to challenge national authorities’ judgement when assessing national security concerns. The court held that the trial judge had carefully balanced the need for openness against the national security interests at stake, and in so doing, had limited the private aspects of the trial to the minimum possible. Through such an analysis, he had satisfied himself that a fair trial was still possible. Consequently, there was no thus disadvantage to the applicant, who had suffered no breach of his Article 6 rights.
In other international developments, lawyers acting for a British 19-year-old in Cyprus filed an appeal against her suspended sentence for public mischief and fabricating an “imaginary crime”. The woman involved had initially made accusations of gang-rape against 12 Israeli youths before retracting her accusation in circumstances now disputed. Her defence have suggested that not only was she suffering from PTSD at the time her claims were withdrawn, but also that she was in fear for her life. The signed confession was in Greek rather than English and made after several hours of unrecorded questioning by detectives in the absence of a lawyer. Her legal team seek to have her conviction overturned.
Returning to purely domestic considerations, the week also saw the announcement that judicial sentencing remarks in high profile cases will in future be broadcast on television from Crown Courts. The move was lauded by broadcasters and the Lord Chief Justice as promoting transparency and as an aid to public understanding of the criminal justice system.
The move was not however uncontroversial. Concerns were raised by the Bar Council of England and Wales that the broadcast of sentencing remarks in the absence of fuller details of the trial could lead to a failure on behalf of viewers to appreciate why a particular sentence has been passed. They expressed anxiety that the audience will be deprived of relevant context, such as mitigation. Further fears included that increased disclosure of judges to the public eye could expose them to undue attack and criticism in circumstances where a given sentence proves unpopular. However regardless of the merits, the development was successful in affording current BBC radio 4 listeners one of the funnier moments so far of 2020, when Evan Davis introduced American lawyer Robert Shapiro to debate the topic with Lord Sumption, only to find that they had inadvertently invited an American political adviser with the same name to the PM show instead (listen here).
The week also saw:
The Mail of Sunday file its defence at the High Court on Tuesday in response to a claim brought by the Duchess of Sussex for breach of copyright, invasion of privacy and misuse of personal data. The case concerns excerpts of correspondence between the Duchess and her father published by the newspaper.
The ECHR deliver judgment in favour of nine Russians detained pending trial for as long as 7 years, some of whom remain incarcerated, in circumstances characterised by fragile reasoning of the courts and an absence of due process – DIGAY AND OTHERS v. RUSSIA [2020] ECHR 54.
The entire Russian government resign in a move thought likely to pave the way for amendments to the country’s constitution favourable to current leader Vladimir Putin. The proposed reforms would strengthen the role of the Prime Minister and weaken that of the President. Mr Putin is constitutionally barred from standing again for the presidency but could transition into one of the roles in which the proposed constitutional changes are likely to vest more power. The reforms would also restrict the applicability of international law in Russia to circumstances where it did not contradict the constitution or restrict people’s rights and freedoms, a measure framed as one to increase national sovereignty.
The High Court refuse permission to appeal in a case brought by a soldier, who contracted Q-fever whilst serving in Afghanistan, against the Ministry of Defence (MOD). The claimant soldier had alleged failings on behalf of the MOD in not providing him with adequate chemoprophylaxis to protect him from the disease – Bass v Ministry of Defence [2020] EWHC 36 (QB).
This week sees Baroness Hale sitting for the final time as President of the Supreme Court. Photo credit: The Guardian.
A brief delay to the publication of this article has helpfully afforded this blogger the opportunity to move beyond the political events of last Thursday and instead focus on much more interesting legal matters (more on those later).
However, it would be remiss not to recognise the consequences of last week’s election, which saw the Prime Minister return newly empowered by a sizeable Conservative majority. At the time of writing, proposals were being made to put the legislation required to withdraw from the European Union back to MPs as early as this Friday.
Sneaking in at page 17 of the Conservative manifesto (one page after a commitment to extend the water rebate in the South West) came the party’s offering on law and order. This included commitments to increase the number of police, enhance the use of “fair and proportionate” stop and search, as well as promote longer sentences and the greater use of electronic tags. The manifesto was however silent on some matters which have drawn attention of late, including court closures, legal aid cuts, and previous suggestions from ministers that the Human Rights Act might be amended to protect soldiers from prosecution for acts performed during their time in service. With such a significant majority however, the Government will be in a position to pursue its chosen agenda with enthusiasm, and so these and other mooted at policies, such as reform of the judicial review process, may not be as fanciful as previously thought.
Moving gratefully on from politics, today saw the first day in the case of XX v Whittington Hospital NHS Trust (appealing [2018] EWCA Civ 2832), which also serves as Baroness Hale’s final case as President of the Supreme Court before her replacement on January 11thby Lord Reed. The case provides an interesting example of a scenario in which factual matters combined with absent or inadequate law require the court to consider matters of a deeply public policy nature. Continue reading →
An Extinction Rebellion protester is removed by police in central London. Credit: The Guardian.
As the general election campaign accelerated this week, the political fall out from the publication of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry contributed to some awkward headlines for both politicians and lawmakers. However, this was by no means the only legal news of the week…
The case turned on the lawfulness of the exercise of powers by the police under section 14(1) of the Public Order Act 1986 to ban XR’s protests earlier this month.
The court ruled that in exercising section 14 powers, the police were required to identify a location to be covered by the powers conferred by the Act. Separate gatherings, separated both in time and by many miles, even if co-ordinated under the umbrella of one body, were not held to be one public assembly within the meaning of section 14(1). Consequently, the decision of the police to impose the condition across a wide area of London for several days was unlawful, being outwith the powers conferred by section 14(1).
Harry Dunn’s family after meeting with the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, last week. Photograph: Credit: The Guardian, Peter Summers/Getty Images.
The usually obscure concept of diplomatic immunity came to the fore this week after it emerged that the wife of an American diplomat was wanted for questioning in connection with the death of a motorcyclist in Northamptonshire. Anne Sacoolas was spoken to by police after a collision with Harry Dunn in which he was killed whilst riding his motorbike, prior to her return to the United States.
Article 31 of the 1961 Vienna Convention grants immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving state to diplomats, a feature extended to their family members by article 37. However, both the United Kingdom and the United States were this weekend reported as having agreed that diplomatic immunity was no longer “pertinent” in the case of Mrs Sacoolas. This raised the possibility of the UK seeking her extradition, despite President Trump being photographed this week with a briefing card stating that she would not be returning to Britain.
Meanwhile, the country’s attention turned back towards Brexit, with the week ahead promising to, in the Prime Minister’s words, be “do or die” for the prospects of a negotiated deal. At the beginning of the week it was widely reported that talks had faltered, with Downing St leaks suggesting a deal was “essentially impossible”. However, the mood surrounding negotiations changed significantly on Thursday, with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar describing the emergence of a “pathway” to a deal following his meeting with Boris Johnson. Continue reading →
Flags flutter outside Parliament. Credit: The Guardian.
Very few weeks have given the function of the legal system and the role of the courts as much prominence, nor exposed them to as much scrutiny, as the last week. The decision of the Prime Minster to prorogue Parliament, followed by the granting of royal assent to legislation which would require him to seek an extension to the Article 50 process for exiting the European Union, has launched into the public consciousness areas of constitutional law previously the domain only of law students cramming for exams, public law lawyers and academics in tweed blazers. In what at times made Newsnight look like an hour-long revision seminar for Graduate Diploma in Law students, unfashionable concepts such as justiciability, judicial review and the rule of law took centre stage, framed by the context of Brexit.
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