Category: BLOG POSTS
10 August 2015 by Hannah Lynes
Photo credit: The Guardian
In the news
The Howard League for Penal Reform has called for a review of the “unfair and unrealistic” Criminal Courts Charge, which “ penalises the poor and encourages the innocent to plead guilty”. The mandatory charge of up to £1,200 is imposed on those who admit committing minor misdemeanours, regardless of their circumstances.
The charity has compiled a list of cases where heavy financial charges have been demanded of people convicted of low-level offences. These include the case of a 38-year-old homeless man who admitted persistently begging in Oxford, and breaching an Asbo prohibiting him from sitting within 10 metres of a cash machine. He was jailed for 30 days and ordered to pay a £150 criminal courts charge.
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6 August 2015 by Guest Contributor
Kiani v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 776 (21 July 2015) – read judgment
In my last post on UKHRB I commented on developments in UK, ECHR and EU jurisprudence relating to procedural fairness in the context of national security.
The developments in this recent case offer some further interesting thoughts on the topic. To explain the case, and put its ramifications in a broader context, this post will be divided into three parts. In the first I outline my original argument as set out in the earlier post. The second will explain the case itself. The third will offer five brief comments on the broader issues the cases touches upon.
In brief, the court in Kiani followed Tariq and held that AF-type disclosure (see below) was not a universal requirement of fairness; the interests of justice could require a lower standard of disclosure without violating the absolute right to a fair hearing.
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5 August 2015 by Dominic Ruck Keene
Serdar Mohammed and Others v Secretary of State for Defence [2015] EWCA Civ 843 – read judgment
The Court of Appeal has held that UK armed forces breached both Afghan law and Article 5 of the ECHR by detaining a suspected Taliban commander for longer than the 96 hours permitted by ISAF policy.
The MOD was therefore potentially liable at both public and private law for the failures to make arrangements for extended detention and to put in place such procedural safeguards as were required by international human rights law. Moreover, the defence of ‘act of state’ was not available against either the public or private law claims.
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4 August 2015 by Rosalind English
Kent & others v Arun District Council and others [2015] EWHC 2295 – read judgment
Iain O’Donnell of 1COR acted for the Council in this case: he played no part in the writing of this post.
This case concerned the application of the law in relation to future conduct, in particular, the role of the judicial review procedure in determining what precisely is meant by the prohibition on the selling of live animals under the Pet Animals Act 1951.
This is a detailed statutory provision inspired by welfare and conservation concerns. It has a complicated legislative history, and essentially the judge hearing the application was being asked to decide whether certain future activities might be caught by it.
For the record, the statute was introduced to protect the welfare of animals sold as pets. It requires any person keeping a pet shop to be licensed by the local council, which will only license such a business if they are satisfied as to the suitability of the accommodation, nutrition and safety of the animals concerned. Section 2 bans the selling of animals in the street, including on barrows and markets.
Councils are responsible for enforcing the law in this area.
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3 August 2015 by David Hart KC
R (Tigere) v. Secretary of State for Business [2015] UKSC 57, 29 July 2015 read judgment here
Ms Tigere is 20. She arrived in the UK from Zambia when she was 6. She did very well at school. In 2013, she applied for a student loan to fund a university place.
The current English system does not allow her to apply for a loan, because of her immigration status. In particular, she did not
(1) have Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) here (and so did not comply with the “settlement rule”), and
(2) have three years of “lawful” ordinary residence here (so did not comply with “the residence rule”).
In a very close run thing, the Supreme Court decided that the application of the settlement rule was incompatible with her Convention rights, under Article 2 of the First Protocol and/or Article 14. By contrast, the residence rule was not incompatible with her rights.
The result was 3-2, and Lord Hughes (of the majority) disagreed with important elements of the reasoning of Lady Hale and Lord Kerr who found for Ms Tigere.
The case is a perfect example of the difficulties of deciding human rights cases in the context of social benefits, as we shall see.
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3 August 2015 by acwessely
In the news:
President Obama made a historic trip to Kenya this week, and called upon African states to abandon anti-gay discrimination (watch the full speech here). In a speech welcomed by Human Rights Campaign, he urged Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta to stop treating people differently based on their sexuality, comparing the effects of this to racial segregation in early 20th century America.
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31 July 2015 by Guest Contributor
O’Connell & anor v the Turf Club [2015] IESC 57 – read judgment
This recent judgment of the Irish Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether the decisions of a sport’s organising body should be amenable to judicial review. This is an issue of some vintage and vexation in this jurisdiction’s legal debate, that provides a useful backdrop against which to ask what exactly it is that makes a decision-making duty or power ‘public’.
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31 July 2015 by Adam Wagner
Here at the UK Human Rights Blog, we love justice, and we also love JUSTICE. Let’s all go to their annual conference, 12 October 2015. All details here and below.
One of the highlights of the human rights lawyer’s calendar, the JUSTICE Annual Human Rights Conference offers a key opportunity to update your legal knowledge and gain valuable insight into the human rights issues of the year.
The Rt. Hon. Sir Brian Leveson and Natalie Lieven QC will be joining us as our keynote speakers and the programme for this year’s event will focus on the challenges facing practitioners and the wider public policy debate on human rights law in the UK.
Morning Breakout Sessions:
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31 July 2015 by Adam Wagner
A quick note to say RightsInfo is having a summer party on 13 August. If you want an invite, sign up to the newsletter here, the invitations will be going out at midday today. It’s going to be great, sun guaranteed. We will be also launching an exciting new project… wait and see!
24 July 2015 by Thomas Raine
Beggs v Scottish Ministers [2015] CSOH 98, 21st July 2015 – read judgment
The Court of Session’s first instance chamber – the Outer House – has held that the way in which the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) handled a prisoner’s correspondence breached Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The petitioner, William Beggs, was a prisoner at HMP Glenochil until March 2013 and thereafter at HMP Edinburgh. In 2001 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1999 murder of 18 year-old Barry Wallace, whose dismembered body parts Beggs disposed of in Loch Lomond.
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24 July 2015 by Laura Profumo
Laura Profumo delivers the latest human rights happenings.
In the News:
Right to die campaigners have sustained yet another setback, following the judgment of R (AM) v General Medical Council last week.
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22 July 2015 by Isabel McArdle
R (o.t.a A.M) v. General Medical Council [2015] EWHC 2096 (Admin) Read the full judgment here
The High Court has rejected the argument made by “Martin”, a man with locked-in syndrome who is profoundly disabled and wishes to end his own life. This comes shortly after Strasbourg’s rejection of the Nicklinson and Lamb cases, for which see my post here.
Philip Havers QC, of 1COR, acted for Martin, and has played no part in the writing of this post.
Martin would like to travel to a Swiss clinic to end his life, but wishes to obtain a medical report, from a doctor, to assist. He would also like to take medical advice on methods of suicide.
There is no dispute that a doctor advising him in this way will likely break the law, by committing the crime of assisting suicide. However, Martin argued that in practice, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has relaxed guidelines on when it is in the public interest to bring a prosecution against a doctor in these circumstances.
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22 July 2015 by David Hart KC
Coventry v. Lawrence [2015] UKSC 50, 22 July 2015, read judgment here
The pre-April 2013 Conditional Fee Agreement system, under which claimants could recover uplifts on their costs and their insurance premiums from defendants, has survived – just. It received a sustained challenge from defendants to the effect that such a system was in breach of their Article 6 rights to a fair trial.
In a seven-justice court there was a strongly-worded dissent of two, and two other justices found the case “awkward.”
The decision arises out of the noisy speedway case about which I posted in March 2014 – here. The speedway business ended up being ordered to pay £640,000 by way of costs after the trial. On an initial hearing (my post here), the Supreme Court was so disturbed by this that they ordered a further hearing to decide whether this was compatible with Article 6 .
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20 July 2015 by Isabel McArdle
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the applications to the ECtHR in Nicklinson and Lamb v UK, cases concerning assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, are inadmissible.
This is the latest development in a long running series of decisions concerning various challenges to the UK’s law and prosecutorial guidelines on assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. You can read the press release here and the full decision here.
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19 July 2015 by Rosalind English
IS (by the Official Solicitor as Litigation Friend) v The Director of Legal Aid Casework and Anor [2015] EWHC 1965 (Admin) (15 July 2015) – read judgment
Collins J has ruled that the Legal Aid guidance as to whether to provide exceptional funding in certain cases is so rigid and complicated as to be unlawful.
Although no declaration has been made in terms, he said that the scheme as operated was “not providing the safety net promised by Ministers and is not in accordance with [the relevant statute] in that it does not ensure that applicants’ human rights are not breached or are not likely to be breached.”
The actual case before him concerned a defendant who had in fact been granted legal aid consequent to an earlier decision by the Appeal Court. There were five other claims which raised similar issues in relation to the guidance and in which the individual claimants asserted that there had been a wrongful refusal of Exceptional Case Funding under Section 10(3) of the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO). It was ordered that the six claims should be heard together to deal with the individual circumstances of each claimant and the attack on the guidance. The claims came before the same judge, Collins J, and on 13 June 2014 he granted judicial review in each of the six cases. His decision was appealed to the Court of Appeal by the defendants, but in this case the appeal was discontinued. The cases were reported under the title of R (Gudanaviciene) v. DLAC and Lord Chancellor (read my previous post on the Court of Appeal’s decision).
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