Category: BLOG POSTS
27 October 2017 by Rosalind English
Inquests and Article 2 ECHR – Caroline Cross and Suzanne Lambert
The highlights of the Public Law Seminar given by members of 1 Crown Office Row are now available for podcast download here or from iTunes under Law Pod UK, Episodes 13, 14 and 15. For non-Apple devices the podcasts are available via the Audioboom app.
For ease of reference the following three posts set out the introductions to each of the presentations and the case citations. Click on the heading for PDF copies of each of the presentations.
Introduction
Article 2 ECHR has had a profound impact upon coronial law, no more so than in relation to deaths in custody/detention and mental health deaths.
This talk will cover the following topics: mental health inquests; terrorism inquests (and inquiries); and detention inquests. Through these lenses, we will examine a number of developments in coronial law over the past 18 months and draw out relevant themes.
We discuss a number of cases in relation to mental health and detention inquests.
Case references in podcast
P v Cheshire West and Chester Council [2014] UKSC 19
R (on the application of Ferreira) and HM Senior Coroner for Inner London South, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, the Intensive Care Society and the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine and Secretary of State for Health and Secretary of State for Justice [2017] EWCA Civ 31
Austin v UK (2012) 55 EHRR 359
Tyrrell v HM Senior Coroner County Durham and Darlington [2016] EWHC 1892 (Admin)
R (Tainton) v HM Senior Coroner for Preston and West Lancashire [2016] EWHC 1396 (Admin)
R (Hamilton-Jackson) v Assistant Coroner for Mid Kent and Medway [2016] EWHC 1796 (Admin)
R (Scarff and Ors) v Governor HMP Woodhill and Secretary of State for Justice [2017] EWHC 1194 (Admin)
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26 October 2017 by Rosalind English
The first episode from the Public Law Seminar given by members of 1 Crown Office Row is now available for podcast download here or from iTunes under Law Pod UK. Look for Episode 13: Tackling radicalisation through the civil courts.
For non-Apple devices the podcasts are available via the Audioboom app.
For ease of reference the following three posts set out the introductions to each of the presentations and the case citations. Click on the heading for PDF copies of each of the presentations.
Introduction
The Civil Courts have now been involved in cases of radicalisation brought before them by local authorities for very nearly three years (we are approaching the third anniversary of the first case). What was then innovative is now reasonably well-established (see President’s Guidance on Radicalization Cases in the Family Courts (8 October 2015) and the judgment of Hayden J in London Borough of Tower Hamlets v B [2016] EWHC 1707.
Concern was stirred originally by the spectre of significant numbers of people travelling to Syria to demonstrate their support for ISIS or the Al Nusra Front. This problem is not novel as 80 years ago Britain and Ireland were similarly fixated with the problem of volunteers departing for Spain to fight on both sides in the Civil War. A portrayal of the indoctrination of school age children to fight in that war even seeped into popular culture courtesy of Muriel Spark’s novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The current situation is complicated by the relative ease of international travel, the tactics and targets used by extremists and the fact that the UK has already experienced domestic terrorism inspired by international examples.
The number of UK nationals travelling to Syria may have fallen but reports in 2016 of significant numbers of youths travelling from Kerala to Syria show that the problem has not fallen away and is truly international.
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23 October 2017 by Adam Wagner
I am speaking at two events in the next couple of weeks, both of which will take a look at a question I have been thinking about quite a bit recently: “where next for human rights?”. Hope to see you there!–
Saving Human Rights
How communications has become a key front in the battle for human rights in the UK and worldwide
Presented by: Oxford Lawyers Without Borders and Oxford University Amnesty International
This Thursday 26th October, Pembroke College, Oxford, 5pm-6:15pm
–
Is it Time For Social Rights?
I am honoured to be giving the keynote at for the wonderful Advocacy Project at their AGM
Thursday 2 November, 2pm – 4pm, Regent Hall, 275 Oxford Street, London
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23 October 2017 by Guest Contributor
“The law of vicarious liability is on the move” proclaimed Lord Phillips in the last judgment he delivered as President of the Supreme Court: Various Claimants v Catholic Child Welfare Society [2012] UKSC 56, (“the Christian Brothers case”). In a judgment recently handed down by the Supreme Court in the case of Armes (Appellant) v Nottinghamshire County Council (Respondent) [2017] UKSC 60, His Lordship has been proved correct.
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22 October 2017 by Rosalind English
ARB v IVF Hammersmith Ltd [2017] EWHC 2438 – read judgment
The claim for over £1 million taken by a father against an IVF clinic for failing to notice that his signature on the consent form had been forged has been widely reported in the press. In the latest Law Pod UK podcast Rosalind English discusses the case with David Prest. Whilst the McFarlane principle defeated the financial claim, Jay J had some stern words to say about the actions of the mother and the procedures of the clinic.
Episode 12 of Law Pod UK is available for free download from iTunes.
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20 October 2017 by David Hart KC
Benkharbouche & Anor v Foreign & Commonwealth Office [2017] UKSC 62, 18 October 2017 – read judgment
If you work for an embassy in London and are not a UK national, you cannot sue your employing state when you get unfairly dismissed. But if you enter a commercial contract with the same embassy, you can sue them.
This is the conundrum which faced the Supreme Court, who decided that the former result, although laid down by statute, was incompatible with Article 6 of the ECHR.
The SC’s sole judgment was by Lord Sumption, with whom the other justices agreed. It is a tour de force of international (rather than human rights) law, because therein lay the key issue.
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11 October 2017 by Rosalind English
Conway, R (On the application of) v The Secretary of State for Justice [2017] EWHC 2447 (Admin) – read judgment
This case concerns the issue of provision of assistance to a person with a serious wasting disease who wishes to commit suicide, so as to be able to exercise control over the time of his death as the disease reaches its final stages. See our previous post on it here and here. It follows a line of cases which have addressed that or similar issues, in particular R (Pretty) v Director of Public Prosecutions [2001] UKHL 61; [2002] 1 AC 800 (“Pretty“), R (Purdy) v Director of Public Prosecutions [2009] UKHL 54; [2010] 1 AC 345 (“Purdy“) and R (Nicklinson) v Ministry of Justice [2014] UKSC 38; [2015] AC 657(“Nicklinson“). Permission to bring this judicial review was granted by the Court of Appeal (McFarlane and Beatson LJJ, see [2017] EWCA Civ 275), having earlier been refused by the Divisional Court (Burnett LJ, Charles and Jay JJ) at [2017] EWHC 640 (Admin
Section 1 of the Suicide Act 1961 abrogated the rule of law whereby it was a crime for a person to commit suicide. In this hearing Mr Conway sought a claim for a declaration of incompatibility pursuant to section 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998 in respect of the prohibition in the criminal law against provision of assistance for a person to commit suicide. That prohibition is contained in section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961.
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1 October 2017 by Rosalind English
XX v Whittington Hospital NHS Trust 2017 EWHC 2318 (QB) (18 September 2017) [HQ15C04535]
Podcast about this case now downloadable
Commercial surrogacy arrangements are considered to be against public policy in the UK and therefore illegal. Surrogacy in the UK is only legal where there is no intention to make a profit – though reasonable expenses are recoverable. Where legal surrogacy is
carried out the surrogate mother is the legal mother of the child. In this case the claimant had suffered injury due to the hospital’s failure to diagnose her cervical cancer in time. She had to undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatment which, amongst other things, damaged her uterus so she was unable to bear and carry a child. Before the treatment she had her eggs frozen.
The hospital admitted negligence. As part of her damages claim she sought the expenses she would incur for a commercial surrogacy arrangement in California. She wished to go to the US since the position of a woman seeking surrogacy in the UK is made more difficult by the fact that commercial arrangements are illegal. This means that in the UK the surrogate chooses the biological mother, rather than the other way around. The lack of certainty over parental status was also cited as a reason why an arrangement in the US would be preferable.
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1 October 2017 by Rosalind English
You may remember the podcast discussion between me, Rosalind English, and David Hart QC earlier in the summer about the NHS decision not to fund the drug Kuvan for the amelioration of symptoms of a boy suffering from phenylketonuria (PKU) and severe autism. The podcast concerned a High Court ruling that the health service should review its decision not to fund the drug Kuvan.
As I mentioned in the original report, the judge did warn the boy’s family against being too optimistic, saying
however much one might hope that on the next occasion the panel will decide that the net additional expenditure of treating S with Kuvan would be justified … they could still lawfully decide to refuse funding.
However, the judge’s caution has not been borne out by events. On Friday 29th September it was reported that NHS England has agreed to provide the drug to treat his PKU, which if left unchecked can lead to complications including brain damage.
Listen to Episode 9 of Law Pod UK, available for download on iTunes
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29 September 2017 by Rosalind English
... and pests are misplaced animals. We are all too familiar with the stories of mayhem caused by urban foxes released into the countryside, and the collapse in property value where Japanese knotweed is found to have invaded. The perpetrators of such damage are rarely identified and brought to account. So it is with a level of glee that the prosecution of two “Buddhist activists” has been reported in the media after they released nearly a thousand alien crustaceans off the coast of Brighton.
“Banker” Ni Li and “estate agent” Zhixong Li bought the live American lobsters and Dungeness crabs from a London fish merchant, hired three boats from Brighton Marina and cast the animals adrift as part of a religious ceremony, fangsheng, which is understood to be the cause of many ecosystem disruptions in Asia.
This short story is so replete with topical issues it is hard to know where to begin.
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24 September 2017 by Sarah Ewart
In the news this month:
The Brexit Bill
The Bill for the withdrawal from the European Union has been dominating the news over the past few weeks. Mark Elliott comments that it is ‘difficult to overstate the importance’ of the bill from a constitutional standpoint, and the House of Lords Constitution Committee has said in an interim report that its political, legal and constitutional significance are ‘unparalleled’. Concern has been voiced in various quarters over the use of ‘Henry VIII’ powers (so named because of the monarch’s disdain for parliamentary restraint) which will allow the executive to bypass parliament to ‘tweak’ legislation, and a concomitant lack of sufficiently robust sunset clauses or checks and balances to the handover of such powers. For more detail, I highly recommend listening to David Hart QC’s conversation with Rosalind English on our new podcast series Law Pod, in which he details the potential consequences of the bill in general and in terms of environmental law in particular; you can read his comments here or have a listen here.
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23 September 2017 by David Hart KC
ACCC Findings in ACCC/C/2008/32
Last week’s post concerned the judicial review costs system in environmental cases and its compliance with the prohibitively expensive rule Art.9(4) of the Aarhus Convention.
Now for some more Aarhus developments which happened over the summer, this time involving the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee (ACCC) having a pop at the narrow EU standing rules applicable to challenges to an act or omission by a EU body, and the EU not liking those findings at all.
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18 September 2017 by Adam Wagner
On 2 October it is the 17th birthday of the Human Rights Act – it came into force on 2 October 2000.
Rightsnfo is looking for inspiring stories of how people have used the Human Rights Act to publish as part of a birthday feature:
- Please send your stories to info@rightsinfo.org
- No more than 150 words per story
- Send them by end of Friday 22 September
- Stories welcome from people who have used the Human Rights Act or lawyers who have used it on people’s behalf (please confirm you have your client/ex-client’s authorisation to share the story).
- If you have photos to share then please do so
Looking forward to seeing what people send in!
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16 September 2017 by David Hart KC
RSPB, Friends of the Earth & Client Earth v. Secretary of State for Justice [2017] EWHC 2309 (Admin), 15 September 2017, Dove J – judgment here
In my March 2017 post here, I explained that amendments to the costs rules for public law environmental claims threatened to undo much of the certainty that those rules had achieved since 2013. Between 2013 and February 2017, if you, an individual, had an environmental judicial review, then you could pretty much guarantee that your liability to the other side’s costs would be capped at £5,000 (£10,000 for companies) if you lost, and your recovery of your own costs would be limited to £35,000 if you won. In this way, the rules sought to avoid the cost of such claims becoming prohibitively expensive and thus in breach of Art.9(4) of the Aarhus Convention.
The most worrying element in the February 2017 amendments was a new CPR 45.44 giving the courts a broad discretion to vary those amounts, apparently at any time. This seemed like an open invitation to the defendants to try to do this, aided by the financial information which claimants are now obliged to provide. It was truly regressive, taking us back to the days when you spent many thousands of pounds arguing about a protective costs order which was intended to save money.
In my March post, I explained that the new rules were being challenged by NGOs, and Friday’s judgment is the upshot of this challenge.
It is essentially a success for the NGOs.
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8 September 2017 by Olivia Kaplan
There are a few places remaining for 1 Crown Office Row’s high-level seminar this Monday 11 September. The event is aimed at solicitors and people associated with NGOs. We also have a limited number of student places which will be allocated on a first come first served basis.
Email events@1cor.com to reserve your place.
Details:
11th September 2017, 5 – 8pm
Programme:
5 – 5.50pm Panel Discussion chaired by Mrs Justice Whipple.
Speakers will include: Marina Wheeler QC, Jeremy Hyam QC, Shaheen Rahman QC, Martin Downs and Adam Wagner.
6 – 6.40pm Breakout sessions – Law and Practice
(i) Public Powers and Private Lives in the Information Age – Amelia Walker
(ii) Inquests and Article 2 – Rachel Marcus, Caroline Cross, Peter Skelton
(iii) Unlawful detention – Suzanne Lambert, Alasdair Henderson, David Manknell
6.45pm Concluding Session – Questions and Summing Up.
Chaired by Mrs Justice Whipple
7pm Drinks Reception
Hosted by the speakers and 1COR Members.
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