Category: Article 8 | Right to Privacy / Family
10 October 2011 by Adam Wagner
In his Conservative Party Conference speech the Prime Minister David Cameron signalled his strong support for the legalisation of gay marriage. He said:
Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other. So I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.
We have covered the slow progress towards legalised gay marriage in a number of posts since this blog launched in March 2010: see the links below. Where are we up to now?
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6 October 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated |I have been sent the first appeal judgment in the political frenzy which has been termed “Catgate”. I had promised myself not to do any more Catgate posts or use any more cute pictures of kittens, but I have now broken that promise.
Having read the short, 6-page judgment dated 9 October 2008 by Immigration Judge JR Devittie – reproduced here by Full Fact – I will quote from it at length (apologies for any transcribing errors) and say the following.
First, on any reading, the judgment does not support the proposition the Home Secretary made in her speech: “The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he had a pet cat.” For similar reasons, it does not support the Daily Mail’s headline from this morning: Truth about Tory catfight: Judge DID rule migrant’s pet was a reason he shouldn’t be deported. Back on to the legal naughty step, Daily Mail.
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4 October 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated | Today the Home Secretary Theresa May gave a speech to the Conservative Party Conference in which she announced new immigration rules which would make it easier to deport foreign criminals.
May also gave three examples in support of the view that the Human Rights Act “has to go”:
We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act. The violent drug dealer who cannot be sent home because his daughter – for whom he pays no maintenance – lives here. The robber who cannot be removed because he has a girlfriend. The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he had pet a cat.
The most startling of those examples is of course the final one, that an illegal immigrant could not be deported because he “had a pet cat”. As regular readers of this blog will know, there are plenty of mythical examples regularly peddled in order to criticise human rights law. Is the cat deportation one of them?
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2 October 2011 by Guest Contributor
Ferdinand v Mgn Ltd (Rev 2) [2011] EWHC 2454 (QB) – Read judgment
In the first “misuse of private information” trial against a newspaper since Max Mosley in 2008, Mr Justice Nicol dismissed a claim brough by England and Manchester United footballer Rio Ferdinand against the “Sunday Mirror”.
The Judge found that, although the claimant’s Article 8 rights to private and family life were engaged, there was a public interest in correcting a false image promoted by the claimant. It was also held that the article contributed to a debate as to the claimant’s fitness to be a role model in the light of his appointment as England football captain.
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27 September 2011 by Guest Contributor
In A.A. v. the United Kingdom, a recent case involving the deportation of a young Nigerian man, the Court faced, once again, the question whether relationships between adult children and parents/siblings amount to family life in deportation cases. The Court’s Fourth Section did not give a clear answer to this question. The 24-year-old applicant resided with his mother and did not have children of his own [also see Rosalind English’s post].
In this post, I take a quick look at the Fourth Section’s reasoning on this issue and try to situate it in the wider context of the Court’s deportation case law. One word of caution: this is an attempt to briefly look at one specific question the Court asks to decide whether the deportation has interfered with an applicant’s right to respect for her family life. Do the ties invoked by the applicant constitute family life within the meaning of Article 8 § 1? To be more specific, do relationships between adult children and parents/siblings amount to family life in deportation cases?
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26 September 2011 by Adam Wagner
Today, an open letter from 158 lawyers and academics has been published in The Guardian claiming that the law on squatting, on which the Government has proposed reforms, has been misrepresented by politicians and the media.
I am one of the letter’s signatories. Amongst other things, it states that:
a significant number of recent media reports have stated that squatters who refuse to leave someone’s home are not committing a criminal offence and that a change in the law – such as that proposed by the government – is needed to rectify this situation.
The accompanying article is here. One interesting aspect of this campaign is that it was organised in part by one of the longest standing and best legal blogs, Nearly Legal. Nearly Legal have used social media, which an ever increasing number of lawyers follow, to gather many of the signatures. Their response is here and some of their previous posts on the topic here and here.
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21 September 2011 by Rosalind English
A.A. v. THE UNITED KINGDOM – 8000/08 [2011] ECHR 1345 – Read judgment
The Strasbourg Court has ruled unlawful the deportation of a Nigerian man convicted of rape. Considering the facts of his case afresh, the Court came to the conclusion that the 24 year old student’s right to family life would be violated if he were removed to Nigeria.
The applicant arrived in the United Kingdom in 2000 at the age of 13 join his mother. At the age of 15, he was convicted of rape. After serving less than two years of his four-year sentence he was released on licence in 2004. The Home Office served him with a notice of liability to a deportation order on account of the rape conviction. Although the Immigration Judge of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (“the AIT”) allowed the applicant’s appeal, the Secretary of State’s appeal against this finding ultimately prevailed since it was found that the various factors in respect of his family life and his good conduct in remand did not outweigh the presumption in favour of deportation in accordance with the current version of the Immigration Rules.
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16 September 2011 by Guest Contributor
In Colleen Smith v IC and Devon & Cornwall Constabulary (EA/2011/0006), the requester asked for information on the number of school teachers in specified towns who had been investigated, cautioned and charged under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 between January 2005 and November 2007. The Constabulary eventually relied on the personal data at section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act (‘FOIA’).
The Commissioner found that, where the answer was “zero”, this was not personal data and should be disclosed; otherwise, the information could be withheld under section 40. The Tribunal has upheld this decision, albeit for different reasons.
This decision is worth noting on a number of grounds.
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15 September 2011 by Matthew Flinn
Voyias v Information Commissioner and the London Borough of Camden EA/2011/0007 – Read Judgment
The First Tier Tribunal has overturned a decision of the Information Commissioner and ordered Camden Council to provide information about empty properties in the borough to a former member of the Advisory Service for Squatters.
When one thinks of the term “human rights”, the first example that springs to mind is likely to be the right to life, or the right not to be tortured or enslaved – fundamental guarantees that protect the basic dignity of our human condition. Yet human rights are also intended to serve the core goal of preserving and enhancing the strength and rigour of democratic and pluralistic societies, and so the European Convention of Human Rights (EHCR) also contains provisions guarding against discrimination, and protecting freedom of religion and expression.
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14 September 2011 by Lucy Series
Last month the Ministry of Justice published a report of a pilot project that ran last year whereby participating family courts produced and published on Bailii written judgments of specified Children Act 1989 cases. The project had three main aims:
- to increase transparency and improve public understanding of the family justice system by publishing anonymised judgments in all serious children cases;
- to help parties by providing written judgments in all cases, even where a matter was not contested;
- to provide judgments which the children involved could access in later life.
The family courts are often perceived as ‘secretive’ or aloof; Munby LJ has made excellent arguments for greater transparency far more eloquently than I could hope to do in this speech (pdf)
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13 September 2011 by Adam Wagner
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has published Hidden in plain sight, a report into disability-related harassment and how well this is currently being addressed by public authorities.
The report, which finds a “systemic failure by public authorities to recognise the extent and impact of harassment and abuse of disabled people” can be downloaded here, the “easy read” version here and the executive summary here. I have also reposted the Executive Summary via Scribd below. The Inquiry found, amongst other things:
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8 September 2011 by Adam Wagner
In a recent speech about the August riots, the Prime Minister bemoaned the “twisting and misrepresenting of human rights”. Unfortunately, this practice is common in the press, sometimes by accident but often by design.
One common accusation against the Human Rights Act is that it prevents the state deporting some foreign criminals. This is sometimes true; for example, the state cannot deport anyone if to do so would put them at a real risk of being tortured. But other law can be “to blame” too for preventing deportation of criminals, as was the case with Learco Chindamo, the killer of head teacher Philip Lawrence. This has not prevented the Daily Telegraph from again using his case as an example of human rights gone wrong.
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4 September 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated | Next week will mark the 10th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. Despite the intervening decade, the states threatened by terrorism are still puzzling out the right balance between the powers of security services and the rights of suspected terrorists to due process.
Although terrorism is now mercifully low on the public agenda, the effects of 9/11 are still being felt across the legal system. The United Kingdom is soon to open an independent inquiry into the improper treatment of detainees by security services following the terrorist attacks. As things stand, the UK’s major human rights groups are boycotting the inquiry for fear that the government will be able to suppress evidence.
The intelligence services have now tightened up their policy towards interviewing detainees overseas, but one policy which is still in flux is the control order regime, soon to be succeeded by Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIMs).
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31 August 2011 by Guest Contributor
As a number of recent cases have made clear, the filming of policing activity in public places is a vital method of holding police to account. But there have been continuing tensions between the police and photographers over filming police activity. In January 2010 there was a protest in Trafalgar Square by photographers against the use of terrorism laws to stop and search photographers. A campaign called “I’m a photographer, not a terrorist” was launched to protect the rights of those taking photographs in public places.
However, although Guidance issued by, for example, the Metropolitan Police has made it clear that
Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel.
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18 August 2011 by Adam Wagner
In a 1996 episode of The Simpsons, a bear frightens residents of Springfield by strolling down from the mountains. Homer rallies an unruly mob and convinces the town mayor to create a state of the art Bear Patrol, including branded stealth bombers. All is well until Homer receives his pay cheque, which includes an additional $5 “bear tax”.
Which of the proposed responses to this month’s rioting and looting will be a bear patrol, that is a disproportionate and expensive response prompted by an unruly mob of citizens demanding action?
Alongside the human rights review of every public sector organisation, an early candidate is the plans to create a new discretionary power of possession to enable landlords to take swifter action to evict their most anti-social tenants. The government consultation is open until 7 November; see also this letter from Grant Shapps MP explaining the change .
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