Category: LEGAL TOPICS
25 March 2011 by Rosalind English
The case of Patmainiece v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was reported in an earlier post. Here we discuss the underlying rationale for the decision and ask whether the finding that the nationality requirement amounted to mere indirect discrimination was a correct “fit” with EU principles of free movement.
Article 18 (now article 21 TFEU) provides:
1. Every citizen of the Union shall have the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States
However a different regime applies to non-economic actors as opposed to workers. Free movement of workers is one of the fundamental underpinnings of the internal market on which the EU is based. The main EU Directives and Regulations giving effect to the right to free movement of workers are Regulation No 1612/68 on freedom of movement for workers within the Community (as amended by Directive 2004/38/EC) and Directive 2004/38/EC on the right of EU citizens and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the member states. But the rights of those who are economically inactive to reside for more than three months in other member states is subject to certain conditions, set out in the 2004 Directive; they must
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24 March 2011 by Maria Roche
A (A Child) v Cambridge University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust [2011] EWHC 454 (QB)– read judgment
A High Court judge has ruled that a seven-year-old child with severe disabilities caused by medical negligence during his birth should be the subject of an order that prohibits their identification in any newspaper report.
The order was granted in the course of a hearing to approve the settlement between the child and the defendant hospital under Part 21.10 of the Civil Procedure Rules. The judge held that there was a risk that the objective of such proceedings, namely to ensure that settlement money is properly looked after and wisely applied, would be defeated if the Claimant was identified. Further, identification of the child would curtail his and his family’s right to respect for their private and family under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights [‘ECHR’] and there was insufficient general public interest in identifying the child to justify that curtailment.
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23 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
Lumba (WL) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] UKSC 12 (23 March 2011) – Read judgment / press summary
The Supreme Court has ruled that it was unlawful and a “serious abuse of power” for the Home Office to follow an unpublished policy on the detention of foreign national prisoners which contradicted its published policy. Two convicted prisoners were therefore unlawfully detained.
This fascinating 6-3 majority decision could be important in respect of setting the boundaries for the courts’ scrutiny of executive powers. It is also, for the record, not a decision which is based on human rights. The appellants are both convicted criminals (and foreigners too), so the court may be criticised for upholding their human rights despite their criminal actions. But this is a case decided on traditional public law grounds, which preceded the human rights act by many years. As Lord Hope put it:
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23 March 2011 by Isabel McArdle
AS v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWHC 564 (Admin) – Read Judgment
In a strange case, reminiscent of the film The Terminal in which Tom Hanks plays a person unable to leave an airport because he is temporarily stateless, an Applicant lost a judicial review application despite being unable to enter the UK lawfully and unable to acquire travel documents to return to Kuwait.
This was an application for judicial review of the decision by the Secretary of State to refuse to treat further representations by a failed asylum seeker as a fresh claim. The Applicant claimed to be a Bedoon, a member of an ethnic group mostly living around the borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The Kuwaiti government is not permitting Bedoon outside Kuwait to return there, and since the 1980s the country has taken away from the Bedoon a great number of rights and benefits. It was accepted by both parties that in Kuwait, the Bedoon are at risk of persecution.
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18 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
The much trumpeted commission on a UK Bill of Rights has been launched by the Ministry of Justice. It is pretty much as was leaked last week, although it will now have 8 rather than 6 experts chaired by Sir Leigh Lewis, a former Permanent Secretary to the Department of Work and Pensions.
The commission is to report by the end of 2012. Its members, described as “human rights experts”. Are they? The roll call, made up mostly of barristers, is:
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17 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
One of the country’s most senior judges, Lord Neuberger, has given a stirring speech on the challenges of open justice in the 21st century. His ideas are progressive and practical, and amount to a manifesto for building a more open justice system, fit for the internet age.
The annual Judicial Studies Board lecture has in recent years been used by the senior judiciary to criticise the European Court of Human Rights (see Lord Judge’s and Lord Hoffmann’s 2010 and 2009 speeches), so Neuberger’s Open Justice Unbound represents a refreshing change of pace.
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17 March 2011 by Matthew Flinn
R (on the Application of AC) v Bershire West Primary Care Trust [2011] EWCA Civ 247 – Read judgment.
The Court of Appeal has dismissed the appeal of a male-to-female transsexual who was refused NHS funding for breast augmentation surgery.
The appellant, known as AC, had been diagnosed with gender identity disorder (GID) in 1996. As part of its GID treatment program the PCT had been prepared to provide genital reassignment surgery, which AC had not availed herself of.
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16 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
Patmalniece (FC) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Respondent) [2011] UKSC 11 – Read judgment / press summary
The Supreme Court has ruled that pensioners from other European Union states should not have the right to claim pension credits in the UK. Although the current ban on claiming these benefits is indirectly discriminatory, the discrimination is a justified response to the legitimate aim of protecting the public purse.
The 4-1 majority ruling (Lord Walker dissented) is likely to calm fears of “benefit tourism” and will probably be wrongly reported as a victory of sensible limits on public finances over human rights. For the record, the appeal was based squarely on EU freedom of movement law and had very little, if anything, to do with human rights.
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16 March 2011 by Rosalind English
The government’s proposals for reform of the law on defamation have been published. The bill seeks to address concerns that libel law has a chilling effect on freedom of speech, failing to strike the right balance between free speech and protection of reputation.
The pressure of the widely-supported reform campaign, inspired by recent libel actions stifling comment on issues of scientific and academic debate, has no doubt contributed to the manifesto commitment on the part of all three parties which the coalition is now following through. The consultation paper and draft bill has been met with muted enthusiasm, with critics claiming that the proposed statute at best codifies the common law, with all its confusions and complexities, and that the whole is at worst “too little, too late” to meet their reform demands.
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16 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
As well as blaming bloggers for media frenzies in yesterday’s Law in Action interview, the Attorney General also made some interesting comments on the UK’s bold new tactic on prisoner votes (see my post on Monday), which is effectively to try to appeal an unappealable ruling.
He said (from 19:20) that the UK “takes its responsibility seriously” and that it would be seeking to reform the court when it takes on the chairmanship later this year. “In any political process” he reminded Rozenberg, “the movement of the tectonic plates is always going to be a bit rough” (please note that the programme was recorded before the Japanese earthquakes). He would not say, however, whether the government would do anything to comply with the ruling in Hirst No. 2.
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16 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
The Attorney General has warned publishers that the law may be changed to prevent them revealing the names of criminal suspects before they are charged. He also blamed the “massive” and “frenzied”coverage of pre-charge suspects in part on pressure on newspapers from the blogosphere.
Dominic Grieve told Joshua Rozenberg on yesterday’s Law in Action (listen here):
We seem to be living a world where because of competing interests on newspapers, perhaps in part because of the internet, because of the fact they are competing with the blogosphere where people are publishing a great deal of material, national newspapers are keen to give as much background detail to their readers as possible at early stages of criminal investigations. (09:25)
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14 March 2011 by Alasdair Henderson
R (BB) v. Special Immigration Appeals Commission and Home Secretary – Read judgment.
The Divisional Court has ruled that bail proceedings before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (“SIAC”) are subject to the same procedural standard under Article 5(4) of the European Convention (the right to liberty) whether they take place before or after the substantive judgment. That standard is that the applicant must be given sufficient information about the allegations against him to enable him to give effective instructions in relation to those allegations, as set out in A v United Kingdom and R (Cart) v. SIAC.
This decision forms the latest in a string of cases considering the extent to which the Government can rely on secret or ‘closed’ evidence in defending appeals by individuals challenging decisions made against them. A judgment by the Supreme Court is imminently expected in the conjoined cases of Al-Rawi v. Security Service and Tariq v. Home Office (see helpful summary here and our analysis of the broader issue of open justice here), which consider this issue in relation to civil damages claims and employment law claims. However, BB is the High Court’s most recent pronouncement on the position in the fraught area of immigration and national security.
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10 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
Lord Anthony Lester, Helena Kennedy QC and Martin Howe QC are to sit on the upcoming commission on human rights reform, the press are reporting this morning.
Lester and Kennedy are both well-known human rights experts. Howe has long-standing proponent of replacing of the Human Rights Act with a bill of rights.
According to The Sun, which says the “probe on how to tackle power-crazy Euro judges is being held up by bickering Tories and Lib Dems“, the 7-strong commission will also include another Liberal Democrat nominee (in addition to Lester), two more members appointed by the Tories and a senior Ministry of Justice civil servant. It will have to report by December 2012.
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9 March 2011 by Guest Contributor
At the end of the Wizard of Oz Dorothy manages to find her way back from the land of Oz to her farmstead in Kansas by closing her eyes, clicking the heels of her ruby-red slippers together, and repeatedly murmuring the incantation “There’s no place like home; there’s no place like home …”.
In his Bringing Rights back home: making human rights compatible with parliamentary democracy in the UK (Policy Exchange, 2011) the political scientist Dr. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky attempts a similar feat, seeking to bring human rights back from the Land of Stras(bourg).
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9 March 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated | CPS -v- Mohammad Razaul Haque and Emdadur Choudhury – Read judgment
A man has been found guilty of public order offences for burning poppies and chanting “British soldiers burn in hell” on Remembrance Day. He was fined £50.
The ruling, and in particular the fine, has led to public anger. The Sun called the fine “pathetic” and asked whether Britain is now “deep in a quicksand of political correctness and hand-wringing over human rights“. The Prime Minister has said that we should be “making a stronger statement that that sort of behaviour is completely out of order and has no place in a tolerant society”
The Sun is wrong that Emdadur Choudhury’s low fine had anything to do with human rights; Chief Magistrate Riddle made clear that “invoking the criminal law to interfere with freedom of expression is proportionate“. But two important questions do arise. First, whether the conviction represents a disproportionate breach of Emdadur Choudhury’s right to freedom of speech. Secondly, if the £50 fine was adequate.
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The case of Patmainiece v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was reported in an earlier post. Here we discuss the underlying rationale for the decision and ask whether the finding that the nationality requirement amounted to mere indirect discrimination was a correct “fit” with EU principles of free movement.
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