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Despite repeat flurries of excitement as a coalition of Peers suggest time and again that most of the controversial Communications Data Bill – popularly known as the Snoopers’ Charter – might be a late-stage drop in; the press has, perhaps regrettably, shown little interest in the Bill.
BB, PP, U and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 9 (23 January 2015) – read judgment
This was an appeal by Algerian nationals who had been found by the Special Immigration and Appeals Commission (SIAC) to constitute a threat to UK national security, against deportation to Algeria.
The appellants had resisted attempts by various home secretaries to deport them via protracted litigation over several years. Despite several findings by the SIAC that their human rights would not be infringed in Algeria, doubts remained, particularly with regard to the period of up to twelve days of initial detention in Algeria, known as “garde a vue” detention, in a barracks run by the Algerian security services (DRS). The purpose of such detention was to interrogate prisoners to obtain evidence for future proceedings. SIAC had wholly accepted the evidence of an innocent British citizen (AB) detained there in a case of mistaken identity as “punitive in the extreme”, but determined that his treatment showed a lack of care over the detainee’s welfare rather than a breach of his human rights. It had conceded that the treatment of the appellants might well be no better, not least because DRS officers considered such treatment to be consistent with respect for human dignity.
The appellants submitted that, in the light of this, SIAC’s conclusion that their treatment would not violate Article 3 of the Convention was legally unsustainable; that SIAC had erred in law in its findings that the Algerian government’s assurances were capable of independent verification; and that the SIAC had also erred in law in maintaining, without any open evidence in support, that the DRS had been present during discussions about those assurances and had subscribed to them.
Northamptonshire County Council v AS, KS and DS [2015] EWFC 7 – read judgment
A Family Division judge has awarded damages under the Human Rights Act against a local authority in what he described as an “unfortunate and woefulcase” involving a baby taken into foster care. Mr Justice Keehan cited a “catalogue of errors, omissions, delays and serial breaches of court orders” by Northamptonshire County Council. Unusually, the judge decided to give the judgment in this sensitive case in public in order to set out “the lamentable conduct of this litigation by the local authority.”
On 30 January 2013, the local authority placed the child (known as ‘DS’) with foster carers. He was just fifteen days old. In the weeks prior to DS’s birth, his mother’s GP had made a referral to the local authority due to her lack of antenatal care and because she claimed to be sleeping on the street. The mother then told a midwife that she had a new partner. He was a heroin addict.
After the birth DS’s mother avoided seeing her midwife. She frequently moved addresses and conditions at home were exceedingly poor. Three days before DS was taken into care, his mother told social workers that her new partner was being aggressive and threatening to her. She reported that he was leaving used needles around the house. Continue reading →
The target of this barb was the case management style of HHJ Dodds. The author, one of three Judges of Appeal empanelled in Re A (Children) [29 January 2015] (we will have to await a full judgment to discover which as – so far – only a Lawtel summary is available).
HHJ Dodds is well known to readers of this blog. His style of case management was also analysed (and found wanting) by the Court of Appeal the following day in Re S-W (children) [2015] EWCA Civ 27 (30 January 2015). The judgments leave one to ponder whether these cases are a product of the stresses that have emerged from the greater expectations now put on the shoulders of judges to case manage litigation or whether, as previously discussed in this blog by David Hart QC here, it is a problem that arises with clever judges who find that they are, by temperament, not inclined to listen patiently to other people (generally considered to be a core part of the job description).
In Re S-W (children), HHJ Dodds made final care orders concerning three children at a hearing designated for case management less than three weeks after the application was made. The Court of Appeal overturned the orders (no party supported the judge’s actions) deeming care proceedings to be inapt for summary judgment in all but the most exceptional of circumstances (e.g. consent). Amongst the enumerated problems were that, the father of one of the children had not been served with notice of the proceedings, the children’s Guardian had not seen the children and there were no final care plans before the court. The judge did not even give a reasoned judgment. The Court of Appeal had to look at the transcript instead. This revealed that the judge had made his settled (and trenchantly expressed) view known within minutes of the hearing commencing. According to the court,
All the parties crumbled under the judge’s caustically expressed views.
Unsurprisingly, the Opinion of the EU Court (just before Christmas – my post here) that the proposed accession of the EU to the ECHR on current terms would be unlawful has not gone down well in Strasbourg.
An excellent post today by Tobias Lock on the Verfassungblog tells the story here, but these are the highlights. In short, the President of the Strasbourg Court, Dean Spielmann, added some text to his review of 2014, in a speech given yesterday, 29 January – here.
Lots of interesting stuff on the 2014 ECtHR case law (and case load), but his withering bit on the CJEU’s Opinion is worth quoting.
Bearing in mind that negotiations on European Union accession have been under way for more than thirty years, that accession is an obligation under the Lisbon Treaty and that all the member States along with the European institutions had already stated that they considered the draft agreement compatible with the Treaties on European Union and the Functioning of the European Union, the CJEU’s unfavourable opinion is a great disappointment.
In short, the CJEU is out of line with the views of the member states, and not least with the obligation in Article 6 of the Lisbon Treaty that the EU “shall” accede to the ECHR.
But Spielmann did not leave it at that, as we shall see.
Most law undergraduates are familiar with Jeremy Bentham’s dismissal of natural rights as “nonsense on stilts”. This is a slight misrepresentation of what he said, which was that “Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts“. But let’s take the stilts away and consider rights in their ordinary sense. They furnish not only arguments before courts, but reasons for going to war and toppling whole regimes. As Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari points out in his recent book:
No one was lying when, in 2011, the UN demanded that the Libyan government respect the human rights of its citizens, even though the UN, Libya, and human rights are all figments of our fertile imaginations.
So, might the author have added, are “citizens”, since in a reality without cities and states, it is a non-sequitur to talk of citizens. Continue reading →
On 7 January 2015 District Judge Mort of the Court of Protection approved a £60,000 settlement agreement reached between Essex County Council and Mr P ([2015] EWCOP 1). For a discussion of the case generally see Rosalind English’s post here.
With a significant backlog of care home cases in the Court of Protection, P’s case runs the risk of becoming something of a precedent on the question of damages for unlawful detention. However, as far as calculation of damages goes, it is light on analysis of principle. This post seeks to explore whether the considerable case law that has developed on damages for false imprisonment in other situations may help illuminate what this type of case is worth. Continue reading →
R (on the application of Rights of Women) v Secretary of State for Justice [2015] EWHC 35 (Admin) – read judgment
Neil Sheldon and Alasdair Henderson (instructed by The Treasury Solicitor) acted for the Defendant in this case. They have nothing to do with the writing of this post.
The campaign group Rights of Women has been unsuccessful in its judicial review of Regulation 33 of the Civil Legal Aid (Procedure) Regulations 2012 (as amended) which sets out the list of documents which will be accepted as evidence that a legal aid applicant has suffered or is at risk of suffering domestic violence. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) purports to retain legal aid for victims of domestic violence. However, such funding is only available where at least one of the documents listed in Regulation 33 is submitted to the Legal Aid Agency. Continue reading →
R (o.t.a Henderson) v. Secretary of State for Justice, Divisional Court, 27 January 2015 – judgment here
The Court (Burnett LJ giving the sole judgment) has ruled on whether the statutory changes made to the ability of acquitted defendants in the Crown Court to recover their costs from central funds are compatible with the ECHR.
Its answer – an emphatic yes, the new rules are compatible. This conclusion was reached in respect of the two statutory regimes applicable since October 2012, as we shall see.
I have a new project. The aim is to change the face of human rights.
As readers of this blog will know, I often complain about bad human rights journalism. But inadequate reporting is a symptom of a deeper problem: poor public understanding of human rights.
It is time to do something about it. Introducing the Human Rights Information Project (HRIP).
Last week, on 15 January 2015, TTIP was debated in the House of Commons – see here. It is important for us all, but why?
TTIP stands for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a proposed trade agreement between the US, the EU, and various members of the EU including the UK. A sober account of its history and scope was produced for the HoC debate (here), and a rather less polite view is here from George Monbiot.
Now, TTIP contains the usual things which one might expect to see in a trade agreement, such as the reduction or removal of tariffs between the respective trading blocs. And it comes with the usual accompanying material suggesting that all parties will benefit massively from the deal to the tune of billions of euros.
So what is there not to like?
Well, one part of the concern is that it will confer on investors (think multi-nationals) the right to sue governments for regulatory regimes causing loss of profits to those investors. This ability to sue is known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement or ISDS. And the suing does not happen in domestic courts, but in a special international law tribunal consisting of corporate lawyers drawn from the world over. I shall give some examples below of the sort of litigation engendered in the past by ISDS, so you can assess what this means in practice.
TTIP with ISDS is being enthusiastically backed by the present Government – not hitherto a fan of foreign judges taking charge of how our laws comply with external standards.
Thursday 5 February 2015 marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta as well as the 50th anniversary of the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London. To commemorate both of these milestones, the Human Rights Collegium at Queen Mary University of London will be hosting this special event.
Paul Mahoney has been the UK judge on the European Court of Human Rights (Strasbourg) since November 2012. Before this, he spent the greater part of his career in the Registry of the Strasbourg Court, beginning as a case-lawyer in 1974 working on the case of Golder v. United Kingdom and ending as Registrar of the Court from 2001-05, with a three-year break in the 1990s as Head of Personnel of the Council of Europe (Strasbourg).
This event will be chaired by Professor Geraldine Van Bueren QC, and Lady Justice Arden will deliver the response.
The lecture will take place between 18.30 – 20.30 on Thursday 5 February at the Arts 2 Lecture Theatre, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS.
Essex County Council v RF and Others (deprivation of liberty and damages) [2015] EWCOP 1 – read judgment
The Court of Protection has castigated the actions of a County Council in depriving an old person of his liberty and dignity in their overreaction to reports that he might be subjected to financial exploitation. This, said the judge, amounted to punishing the victim for the acts of the perpetrators.
Factual background
The facts of this case can be summarised very shortly. P, a 91 year old gentleman, is a retired civil servant and WWII veteran, and until February 2013, has lived in his own home for fifty years. He has been alone with his companion cat since the death of his sister in 1998. He is described as being a very generous man ready to help others financially if he believed they needed it, as well as making donations to various charities. Continue reading →
I took part in a debate on the BBC World News today on some of the anti-terrorism law proposals and the impact on human rights. We only covered one aspect of the raft of anti-terrorism laws which are currently making their way through Parliament – see Angela Patrick’s detailed post from last week, which is highly recommended.
Chief Constable of Greater Manchester v Calder [2015] EWHC B11 – Read judgment
Adam Wagner represented Scott Calder in this case. He is not the writer of this post.
The Greater Manchester Police (‘GMP’) have been unsuccessful in an attempt to obtain an Injunction to Prevent Gang-Related Violence (‘IPGV’ or ‘Gangbo‘) against Scott Calder. The application was based on police intelligence and the lyrics of Mr Calder’s YouTube Grime Rap videos. On 14 January 2015, Mr Justice Blake dismissed the GMP’s appeal to the High Court, and in doing so laid out guidance on the purpose and ambit of the IPGV legislation, which is currently being substantially amended by Parliament.
The below is based on the Judge’s ex tempore judgment (i.e. given at the hearing). We will post the full judgment when it is available.
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