9 April 2013 by Guest Contributor
‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ is the lead piece of statutory guidance on… well, working together to safeguard children. Originally published in 1999, a new edition was published in 2006 following the changes brought about following the death of Victoria Climbié. And the next edition in 2010 incorporated recommendations of the second Laming Report which followed the death of Baby P. It had grown longer over time, as we all learned lessons from Haringey; but its growing length was causing concern.
A new version was published last month. The new version was published the week after judgment was handed down in AB & Anor, R (on the application of) v The London Borough of Haringey [2013] EWHC 416 (Admin) (13 March 2013) (my firm represented the Claimants).
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8 April 2013 by Guest Contributor
Max Hastings greeted the new Supreme Court with the prediction that it was a “constitutional disaster in the making.” For Hastings this was Blair’s Court, Blair’s legacy; its creation just one more example of Labour’s wrecking of ancient British institutions. Of course, there was also positive coverage in the early days in papers like the Guardian and Times, but ideally the Court needed to get its own message about itself. How has it gone about doing this? And what has it been saying? What challenges has it faced in its first three years?
This blog (a shortened version of an article out this month in Public Law) looks at the Court’s innovative approach to getting the message out not only about what it is doing in cases, but also about its role in general. It is a topic covered recently by Adam Wagner, here. At the heart of the Public Law article is the idea that the Court is quietly asserting its role as a new and powerful constitutional actor. Its communication’s operation has been at the heart of this.
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8 April 2013 by David Hart KC
Last Friday, 5 April, saw a break-through in negotiations as to how the EU is to accede to the ECHR – see the Draft Agreement on Accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights. There has been a lot of speculation (e.g. my post of June 2012) about how the roles of the EU Court (the CJEU) and the Strasbourg Court might be fitted together. Now at least we have some of the proposed answers, though there are a number of formal steps to be undergone before it comes into law.
The move is a culmination of a process trailed as long ago as the 1970s, though kick-started more recently by Article 6 of the Lisbon Treaty of European Union. This entered into force in 2009, and says that the EU “shall” accede to the ECHR. Negotiations started in earnest in 2009/10, initially with negotiators from 14 Convention countries (7 in the EU, 7 ECHR but non-EU members) who met with members of the European Commission, and latterly involving all 47 Council of Europe countries. Those negotiators have now reached agreement.
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7 April 2013 by Daniel Isenberg
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular smorgasbord of human rights news. The full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here.
A relatively quiet week on the news front, with courts having a well-earned Easter break. Just a few items to focus on, with commentary appearing following the US Supreme Court’s oral hearing on the same-sex marriage. The Employment Tribunal has found that conference motions and debates surrounding Israeli boycotts do not constitute anti-Semitism; and assistance is out there for litigants in person following the enactment of LASPO.
by Daniel Isenberg
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6 April 2013 by Rosalind English
The Queen (on the application of Newhaven Port and Properties Limited (Respondent)) v East Sussex County Council (Appellant) and Newhaven Town Council (Interested Party) [2013] EWCA Civ 276 – read judgment
This is a tale of common law rights, open water swimming, and individual freedoms. It is about the flip side of codified human rights: the time-honoured principle, that that which is not specifically prohibited, is – or should be – permitted in English law.
Our current preoccupation with certain sorts of intolerance must not allow us to lose sight of another threat to our individual freedoms: the encroaching requirement that our use of wild spaces is subject to the permission of the public authority who happens to be vested with certain statutory power over the land in question. This ruling confirms, if it needed confirming, that “toleration” does not mean the same as “permission”. If we allow the one to collapse into the other, the inference will become widespread that use of such land is permissive by virtue of an implied licence, a licence which can be easily withdrawn at any time.
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6 April 2013 by David Hart KC
Julius Kloiber Schlachthof GMBH and others v. Austria, ECtHR, 4 April 2013, read judgment
These ECtHR decisions are the latest in a number of claims by slaughterhouses that their rights were infringed by the exaction of a surcharge by the Austrian national agricultural board. The Court decided that (a) the process of surcharging by administrative bodies engaged the criminal part of Article 6 and (b) the Austrian courts hearing appeals against the surcharges did not have the jurisdiction to carry out a “full review” of the decision to surcharge; only that way could one turn the combination of administrative decision and court decision into a decision by a “tribunal” complying with Article 6.
Now to unpack these complex but important ECtHR rules, and to look at how they play out domestically.
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4 April 2013 by Rosalind English
Raw and others v France – read judgment (only available in French)
This complicated inter-jurisdictional battle between estranged parents is a stark illustration of how difficult it can be in these sorts of cases to apply the law in the fog of family warfare.
Even though the mother’s case was upheld in the Strasbourg Court, one can tell from the modesty of the damages awarded and the strength of the minority opinions that the judges were extremely reluctant to apply hard letter law to the complicated case before them. Indeed in one partially concurring judgment, Judge Nussberger found it distinctly odd that the mother was able to join the children as parties, in the light of their opposition to her wish that they leave their father to join her.
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4 April 2013 by Rosalind English
The Queen (on the Application of James Dowsett) v Secretary of State for Justice [2013] EWHC 687 (Admin) – read judgment
The secretary of state’s policy in respect of rub-down searches of prisoners, which allows cross-gender searches in the case of male prisoners but not for female prisoners, does not discriminate against male prisoners on grounds of sex.
Background
The claimant, who has been a serving prisoner since 1989, challenged Secretary of State’s policy made under section 47(1) of the Prison Act 1952. This is the policy on so-called “rub-down” searches and, in particular, the policy that a male prisoner cannot normally object to such searches conducted by a female prison officer other than when his case falls within the exceptions based on “religious” or “cultural” grounds (a cultural ground means an objection that arises from a sincerely and deeply held belief, so it is not clear how this ground differs from religion). In consequence, the claimant had been searched by female officers on many occasions. Current policy with regard to female prisoners was that they could only be searched by female staff.
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31 March 2013 by David Hart KC
J1 v Secretary of State for the Home Department, 27 March 2013 – read judgment
A UKHRB editor, Angus McCullough QC, was a Special Advocate for J1 before the Court of Appeal, but not in SIAC below. He had nothing to do with the writing of this post
Hot on the Home Secretary’s loss of the Abu Qatada appeal, a reverse for her in another deportation case about someone whom the Court of Appeal described as “an important and significant member of a group of Islamist extremists in the UK,” and who was said to have links – direct or indirect – with men involved in the failed July 21 2005 bombing plot.
The general contours of the case will be familiar to Abu Qatada watchers, with claims under Articles 3 and 6 of the ECHR amongst others – that if J1 was returned to his country of origin (here, Ethiopia), his human rights would not be respected. There are however a number of interesting features about this decision of the Court of Appeal; firstly, it reversed a decision of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission against J1 on Article 3 (recall the heightened regard for SIAC as a specialist tribunal in the Abu Qatada appeal) , and secondly (in dismissing the Article 6 claim) it illustrates graphically some of the dilemmas facing Special Advocates when representing their clients in the imperfect world of “closed procedures” (a.k.a secret trials).
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31 March 2013 by Sarina Kidd
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular smorgasbord of human rights news. The full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here.
The focus this week has been on the continuing Abu Qatada saga. The Home Secretary lost her appeal and for the time being, Abu Qatada will remain in the country. In other news, the Justice and Security Bill edges towards the finish line, discussion continues on whether the UK will be able to remain in the EU if they leave the ECHR and people are split on the proposed press regulation measures.
by Sarina Kidd
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28 March 2013 by Jim Duffy
Othman (aka Abu Qatada) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWCA Civ 277 – read judgment
The Home Office last night assured its 70,000 Twitter followers that “it is not the end of the road”. Yet by the time she had reached page 17 of the Court of Appeal’s dismissal of her latest attempt to deport Abu Qatada, it might well have seemed that way to Theresa May.
In November, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) ruled that Qatada could not be deported to face a retrial for alleged terrorism offences due to the real risk of “a flagrant denial of justice”. Read my post on that decision here. Yesterday, Lord Dyson – the Masters of the Rolls and second most senior judge in England and Wales – together with Lord Justices Richards and Elias, rejected the Home Secretary’s appeal.
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26 March 2013 by Guest Contributor
Today we will see the beginning of the end of the passage of the Justice and Security Bill 
through Parliament: the process commonly known as parliamentary “ping-pong”.
The notion of a Bill being swatted back and forth across the Palace of Westminster is at its most accurate in the case of controversial legislation such as the “secret courts” Bill (see previous discussions of these controversies).
With allegations that ministers may have misled parliamentarians on the scope of their prized Bill, the picture of political game-playing might be apt. However, this is the last chance for parliament to consider the government’s case for the expansion of “closed material procedures” (CMP), where a party to proceedings and his lawyers (together with the public and the press) are excluded – and his interests represented by a publicly appointed security vetted lawyer, known as a Special Advocate. An analogy more serious than Boris’ “wiff-waff” might be needed for tonight’s debate. Some commentators have suggested the Lords will play “ping-pong with grenades”.
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25 March 2013 by Daniel Isenberg
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular smorgasbord of human rights news. The full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here.
There was a lot of reaction this week to the proposed Royal Charter on press regulation and the auxiliary legislation upon which it relies. Commentators are divided on whether the move will work or not, with most controversy surrounding the concept of a ‘relevant publisher’ and how this will affect small, online media. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has declared that it does have the power to read closed judgments of courts below, and therefore could, too, issue closed judgments. Debate continues about the shape of human rights in the UK, especially after the next election; whilst the ECHR slowly evolves with a new protocol ready for ratification.
by Daniel Isenberg
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23 March 2013 by Alasdair Henderson
Core Issues Trust v. Transport for London 22 March 2013 [2013] EWHC 651 (Admin) – read judgment.
In a judgment which is sure to provoke heated debate, the High Court has today ruled that the banning of an advert which read “NOT GAY! EX-GAY, POST-GAY AND PROUD. GET OVER IT!” from appearing on London buses was handled very badly by Transport for London (“TfL”) but was not unlawful or in breach of the human rights of the group behind the advert.
The advert was placed in April 2012 by Anglican Mainstream, a Christian charity, on behalf of Core Issues Trust, another Christian charity which describes its aim as “supporting men and women with homosexual issues who voluntarily seek change in sexual preference and expression” (see website here). It was intended as a response to another advert placed on London buses earlier in 2012 by Stonewall, the gay rights campaign group, which was in support of the proposal to introduce same-sex marriage and read “SOME PEOPLE ARE GAY. GET OVER IT!”
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22 March 2013 by Adam Wagner
On 26 March 2013 the House of Lords will consider the amendments to the Justice and Security Bill made by the House of Commons. We have reported on this blog on the Bill at various points in its progress, including on the Special Advocates’ views on the proposals.
Here, now, is the latest contribution: a Briefing Note in relation to two key amendments which will be considered next week (covering letter here). First, whether closed material procedures should only be used as a last resort, if a fair trial cannot otherwise be achieved. And second, whether the interests of open justice should be weighed in the balance by a Court in considering whether to order a closed procedure.
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