Search Results for: environmental/page/16/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)

Privacy: the way ahead? Part 2 – Hugh Tomlinson QC

2 May 2011 by Guest Contributor

This is Part 2 of a three part series which originally appeared on Inforrm’s Blog. Part 1 can be read here and Part 3 is coming tomorrow.

The “new law of privacy” has not been uncontroversial.  Over the past week the press has complained bitterly about “gagging orders” and “judge made law”.  These criticisms are not new.  More than four years ago, with characteristic restraint, the commentator Melanie Phillips described the process of the development of privacy law in these terms:

“Driven by a deep loathing of the popular press, the judges have long been itching to bring in a privacy law by the back door. Thus free speech is to be made conditional on the prejudices of the judiciary …” (Melanie Phillips, “The law of human wrongs”, Daily Mail, 6 December 2006)

Her editor at the Mail, Paul Dacre, has been equally firm in his views:

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Redress for ‘historical’ child abuse in care: what can Scotland learn from Ireland? — Dr Maeve O’Rourke

21 October 2020 by Guest Contributor

The Redress for Survivors (Historical Child Abuse in Care) (Scotland) Bill is currently undergoing parliamentary scrutiny.

How survivors experienced Ireland’s institutional abuse ‘redress’ schemes (the Residential Institutions Redress Board (RIRB) and the Magdalen Restorative Justice Ex-Gratia Scheme) over the past two decades can tell us a great deal about the elements of good practice in the Scottish Bill and the areas requiring amendment.

The Scottish Bill improves greatly on some problems that have beset Irish redress schemes by proposing a non-adversarial approach, provision of legal and other assistance throughout a survivor’s engagement with the scheme, freedom of expression for survivors, and a prohibition on the review body reducing the payment proposed at first instance.

However, the Bill’s shortcomings include the waiver requirement, the five-year time limit for applications, the anticipated obligation on survivors to provide documentary evidence ‘in all but exceptional cases’, and the exclusion of corporal punishment from the scheme’s scope. My recent correspondence to the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee discusses all of these issues.

Here, I focus on the waiver. This requires that a survivor must trade their right to sue the State and any institution that has made ‘fair and meaningful contribution’ to the scheme in exchange for a payment of up to £80,000.

Scotland has the opportunity to use this redress scheme to support survivors who wish to pursue litigation against the State and/or other entities, by contributing to these individuals’ psychological and financial security in the short term. Instead of the current waiver proposal, the Bill could direct the courts to reduce any future damages award by the amount already paid by the relevant Defendant under the scheme. This approach would recognise the absolute and inalienable human right of survivors of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment to accountability for such abuse, and to compensation commensurate with the gravity of the harm suffered. Such recognition would strengthen current and future protections against torture and ill-treatment while redressing past failings.

A newcomer to the world of injunctions

19 December 2023 by Guest Contributor

Factual background

The appeal in Wolverhampton City Council and others v London Gypsies and Travellers and others [2023] UKSC 47 concerned injunctions obtained by over 38 different local authorities between 2015 and 2020 to prevent unauthorised encampments by Gypsies and Travellers. These “newcomer injunctions” as they are known, are a wholly new form of injunction, granted without prior notice, against persons unidentified at time of the grant of the injunction and who have not yet performed, or even threatened to perform the acts which the injunction prohibits. They therefore apply “to potentially anyone in the world” [143(i)].

Local authorities sought to use such injunctions, due to the inefficacy of obtaining an injunction against named Gypsies or Travellers who, by the time proceedings have commenced, have left, and been replaced by another group, against whom the injunction has no effect.

Beanstalks, bad press and the death of juries? – The Human Rights Roundup

21 June 2011 by Graeme Hall

Welcome back to the human rights roundup, a regular bulletin of all the law we haven’t quite managed to feature in full blog posts. The full list of links, updated each day, can be found here.

by Graeme Hall

In the news:

Continuing with their assessment of the UK’s law and legal system, the Law and Lawyers’ blog has produced the latest in its series, No. 4:  Juries. This comes at an opportune moment given the recent jailing of a juror for contempt of court after using Facebook to contact an acquitted defendant. This case has seen a possible dichotomy of opinion arise: passionate supporters of trial by jury, such as barrister Felicity Gerry and Tory politician David Davis; or that of Joshua Rozenberg who poses the thorny question; “Whom would you prefer to be judged by – a highly trained, publicly accountable circuit judge? Or 12 people like [jailed juror] Joanne Fraill?”.

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Will the Detainee Inquiry be human rights compliant?

8 August 2011 by Matthew Flinn

Ten human rights campaign groups and the lawyers for a number of detainees alleging UK involvement in their mistreatment have confirmed that they will be boycotting the impending Detainee Inquiry.

We recently posted on the publication of the Terms of Reference and the Protocol for the Detainee Inquiry and set out some of the reaction to it. At the time, a number of lawyers representing those who claimed to have suffered mistreatment threatened to boycott the inquiry, claiming it would be a whitewash. As the BBC has reported, they have now been joined by a number of Human Rights organizations, and it seems that the clear intention is for the boycott to go ahead.

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No anonymity for bankers involved in Libor scandal

30 January 2013 by Rosalind English

Graiseley Properties Ltd and others (Claimants) v Barclays Bank Plc (Defendant); Various employees and ex-employees of Barclays Bank plc and Telegraph Group and others (interveners) [2013] EWHC 67 (Comm) 21 January 2013 – read judgment

The Commercial Court has resisted an application to anonymise those individuals at Barclays involved in the LIBOR scandal.

In his firm dismissal of the arguments Flaux J has confirmed the principle that anonymity orders will only be made in cases where the applicant for the order has established that it is strictly necessary for the proper administration of justice. The employees’ claim they should remain anonymous until trial failed at the first hurdle, “because they had simply not established by clear and cogent evidence, or at all, that the order they seek or any aspect of it is strictly necessary for the proper administration of justice.”
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Victory for claimants in Sarah Everard vigil case

14 March 2022 by Shaheen Rahman

Leigh & Ors v (1) The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis and (2) Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Interested Party) [2022] EWHC 527

A year after the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by serving Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens, the Divisional Court has given its judgment on the MPS response to the proposed vigil for Ms Everard organised by #ReclaimTheseStreets on Clapham Common, near where she was last seen alive.

The aim of the vigil was to highlight risks to women’s safety and to campaign for a change in attitudes and responses to violence against women. However, it was at a time when Regulations imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic prohibited a gathering of more than 30 persons in a public outdoor place in a Tier 4 area such as London.

MPS would not sanction the plan for the vigil and it was cancelled (as discussed here). The Claimants alleged that this was because the Met had unlawfully thwarted the plan. The Court agreed.

The judgment is a comprehensive victory for the Claimants, hailed by them as a “victory for women” and an “absolute vindication”. It is also a landmark decision in the context of debate as to the impact of the Covid regulations on the fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in primary legislation pursuant to the HRA. It contains a granular analysis of the requirements of the proportionality assessment to be undertaken in such cases. It has particular resonance given controversial changes to the way police are able to control protests currently being debated in parliament as part of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

More poor human rights reporting on Somali foreign criminals case

30 June 2011 by Adam Wagner

In today’s Daily Express, Stephen Pollard has written an article entitled We must regain right to kick out foreign criminals. There is a lot wrong with the article, not least the misrepresentation – not for the first time, either – of a 2007 case involving the failed deportation of headmaster Philip Lawrence’s killer.

Pollard is responding to the European Court of Human Rights ruling in Sufi and Elmi v UK, in which the court ruled that the situation in Somalia was so dire that except in very limited scenarios it will not be possible to deport people back to the country. Rosalind English has already examined the case in more detail.

As I say, there are many problems with the article, which follows the standard anti-human rights act playbook. It is worth addressing them as they are likely to be repeated elsewhere. Here are just a few.

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Womb for living?

23 May 2018 by Rosalind English

This week Irish voters will decide whether there should be a continuing constitutional protection for the ‘unborn’. Novelist Sally Rooney’s article this week’s edition of the London Review of Books is short, but very well worth the read.

Pregnancy, entered into willingly, is an act of generosity, a commitment to share the resources of life with another incipient being. Such generosity is in no other circumstances required by law.

No legal system will force another person to donate living tissue, no matter how needy the recipient. An organ donor is not bound to the world’s needy recipients.  Unless, Rooney points out, the law is concerning itself with a foetus.

If the foetus is a person, it is a person with a vastly expanded set of legal rights, rights available to no other class of citizen: the foetus may make free, non-consensual use of another living person’s uterus and blood supply, and cause permanent, unwanted changes to another person’s body. In the relationship between foetus and woman, the woman is granted fewer rights than a corpse.

The referendum this week concerns the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, introduced in the early eighties, which protects ‘the unborn’.

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The ECJ on Aslyum, Greece; the UK Protocol on the EU Charter – Dr Cian Murphy

28 December 2011 by Guest Contributor

Last Wednesday, the European Court of Justice issued a flurry of judgments just before the Christmas break. Indeed, there were so many interesting and important decisions amongst the twenty or so handed down that seems foolish to consider any of them the ‘most important’. Nonetheless the judgment in NS and Others v SSHD (C-411/10) must be a contender for the title.

The case concerns an asylum seeker in Britain who first entered the EU through Greece. The Dublin Regulation, which governs this aspect of EU asylum law, would ordinarily dictate that the applicant should be sent to Greece to have his asylum claim considered there. However, Mr Saeedi challenged his transfer to Greece, claiming that his human rights would be infringed by such a transfer as Greece would be unable to process his application. NS was joined with an Irish case, ME & Others v Refugee Applications Commissioner & MEJLR (C-493/10), which raised similar questions for EU law.

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Article 2 and the provision of healthcare — Part 2

23 November 2020 by Shaheen Rahman

This three-part extended analysis discusses the important recent authorities on article 2 ECHR in the context of the provision of healthcare. Part 1 examined the leading case of Lopes de Sousa. In this part, the way that this case has been addressed will be considered.

Criticism of the approach in Lopes de Sousa

It will be apparent that the requirements for a breach of the substantive obligation under article 2 set by the Grand Chamber overlap to some extent, and it is difficult to understand how all the factors identified in denial of treatment cases can be cumulatively required, as opposed to being alternative bases for a violation in some instances.  On any view, however, the overall effect is extremely restrictive and has been criticised as such, not least in a powerfully worded dissenting judgment from Judge Pinto de Albuquerque:

For a State to avoid international-law responsibility under the Convention, it is not sufficient for health-care activities to be circumscribed by a proper legislative, administrative and regulatory framework and for a supervisory mechanism to oversee the implementation of this framework, as the Court held in Powell […] By evading the question of the specific protection of the individual right of each patient and instead protecting health professionals in an untouchable legal bubble, Powell renders the Convention protection illusory for patients. Powell seeks a Convention that is for the few, the health professionals and their insurance companies, not for the many, the patients. This must be rejected outright. [64]

[…]

This case could have been a tipping point. The Grand Chamber did not want it to be that way. I regret that, by rejecting a purposive and principled reading of the Convention, the Court did not deliver full justice [94]

Judge Serghides, also dissenting, but in less trenchant terms, regretted the Grand Chamber had “missed a good opportunity to follow Elena Cojocaru and to abandon the Powell principle for good or distinguish the present case from that old decision.” [15]

Rules, Rights (rings) and the Twitter Joke – The Human Rights Roundup

30 July 2012 by Sam Murrant

Gratuitous Olympics image

Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your weekly bulletin 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.

In the news

Whilst the eyes of the world are on London’s Olympic Games, the eyes of this blog are on a series of important rulings which our judges produced last week just before they took the short stroll from the Royal Courts of Justice to Horse Guards Parade watch the beach volleyball. There were three particularly important decisions: firstly, Paul Chambers won his appeal against criminal conviction following a Twitter Joke. Secondly, the recent Alvi case clarified the meaning of the word “rule” in immigration law as a response; and finally the RT (Zimbabwe) case established that a person subject to deportation is not to be expected to lie about one’s beliefs (or lack thereof) to avoid persecution.

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How most Australians do human rights without a Human Rights Act

9 July 2012 by David Hart KC

A sparkling, erudite and funny lecture last Thursday 5 July from the Chief Justice of Australia, exploring how the Australian system with a constitution, but without a Bill of Rights/Human Rights Act, seeks to deliver human rights protection – thanks to the Administrative Law Bar Association and the Angl0-Australasian Law Society. I shall try to summarise the differences, though, rather like the pre-HRA UK position, Australian human rights protection is a subtle one and a difficult one to explain in a short post. Particularly for a Pom. So I am in part throwing down a challenge to our Australian readers (up until this point, at least, quite a few) to comment on what follows.

The constitutional framework  is all important. There are three major differences between this and the UK “constitution”. The first is the presence of a written constitution over 100 years old, and amendable only by referendum. The second is a federal system laid down by that constitution. Out of that arrangement comes a separation of powers between judiciary, legislature, and executive, and also between the Commonwealth (i.e, the federation) and each State, taken against the background of general common law principles drawn from the States’ shared colonial history. And the third is the lack of any substantive human rights instrument applicable to Australia as a whole.

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Parliament Square protesters to be evicted by Mayor

30 June 2010 by Adam Wagner

The Mayor of London has won a court order to evict a camp of protesters from Parliamentary Square. The protesters have won a temporary reprieve by appealing the decision.

As we posted earlier this month, during the build-up to the General Election a number of protesters erected tents and flags in Parliament Square, a green outside the Houses of Parliament. The protesters named the site “Democracy Village”.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, launched an action for trespass against the protestors.

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No duty to investigate in respect of civilian deaths in Malaya in 1948

20 March 2014 by Rosalind English

Keyu and Others v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Office and another [2014] EWCA Civ 312, 19 March 2014 – read judgment

After an interesting analysis of the time limits for claims under Convention in response to a claim made in relation to actions by British soldiers in Malaya in 1948, the Court of Appeal dismissed all their  human rights, customary international law and Wednesbury  arguments.  There was no obligation in domestic law for the state to hold an inquiry into the deaths of civilians killed by British soldiers  in colonial Malaya in 1948, even though the Strasbourg Court might well hold that such a duty ensued.

Background

After the defeat of Japan in WWII and their withdrawal from Malaysia, there ensued a bitter conflict between Malaysian civilians Chinese-backed communist insurgents. In 1948 Commonwealth forces got involved and there ensued a guerrilla war fought between Commonwealth armed forces and the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), from until 1960.
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