Search Results for: environmental/page/22/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)
4 July 2022 by Natasha Isaac
Background
The Appellant in R (on the application of Elan-Cane) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) [2021] UKSC 56 was assigned female at birth, however during and after puberty they felt revulsion at their body and underwent surgery in 1989 and 1990 to alleviate those feelings. The Appellant who identifies as non-gendered, is a campaigner for the legal and social recognition of this category. The provision of “X passports” are a focal point of the Appellant’s campaign.
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15 January 2018 by Angus McCullough KC
A flash-back to 1980: the first series of the TV sitcom, ‘Yes Minister’ and a discussion between a Permanent Secretary (Sir Humphrey Appleby) and his Minister (the Rt Hon Jim Hacker MP):
Sir Humphrey: Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last five hundred years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it’s worked so well?
Hacker: That’s all ancient history, surely?
Sir Humphrey: Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn’t work. Now that we’re inside we can make a complete pig’s breakfast of the whole thing — set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch… The Foreign Office is terribly pleased; it’s just like old times.
Hacker: But surely we’re all committed to the European ideal?
Sir Humphrey: [chuckles] Really, Minister.
Nearly 40 years later, as the Westminster Government seeks to extract the UK from the European project, chuckles are in short supply (in contrast to articles about Brexit). This piece considers the role of judicial review as the EU Withdrawal Bill is enacted, and after Brexit day has dawned – and the capacity of the Administrative Court to meet the increased demands that will predictably be made of it.
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26 October 2010 by Adam Wagner
Cadder (Appellant) v Her Majesty’s Advocate (Respondent) (Scotland) [2010] UKSC 43 – Read judgment / press summary
The UK Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that Scottish criminal law, which allows a person to be detained and questioned by the police for up to six hours without access to a solicitor, breached the European Convention on Human Rights. The decision will not allow closed cases to be reopened but will affect cases which have not yet gone to trial.
The court ruled that whilst the Scottish High Court’s decision was entirely in line with previous domestic authority, that authority cannot survive in the light of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights’ decision in Salduz v Turkey (2008) 49 EHRR 421 and in subsequent cases. Properly interpreted, Salduz requires a detainee to have had access to a lawyer from the time of the first interview unless there are compelling reasons, in light of the particular circumstances of the case, to restrict that right.
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23 April 2013 by Guest Contributor
The Ministry of Justice has released its response to the comments generated by the consultation paper on judicial review that was published in December. Unsurprisingly, the Government has signalled that it intends to press ahead with most of the proposals upon which it consulted. In particular, it plans to implement the following proposals:
- Time limits The time limit for judicial review (which at three months is already very short) will be reduced to six weeks in planning cases and thirty days in procurement cases. The Government recognizes that these timescales are so short that compliance with the Pre-Action Protocol will be impossible, so it will invite the judiciary to disapply the Protocol in such cases. Given that one of the objectives of the Pre-Action Protocol is to encourage pre-litigious resolution of disputes, it is not clear how this will promote the Government’s objective of reducing recourse to litigation.
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2 August 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated (4 Aug 2010)
Army generals are notorious for fighting the last war instead of the current one. Human rights campaigners may be in danger of the same mistake if they get their strategy wrong for the new coalition government.
The great civil liberties fight of the last decade centered on New Labour’s anti-terrorism measures. Keystone issues such as stop and search, 42-day detention without charge and control orders caught the public imagination and have been the subject of bitterly fought and largely successful campaigns by rights groups.
The other significant fights have been over the so-called surveillance state; for example CCTV, the DNA database and ASBOs, all of which are now being considered for reform by the new government.
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5 July 2016 by Rosalind English
… well there aren’t exactly fifty ways to leave the European Union, but from the vociferous debate in legal as well as political circles we might be excused for thinking there are a great deal more. Today’s Times reports that “1,000 people join legal fight against Brexit” to ensure that parliament votes before the government formally triggers the exit procedure from the EU. David Pannick will argue the challenge. But against such a legal heavyweight is former law lord Peter Millett, whose letter published in yesterday’s Times declares that the exercise of our treaty rights is a matter for the executive and the triggering of Article 50 does not require parliamentary approval. So whom are we to believe?
In her guest post Joelle Grogan has speculated upon the possible future for rights in the immediate aftermath of the referendum so I won’t cover the same ground. I will simply draw out some of the questions considered in two reports produced before the result of the referendum was known: 1. House of Lords EU Committee Report (HL138) and the more detailed analysis by Richard Gordon QC and Rowena Moffatt: 2 “Brexit: The Immediate Legal Consequences”.
- The House of Lords EU Report
Is Article 50 the only means of leaving the EU?
States have an inherent right to withdraw. It would be inconceivable that the member states of such a close economic arrangement would force an unwilling state to continue to participate. The significance of Article 50 therefore lies not in establishing a right to withdraw but in defining the procedure for doing so.
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15 July 2014 by Guest Contributor
PLP v Secretary of State for Justice [2014] EWHC 2365 – Read judgment / summary
As the House of Lords is scheduled to vote on the Government’s proposals for a residence test for access to legal aid, Angela Patrick, Director of Human Rights Policy at JUSTICE considers today’s judgment of the Divisional Court in PLP v Secretary of State for Justice.
While we are all following the exciting live feeds on both the reshuffle and the progress of emergency legislation on surveillance, the freshly appointed Attorney General, Jeremy Wright MP, may want to cast his eyes to BAILLI.
The Administrative Court may this morning have handed him one of his first “to-do” list items. In – PLP v Secretary of State for Justice – a rare three judge Divisional Court has held that the Government’s proposal to introduce a residence test for legal aid – where all applicants will have to prove 12 months continuous lawful residence in the UK – is both ultra vires and discriminatory.
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15 July 2014 by David Hart KC
Public Law Project v Secretary of State for Justice [2014] EWHC 2365 – Read judgment / summary
Angela Patrick of JUSTICE has provided an excellent summary of this important ruling, which declared a proposed statutory instrument to be ultra vires the LASPO Act under which it was to have been made. The judgment is an interesting one, not least for some judicial fireworks in response to the Lord Chancellor’s recourse to the Daily Telegraph after the hearing, but before judgment was delivered.
But more of that after some thoughts on the discrimination ruling.
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15 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated x 2 | The lord chancellor Ken Clarke has announced plans for significant cuts to the legal aid system, which provides funding for legal representation to those who otherwise cannot afford it. The plans were largely as expected and will be open to consultation.
Update: The MoJ has published full details of the plans:
- The main documents, including impact assessments are here
- The proposals can be downloaded here
- Views on the consultation can be submitted online here
- A summary of the plans can be found here.
- The consultation on proposals for reform for civl litigation funding (the Jackson review) is here.
The scale of the cuts is expected to be around £350m out of the £2.2bm budget, which is just over 15%. Some of the plans had been leaked with partial accuracy by the Sunday Telegraph.
Update x 2: Read a summary of the reaction to the cuts here and an analysis of the underlying rational here.
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26 August 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated 27 Aug (17:15) | A High Court judge has branded the Legal Service Commission’s recent and highly controversial tender for legal aid work as a “dreadful” and potentially irrational decision.
The comments of Mr Justice Collins came in a permission hearing (i.e., only the first stage of a two-part process) on the application by the Community Law Partnership to judicially review the LSC’s recent tender, and specifically the rejection of CLP’s own application. It appears from a Law Society Gazette article that the hearing was adjourned, with the judge warning the LSC to consider its position carefully, and that if it fights and loses the decision could set a dangerous precedent. The hearing is to resume in around a week and a half.
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6 March 2013 by Guest Contributor
In a rare public intervention Lord Neuberger, President of the UK Supreme Court, has flagged three important issues that should be of concern to us all.
Firstly, Lord Neuberger has quite rightly criticised the cuts to the Legal Aid budget. Denying litigants a chance to go to court will create ‘frustration and a lack of confidence in the system’, or people will be tempted to ‘take the law into their own hands.’ Lord Neuberger observed that “as one of the three remaining articles of the Magna Carta (1297) says “to no man shall we deny justice”, nowadays “to no man and no woman shall we deny justice”, and we are at risk of going back on that.’
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11 December 2014 by Hannah Noyce
R (on the application of Gordon-Jones) v Secretary of State for Justice and Governor of HM Prison Send [2014] EWHC 3997 (Admin) – read judgment
Contrary to what some media reports would have us believe, Prison Service Instruction (“PSI”) 30/2013 did not impose an absolute ban on books in prisons. It did, however, impose severe restrictions on the possession or acquisition of books which a prisoner can treat as his or her own. The High Court has found that those restrictions could not be justified by the limited provision of prison library services and are therefore unlawful.
The Claimant is a prisoner serving an indefinite sentence for the protection of the public at HMP Send. She has a doctorate in English literature and a serious passion for reading. The books she wants to read are often not the sort which are required by fellow prisoners or readily available through the prison library (the Dialogues of Marcus Aurelius and Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, for example, crop up in the judgment) and she therefore relies on having books sent or brought to her by people outside the prison.
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31 January 2020 by Guest Contributor
In this article, Uzay Yasar Aysev and Wayne Jordash QC of Global Rights Compliance analyse the two cases which have been brought in the international courts relating to the persecution of the Rohingya people by the Myanmar authorities.
Readers may want to read the first article about this topic published on the Blog here.
To read more about Global Rights Compliance’s work with the Rohingya, please see: https://www.globalrightscompliance.com/en/projects/the-rohingya-accountability-project.
On 11 November 2019, Republic of The Gambia initiated a case against Myanmar before the International Court of Justice (‘ICJ’ or the ‘Court’), alleging that the atrocities committed against the Rohingya people during “clearance operations” from around October 2016 violated the Genocide Convention (‘Convention’).
In
its application, The Gambia requested the Court to instate six provisional
measures. Provisional measures are ordered to safeguard the relevant, plausible
rights of the Parties that risk being extinguished before the Court determines the
merits of the case (LaGrand Case, para. 102). The Gambia contended that the Rohingya were facing threats
to their existence and had to be protected from Myanmar’s genocidal intent.
On 23 January 2020, the Court issued an Order granting four of the six provisional measures requested. Myanmar was ordered to:
- Take all
measures within its power to prevent the commission of genocide against the
Rohingya;
- Ensure that its
military, any irregular armed units which may be directed or supported by it,
any organizations and persons which may be subject to its control direction or
influence, do not commit, attempt or conspire to commit genocide, or incite or
be complicit in the commission of genocide against the Rohingya;
- Take effective
measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence
related to allegations of genocide; and
- Submit a report to the Court on all measures taken to
give effect to the provisional measures order within four months and thereafter
every six months, until the Court renders a final decision.
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28 June 2016 by Adam Wagner
It is only four days since the UK public narrowly voted to leave the European Union. A lot of people are now arguing for a second referendum. But would that be democratic?
Like many people who voted to remain, I have been feeling down about the result. My social media feeds have been full of many of the states of grief, but mostly anger and denial. It is denial which, I think, is motiving the calls for a second referendum. I am therefore wary, as someone who would love for this all magically to go away, of the allure of those arguments. But, we are in uncharted waters. Millions are calling for a second referendum on the original question, and now likely Conservative leadership candidate Jeremy Hunt has called for a second referendum to decide whether the country would accept an exit deal.
Hunt’s argument is enticing, at first glance anyway. He begins by saying that ‘The people have spoken – and Parliament must listen“. But – but! – “we did not vote on the terms of our departure“. In short, he wants to open up “a space for a “Norway plus” option for us – full access to the single market with a sensible compromise on free movement rules”. And he thinks the best way to make that happen is to negotiate an informal deal before invoking Article 50 (therefore setting a two-year time limit) and “once again… trust the British people to decide on whether or not it is a good deal”.
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30 June 2016 by Hannah Noyce
The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) has published a damning report on the UK’s implementation of economic, social and cultural rights. The report is available here (under “Concluding Observations”).
The CESCR monitors the implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), an international treaty to which the UK is a party. State parties are required to submit regular reports to the Committee outlining the legislative, judicial, policy and other measures they have taken to implement the rights set out in the treaty. The Committee may also take into account evidence from “Civil Society Organisations” (Amnesty International and Just Fair were among those who made submissions in respect of the UK). The Committee then addresses its concerns and recommendations to the State party in the form of “concluding observations”.
The Committee’s last report on the UK was back in 2009, so this was its first opportunity to review the austerity measures put in place since 2010.
It’s fair to say that the UK did not come off well. With regard to austerity, the Committee was:
“…seriously concerned about the disproportionate adverse impact that austerity measures, introduced since 2010, are having on the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights by disadvantaged and marginalized individuals and groups.”
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