Search Results for: environmental/page/23/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)

When the EU implements Aarhus against itself, oh, how minimally it does it.

3 July 2012 by David Hart KC

On the EU watch again, I am afraid. We have looked at getting documents out of the EU, in the context of the IFAW case about the German Chancellor’s letter, via Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 (the EU Access to Information Regulation). And also on how to seek annulment of  EU laws and decisions from the EU courts (Inuits and all that). Both apply to all EU issues. We have mused on what might happen if the EU institutions sign up to the ECHR, so that complaints about them can go to the Strasbourg Court.

There is no right ‘to be forgotten’ by internet search engines

1 July 2013 by Rosalind English

Case C-131/12: Google Spain SL & Google Inc. v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) & Mario Costeja González – read Opinion of AG Jääskinen

This reference to the European Court of Justice (CJEU) concerned the application of the 1995 Data Protection Directive  to the operation of internet search engines. Apart from demonstrating the many complications thrown up by this convoluted and shortsighted piece of regulation, this case raises the fascinating question of the so-called right to be forgotten, and the issue of whether data subjects can request that some or all search results concerning them are no longer accessible through search engine.

All of these questions are new to the Court.
Continue reading →

The South African ‘Secrecy Bill’: where are we now – Caroline Stone

24 June 2012 by Guest Contributor

When two Nobel Laureates, an eminent constitutional lawyer and the Secretary General of COSATU (South Africa’s largest trade union federation) are unified in their stinging criticism of a proposed Bill, it may be the time has come for a redraft. Following 293 condemnatory submissions to the National Council of Provinces’ Ad Hoc Committee, the ANC has begun to make concessions.

In an unexpected volte-face at Committee deliberations last month, the ANC tabled a raft of amendments to the current draft of the controversial Protection of State Information Bill. Key proposals include the insertion of a narrow ‘public interest defence’ in relation to a Clause 43 charge of unlawful disclosure of classified information and scrapping of the intolerably low mental element of constructive knowledge – “ought reasonably to know” – from many of the offence-creating provisions. By virtue of the former amendment, an accused would also be able to rely on a defence of ‘wrongful classification’.

Continue reading →

Identity of social workers may be published following fostering bungle

13 January 2013 by Rosalind English

 Bristol City Council v C and others [2012] EWHC 3748 (Fam) – read judgment

This was an application for a reporting restriction order arising out of care proceedings conducted before the Bristol Family Proceedings Court. The proceedings themselves were relatively straightforward but, in the course of the hearing, information came to light which gave rise to concerns of an “unusual nature”, which alerted the interest of the press.

Background

After family court proceedings decided that child A was at risk of violence from her father, an interim care order was implemented and A was moved to foster carers. However some time afterwards the local authority received information from the police suggesting that someone living at the address of A’s foster carers had had access to child pornography. A also told social workers that another member of the foster household (also respondent to this action) had grabbed her around the throat. As a consequence police and social services visited the foster carers, informed them of the concerns about pornography, removed all computers from the house and moved A to another foster home. On the following day the male foster carer was found dead, having apparently committed suicide.
Continue reading →

The new Environmental Bill: what does it have in store?

13 March 2020 by Rafe Jennings

Introduction

On 26th February, parliament held its second reading of the government’s revised Environment Bill 2020, setting out its agenda for environmental reform and governance post-Brexit. It would provide the secretary of state with powers to create new regulations on air quality, water usage, waste disposal and resource management, biodiversity, and environmental risk from chemical contamination, and would create a new non-departmental public body, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), as an environment watchdog. The government describes it as the most “radical” environmental legislation to date, and sees the bill as paramount to ensuring both its 25 Year Environment Plan and its Net Zero Carbon Emissions by 2050 goal. 

The bill faced criticism both from parliament and from environmental groups. Greener UK, a coalition of 13 major environmental organisation, has said that as it stands, the bill “[would] not achieve what is has promised”, criticising it for lacking ambition and including no legal requirements for the government to prevent backsliding on EU environmental regulation. MPs, both Conservative and Labour, specifically criticised the lack of ambition in air quality. Others criticised the proposed structure of the OEP as being insufficiently independent of the government to match the ambitions of the bill to create “a world-leading environmental watchdog that can robustly hold the Government to account”. 

The Bill in Brief

The bill, as it stands, is divided into eight sections, which can be grouped into three major areas: giving the secretary of state the power to amend regulations in areas of environmental concern, legally enshrining biodiversity targets, and creating an environmental watchdog called the Office of Environmental Protection. All three are intimately tied to Brexit, with the government intending to use the bill to “transform our environmental governance once we leave the EU”.

Are “squalid” prison conditions and the response to the Covid-19 pandemic breaching human rights?

6 July 2020 by Jonathan Metzer

The latest reports of HM Chief Inspector of Prisons and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights lay bare the conditions in some British prisons.

Some of the language that is used to describe living conditions in the Chief Inspector’s report is shocking – including “appalling”, “squalid”, “intolerable”, “extremely squalid” and beset with “vermin and filth”.

The Chief Inspector’s view is that such conditions “should not feature in 21st century jails”. This conclusion was expressed prior to the further impact caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Since the pandemic, the Government has introduced measures to address the risk of contagion including a blanket ban on visits since around 24^th March which has still not been revisited despite the Covid-19 threat level having been reduced to level 3 on 19^th June.

The conclusion of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights is that the Government’s response and the deficiencies in the measures to mitigate the impact of this “have put at risk the right to family life of up to an estimated 17,000 children of mothers in prison”.

In the view of this author, the evidence indicates that in several respects the UK may well be in breach of vital protections for prisoners and their families under Articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This extended piece will examine these issues in detail.

Misconduct in public office – ECtHR reviews foreseeability of common law offence

6 September 2021 by Joanna Curtis

On 6 July 2021 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) published its judgment in the case of Norman v UK (Application no. 41387/17).  The case concerned Mr Robert Norman, an officer at Belmarsh prison, who in 2015 was convicted of misconduct in public office for passing a variety of information to a tabloid journalist in exchange for money. The ECtHR found that, in Mr Norman’s case, the offence itself did not constitute a breach of Article 7 ECHR (no punishment without law): Mr Norman’s conduct was sufficiently serious for it to have been foreseeable that it would constitute a criminal offence. The ECtHR also found that the newspaper’s disclosure of Mr Norman’s activities to the police, and his subsequent prosecution and conviction, did not breach his rights under Article 10 ECtHR (freedom of expression).

Strasbourg rules on anti-gay speech for the first time

13 March 2012 by Karwan Eskerie

Vejdeland and Others v Sweden (Application no. 1813/07) – Read judgment

 “Will both teacher and pupils simply become the next victims of the tyranny of tolerance, heretics, whose dissent from state-imposed orthodoxy must be crushed at all costs?”, asked Cardinal O’Brien in his controversial Telegraph article on gay-marriage. He was suggesting that changing the law to allow gay marriage would affect education as it would preclude a teacher from telling pupils that marriage can only mean a heterosexual union. He later insinuated that the change might lead to students being given material such as an “explicit manual of homosexual advocacy entitled The Little Black Book: Queer in the 21st Century.”

A few weeks before that article was published, the European Court of Human Rights handed down its first ever ruling on anti-gay speech, in a Swedish case where a group of young men, seemingly motivated by a similar abhorrence to that expressed by Cardinal O’Brien for the “tyranny of tolerance” in education, put a hundred or so leaflets in or on the students’ lockers at a secondary school. The leaflets read:

Continue reading →

Abolishing private schools and redistributing their assets: social justice at the expense of human rights?

3 October 2019 by Jeremy Hyam QC

A short examination of whether the policy endorsed by the Labour Party as part of its pledge to support social justice can be justified in law or is a flagrant contravention of human rights. This article was first published in Counsel magazine.

It didn’t take long for some rather well-known lawyers to point out there may be a flaw in this plan. Lord Lester QC of Herne Hill in a letter to the Times that weekend pithily explained that as long ago as 1982, he and David Pannick had advised the school governing bodies that ‘Labour’s plan would violate the European Convention on Human Rights and its first protocol. Our opinion was published. No one disputed our advice and the policy was dropped.’ He expressed surprise about the plan being reignited and continued to be of the view that the plan would violate the European Convention on Human Rights (‘the Convention’).

Supreme Court rules on true employment status of a contractor in Pimlico Plumbers case

18 June 2018 by Rosalind English

Pimlico Plumbers Ltd & Anor v Smith [2018] UKSC 29 – read judgment

The Supreme Court has unanimously dismissed Pimlico Plumbers Ltd’s appeal and upheld the Employment Tribunal’s ruling that the Respondent – Mr Smith – a plumbing and heating engineer had been:

(a) a “worker” within the meaning of section 230(3) of the Employment Rights Act 1996;

(b) a “worker” within the meaning of regulation 2(1) of the Working Time Regulations 1998 (SI 1998/1833)

(c) in Pimlico’s “employment” within the meaning of section 83(2)(a) of the Equality Act.

Questions concerning the true employment status of individuals who are presented to the paying customer as being an integral part of the business in question are increasingly common. Despite being presented to the end customer as such, the purported legal reality is that the individual is self-employed for both tax and employment law purposes. This is partly what is described by such arrangements being part of the so-called “gig economy”.
Continue reading →

The evolved mind: rising to the environmental challenge

20 March 2012 by Rosalind English

This is a shortened version of an article published by Rosalind English in the Journal of Environmental Law and Management November 2011: Cooperation and Public Goods: an evolutionary perspective on environmental law  23 ELM 278-283 

In my 2011 post Why be nice? Human rights under pressure I explored the extent to which our limited tendencies to altruism, insofar as they have survived natural selection, could be institutionalised and enforced. In this article I apply the scientific learning on our cooperative instincts to the question of environmental regulation. I argue that whilst we seem to be hard-wired to cooperate, environmental responsibility will only be instilled under certain conditions that resonate with our evolved psychology, and that most modern environmental law fails to acknowledge these conditions.
Continue reading →

So we cannot see Prince Charles’ advocacy letters after all

9 July 2013 by David Hart KC

R (o.t.a Rob Evans) v. Attorney-General,  Information Commissioner Interested Party, 9 July 2013 – read judgment

As we all know, the Prince of Wales has his own opinions. And he has shared those opinions with various government departments. Our claimant, a Guardian journalist, thought it would be interesting and important for the rest of us to see those opinions. So he made a request under the Freedom of Information Act and the Environmental Information Regulations to see these documents.

No joy, says the Administrative Court. Yes, a tribunal had ordered production of the letters, but that order had been overridden by the Attorney-General. What, says anybody used to the idea that courts do their bit, and the government does its bit – that’s unfair, government cannot override what the courts say.

The complication, as we shall see, is that the override is built into FOIA.

Continue reading →

Strasbourg Controversies, Deportation Amendments and Secret Court fallouts – The Human Rights Roundup

17 March 2013 by Sarina Kidd

Please welcome our new rounder upper, Sarina Kidd, a student on the GDL course at City University. Sarina joins Daniel Isenberg (our other rounder upper) and replaces Sam Murrant, who has moved on to pastures new after producing a fantastic run of human rights roundups. We wish him all the best and welcome Sarina on to the team – Adam Wagner

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.

In the News

The Human Rights Act and Strasbourg

The debate continues over the suggestion that a future Conservative government would repeal the Human Rights Act and withdraw from the European Convention.

Earlier this week Lady Hale, the UK’s most senior female judge, warned that her fellow judges would ‘regret’ a decision to repeal the HRA and that such a repeal would allow Parliament to pass laws incompatible with the ECHR.

Continue reading →

Case Law: JIH v News Group Newspapers, anonymity regained – Edward Craven

1 February 2011 by Guest Contributor

The Court of Appeal yesterday handed down judgment in the case of JIH v News Group Newspapers Ltd ([2011] EWCA Civ 42). In allowing the appeal against the order of Tugendhat J ([2010] EWHC 2818 (QB)) the Court ordered that the claimant’s anonymity should be restored.

Although the Court stressed that each decision is fact sensitive, this approach seems likely to be followed in most types of privacy injunction cases. This eagerly awaited decision adds to the growing body of case law concerning reporting restrictions where an injunction has been granted to restrain publication of information about a claimant’s private life.

Continue reading →

Why EU law will not make the trains run on time

21 December 2016 by David Hart KC

Govia GTR Railway Ltd v. ASLEF [2016] EWCA Civ 1309, 20 December 2016 – read judgment 

As all domestic readers know, there is a long running industrial dispute between Southern Rail and ASLEF, the train drivers’ union. The issue : DOOP  – Driver Only Operated Passenger – Trains. The company says they are perfectly safe, have been used extensively, and there will be no job losses. It claims over 600,000 journeys are being affected per day. The union strongly disputes that the new system of door closing is as safe as the old for passengers, and says that the new system is very stressful for drivers. 

Under domestic law, there appears to be no doubt that the strike action is lawful. In the time-honoured phrase, it is in furtherance and contemplation of a trade dispute, and the company accepted that a proper and lawful strike ballot was held – with a 75% turnout of members of whom 90% favoured the strike.

But the company argued that strike action was in breach of EU law, and hence it was entitled to an interlocutory injunction preventing the strike pending trial.

Continue reading →