Search Results for: environmental/page/36/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)
15 January 2026 by Rosalind English
In his recent Substack post, Joshua Rozenberg has drawn attention to a recent speech delivered by Jonathan Hall KC to the think tank Policy Exchange called The Lessons of Bondi Beach: Terrorism, Hatred and the Law.
“It sometimes seems to me that it is not so much extremism as normalisation that we have to fear”, Hall observed.
It is indeed an important and nuanced reflection on the subject that is worth summarising again on the UKHRB for readers who are not subscribed to Rozenberg’s Substack or who have missed it for any other reason.
Jonathan Hall KC’s lecture articulates a compelling case that contemporary anti‑Jewish agitation cannot be treated as routine protest but must be recognised as a vector of risk for real-world violence and ultimately terrorism. His core insight is that what threatens liberal democracy is less spectacular “extremism” than the slow “normalisation” of sectarian calls to violence, particularly against Jews. For our lawyer readers, the speech matters because it shows how existing doctrines on precaution, public order and incitement must be read through the lens of this normalisation if law is to discharge its protective function without abandoning its commitment to free expression.
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9 August 2023 by anuragdeb
In the early hours of 24 March 1922, a group of men, of whom most were in police uniform, broke into the North Belfast home of prominent Catholic businessman Owen McMahon and shot him dead, along with four of his sons and a male employee. Between 1920 and 1922, hundreds of people were killed, and thousands forced out of their homes, particularly in Belfast and the surrounding townlands. These grizzly events marked the birth of Northern Ireland.
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9 August 2010 by Adam Wagner
The Strasbourg court
A new Government report on the implementation of European Court of Human Rights judgments has highlighted the vexed issue of the rightful place of such rulings in domestic law. Many decisions, for example on prisoner voting rights, have languished unimplemented for years and it remains to be seen whether the Coalition Government will do any more to fulfil its legal obligations to the thousands affected.
The report sets out the Government’s position on the implementation of human rights judgments from the domestic and European courts. It is a response to the Joint Committee on Human Rights‘ March 2010 report, in which the committee criticised “inexcusable” delays in implementation.
The United Kingdom is obliged to implement judgments of the European Court of Human Rights under Article 46 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In 2009, the UK was found to have violated the European Convention 14 times, which represents 1% of the overall total of violations found by the Court. However, the UK has a high proportion of leading cases outstanding for more than 5 years.
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12 April 2021 by Byul Ryan-Im
In the news:
On Wednesday, Amnesty International released its 2020/21 report on the state of the world’s human rights. Amnesty’s UK director, Kate Allen, also called for an inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic and said “the government is now shamefully trying to strip away our right to lawfully challenge its decisions, no matter how poor they are.” The report highlighted human rights concerns related to the government’s response to COVID-19, including health, immigration, domestic abuse and housing. There were also concerns around police conduct around racial discrimination and excessive use of force against protesters; during the first national lockdown in May, 10,000 of 43,644 recorded stop and searches conducted against young black men. Several legal developments were criticised for falling short of human rights standards, including the Immigration Act, the Gender Recognition Act, the Domestic Abuse Bill, the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill, the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill, which would create a “presumption against prosecution” for members of the British Army accused of overseas crimes, including torture, committed more than five years earlier.
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12 December 2022 by Emma-Louise Fenelon
In Episode 174 Emma-Louise Fenelon speaks to Sir Jonathan Jones about recent developments in public law and the Constitution, including recent political turbulence, the Union, the Northern Ireland Protocol, Judicial Review reforms, Human Rights Act reforms and Standards and Ethics in public life.
Sir Jonathan Guy Jones KCB KC is a British lawyer, appointed in March 2014 and serving until his resignation on 8 September 2020 as HM Procurator General, Treasury Solicitor and Head of the Government Legal Service, and so the Permanent Secretary of the Government Legal Department. He is now a Senior Consultant, Public and Constitutional Law, at Linklaters. He tweets at @SirJJKC
This Episode mentions:
- HM & Ors [2022] EWHC 2729 (14 October 2022), judgment here, covered by Marina Wheeler KC on the Blog here
- The Good Law Project v SSHSC [2022] EWHC 298 (15 February 2022) judgment here
- Reference by the Lord Advocate (Rev1) [2022] UKSC 31 (23 November 2022) judgment here
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6 April 2012 by Richard Mumford
DL v A Local Authority & Others [2012] EWCA Civ 253 – Read judgment
Where adults have capacity under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA 2005), does the “great safety net” of the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction still exist to guard them from the effect on their decision making of undue influence, coercion, duress etc? In its judgment handed down on 28 March 2012, the Court of Appeal confirmed that it does.
DL proceeded in the High Court and the Court of Appeal on assumed (as opposed to agreed) facts, many if not all of which were contested by the appellant. For the court’s purposes however, it was assumed that DL, a man in his 50s who lived with his mother and father (90 and 85 respectively), had behaved aggressively towards his parents, physically and verbally, controlling access to visitors and seeking to coerce his father into transferring ownership of the house into DL’s name, whilst pressuring his mother into moving into a care home against her wishes. The Court of Appeal’s judgment uses the term “elder abuse” for such a situation.
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2 May 2013 by Guest Contributor
R (on the application of T) v Legal Aid Agency (formerly Legal Services Commission) [2013] EWHC 960 (Admin) Collins J, 26 April 2013 read judgment This successful challenge to a decision by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) arose from an expert assessor in family proceedings – not unnaturally – refusing to begin work unless funding was in place. If the LAA are asked to fund an assessment on behalf of a party with legal aid, then it is common for lawyers to obtain prior authority from the LAA to ensure that the expert will be paid for their work. If not, then the lawyers themselves can be liable for an expert’s costs. In this case, prior authority to pay for the expert assessment had been refused by the LAA thus resulting in further court hearings and delay in the resolution of the case for the children.
The application for judicial review of the LAA came before Collins J. He concluded that:
For the reasons given the decision of the defendant was wrong in law. Reasons have not been given. This might not have led to any relief beyond a declaration if I were persuaded that the only result could be that the decision was confirmed. Not only am I not so persuaded but I find it difficult to see that it would be reasonable, at least without engaging with the judge whether in writing or orally, to fail to comply with what she has decided is necessary.
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22 October 2012 by Rosalind English
The recognition of a right to life, liberty, and the autonomy of the individual and the mandate of government to secure these rights is being threatened by an increasingly illiberal notion of “human dignity”, says evolutionary psychologist Stephen Pinker.
His 2008 broadside in The New Republic took to task a now defunct body, the US President’s Council on Bioethics whose publication Human Dignity and Bioethics is shot through with disquiet about advances in biotechnology. It could not be more different from the enlightened report issued earlier this year by the Council’s successor calling on the current administration not to stifle biomedical research with over-restrictive regulation (see my post). Does the contrast between the present advisory body’s recommendations and the report put before the previous President signal a fundamental change in the way we approach progress in this field? Probably not. Only two weeks ago, Sir John Gurdon (the Nobel physiologist whom schoolteachers had written off as a scientist) bemoaned the regulatory restrictions that make important therapies too costly to pursue. Pinker’s dismay at the “scientific illiteracy” of society rings true today:
Ever since the cloning of Dolly the sheep a decade ago, the panic sown by conservative bioethicists, amplified by a sensationalist press, has turned the public discussion of bioethics into a miasma of scientific illiteracy. Brave New World, a work of fiction, is treated as inerrant prophesy. Cloning is confused with resurrecting the dead or mass-producing babies. Longevity becomes “immortality,” improvement becomes “perfection,” the screening for disease genes becomes “designer babies” or even “reshaping the species.” The reality is that biomedical research is a Sisyphean struggle to eke small increments in health from a staggeringly complex, entropy-beset human body. It is not, and probably never will be, a runaway train.
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16 January 2023 by Matthew Johnson
In the news
Grant Shapps, the Business Secretary, has set out the anti-strike laws that are planned to enforce minimum levels of service during strike action. Under the proposals, some employees would be required to work during a strike and could be fired if they refuse. It would be for the ministers to set the minimum levels of service, and there would be no automatic protection from unfair dismissal in breaching these levels. Unions have criticised the bill for being ‘undemocratic, unworkable, and almost certainly illegal’, and Labour have stated it would repeal the legislation if it wins the next general election. The bill has been defended by Shapps, who states it is aimed to protect lives and livelihoods.
The investigation into alleged war crimes in Ukraine will be considered in a major international meeting to be held in London in March. In attendance will be the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, in order to inform about the court’s work in investigating war crimes. The meeting comes as Putin continues to target crucial energy infrastructure as he destroys central heating supplies in the heart of winter. Dominic Raab has stated that ‘Russian forces should know they cannot act with impunity and we will back Ukraine until justice is served’; the meeting is designed to determine how to further assist the ICC in bringing that justice.
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29 November 2013 by Rosalind English
Zoumbas (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) On appeal from the Inner House of the Court of Session, [2012] CSIH 87 [2013] UKSC 74 – read judgment
The Supreme Court has clarified the principles to be applied when considering the welfare of children in deportation cases. The following summary is based on the Supreme Court’s Press Summary.
The appellant (Mr Z) and his wife (Mrs Z) are nationals of the Republic of Congo currently living in Glasgow with their three children, now aged 9, 5 and 2. Mr Z entered the UK illegally in May 2001 using a French passport that did not belong to him. He married Mrs Z in November 2003 after she had entered the previous year using a forged French passport and both their asylum claims had been refused. Their appeals were unsuccessful . In October 2005 Mrs Z and the couple’s daughter (A) were detained and removed to Congo. For the following ten months, Mr Z was treated as an absconder having failed to report to the authorities.
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7 December 2020 by Charlotte Gilmartin
R (Article 39) v Secretary of State for Education [2020] EWCA Civ 1577
The issue before the Court of Appeal was whether the Secretary of State for Education had acted unlawfully in failing to consult certain bodies representing children in care, including the Children’s Commissioner for England, before introducing the Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (“the Amendment Regulations”) following the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic.
On 24 November 2020, the Court of Appeal allowed the appellant’s appeal, granting a declaration that the Secretary of State for Education had acted unlawfully by failing to consult those bodies before introducing the amendments.
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6 June 2012 by Rachit Buch
Last week the UN Human Rights Commissioner published the draft report of the second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the UK’s human rights record (draft report here, webcast of the UPR session here). The UPR involves delegations from UN member states asking questions and make recommendations to the UK government on the protection of human rights, which the government will consider before providing its response. The report is extremely wide-ranging, perhaps to its detriment, though many valuable and interesting insights are provided.
The UPR process was established in 2006. It involves a review of all 192 UN member states once every four years. As readers of this blog will know, the protection of human rights has a troubled recent history in the UK, with newspaper campaigns against “the hated Human Rights Act” providing the background to government pronouncements on human rights that veer from the sensible to the ridiculous. In this context, the UPR provides a valuable attempt at a serious assessment of human rights in this country.
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29 April 2019 by Thomas Hayes
Mourners including Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald, DUP leader Arlene Foster and SNP leader Ian Blackford give a standing ovation after Fr Martin Magill’s speech at the funeral of journalist Lyra McKee in Belfast – April 24th 2019. Credit: The Guardian.
This week saw the senior courts continue their Easter vacation between the Hilary and Easter Terms. Consequently, neither the Supreme Court, Civil Division of the Court of Appeal or Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court recorded any new decisions in the week commencing April 22nd.
Luckily for the writer of this Blog, the European Court of Human Rights does not share the relaxed attitude of the domestic courts towards Easter working, and on the April 25th gave judgement in the case of VM v United Kingdom (No 2).
The case concerned a Nigerian woman who entered the United Kingdom illegally in 2003. She subsequently pleaded guilty to cruelty to her son and was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment with a recommendation she be deported at the end of her sentence. Pursuant to this, upon her release, she was detained under immigration powers for two years and ten months.
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5 October 2012 by Rosalind English
Ndiki Mutua and others v the Foreign and Commonwealth Office – read judgment
1 Crown Office Row’s Guy Mansfield QC acted for the Defendant, Henry Witcomb assisted by Maria Roche acted for the Claimants and Elizabeth-Ann Gumbel QC acted for intervener. None of them had anything to do with the writing of this post.
Although any claims regarding alleged acts of torture on Kenyan detainees during the 1950s state of emergency are technically time barred the High Court has allowed three of the claims to go ahead.
This was a trial of a preliminary issue in the Mau Mau detention camps case concerning the matter of limitation of claims for personal injury. In principle, the primary limitation periods in respect of the claims respectively ended in September 1960, 3 March 1962 and on dates in 1963 which are unclear. The period of delay was approximately fifty years in duration, i.e. from between 1960/1963 to the issue of these proceedings on 23 June 2009. The events to be investigated at any trial would extend back to 1952 at least, a period of 60 years or more by the likely date of trial.
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10 September 2018 by Guest Contributor
The Director of the SFO v ENRC [2018] EWCA Civ 2006 – read judgment
Eurasian Natural Resources Corp, the defendant to the Serious Fraud Office’s application to enforce notices seeking to compel the production of documents, has had a chequered history in the last 10 years since it came to the London market (in January 2014 it delisted and went private). In December 2010, a whistleblower alerted the company by email to serious allegations of corruption, fraud and bribery within its group.
After substantial internal enquiries and investigations on the part of ENRC and professionals instructed by it, accompanied by correspondence and meetings between the SFO and lawyers instructed by ENRC, in February 2016 the SFO issued a Part 8 claim against ENRC. This sought a declaration that documents in for specific categories were not “information or… Any document which ENRC would be entitled to refuse to disclose or produce on grounds of legal professional privilege in proceedings in the High Court” within the meaning of section 2 (9) of the Criminal Justice Act 1987. The SFO’s pleaded case was that neither litigation privilege nor legal professional privilege attached to the documents in the first place, not that any privilege had been waived.
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