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UK Human Rights Blog - 1 Crown Office Row
Search Results for: environmental/page/45/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)
This piece asks whether, in the light of UK proposals for the reform of the ECtHR, and in the wake of the outcry in the UK over the Qatada decision (Othman v UK), the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is taking an approach that looks like one of appeasement of certain signatory states.
Two very recent decisions will be looked at which, it will be argued, contain appeasement elements. Each can be compared with a previous counter-part decision against the same member state which adopts a more activist approach; and each is not immediately obviously reconcilable with the previous decision. Is the Court revisiting the ‘true’ scope of the ECHR in a more deferential spirit?
The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has been in the news for claiming that asylum seekers “purport” to be gay to “game the system” and receive preferential treatment in asylum applications. In a speech in Washington DC on Tuesday, the Home Secretary said that discrimination on the basis of sexuality or gender is not sufficient to qualify for international refugee protection. Braverman’s comments have been heavily criticised, and approximately twelve Conservative MPs complained to the Chief Whip this week, saying the Home Secretary’s remarks were offensive, divisive, and inaccurate. According to the BBC, sexual orientation only formed the basis of 1.5% of asylum claims made in the UK last year. Equally, many continue to face persecution as a result of their sexuality; consensual same-sex acts are illegal in a number of countries and, in some cases, are punishable by death.
Meanwhile, the Attorney General issued a notice to the media this week, warning editors not to put themselves at risk of being in contempt of court by ‘publishing any material’ which might ‘prejudice any potential criminal investigation’ into the allegations against Russel Brand. Editors, publishers, and social media users were advised to comply with obligations under the Contempt of Court Act 1981. Commentators have criticised the Attorney General’s warning for possibly misapplying the law on contempt; publishers can be found unintentionally to be in contempt of court, but only where there are active criminal proceedings (which there are not in Brand’s case). Alternatively, the Attorney General might have been warning against falling foul of the old common law rules on contempt, where no active case is required. Regardless, many have questioned whether reporting by the media – who in this instance were responsible for breaking the allegations against Brand and prompting a criminal investigation – would make any future trial unfair.
Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust, R (on the application of) v Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts & Anor [2012] EWCA Civ 472 – Read judgment.
Marina Wheeler of 1 Crown Office Row appeared for the successful Appellant in this case. She is not the author of this post
When is reorganisation of healthcare services unlawful? When can consultation, rather than a final decision, successfully be challenged? These were the questions dealt with by the Court of Appeal in relation to the reconfiguration of paediatric heart surgery services. The Bristol Royal Infirmary scandal had left these services in need of change; the Court of Appeal found that there was nothing unlawful in the consultation process resulting in the Royal Brompton failing to be chosen as one of the two specialist centres in London.
Following the failures in Bristol that were subject to a public inquiry in 1998, there have been a number of reports on paediatric heart surgical care. This is an extremely specialised area of medicine. The recent trend has been for such specialist areas (another example is major trauma care) to become concentrated in fewer hospitals: the principle being that when professionals come into contact with such work more regularly they become better at it; spreading such cases wide and thin results in poor outcomes.
L (A Child: Media Reporting), Re [2011] EWHC B8 (Fam) (18 April 2011) – Read judgment
The thought of being personally criticised in a reported judgment would make most lawyers break into a cold sweat. Some journalists wear such treatment as a badge of honour. But surely it is professionally embarrassing for a high court judge to label an article as “unbalanced, inaccurate and just plain wrong“.
That was the treatment handed out by His Honour Judge Bellamy to the Telegraph’s Christopher Booker in a recent ruling. The facts of the case are sad and I will not repeat them in any detail. HHJ Bellamy was asked to make a factual ruling relating to the alleged mistreatment of a baby by its family. He found that the mother was responsible for breaking the baby’s arm, an injury which led to the council forcibly removing the child from its parents’ care, as well as bruising to his hand and cheek. The judge did question, however, why it was necessary for the police to march the parents through a hospital wearing handcuffs.
Two particular measures were under challenge. The first was the introduction of maximum weekly caps on the amount of local housing allowance (LHA). The second was the reduction of the maximum size in accommodation eligible for housing benefit from five bedrooms to four bedrooms.
On 16 February 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) granted further interim measures against Russia in relation to political opposition figure Alexei Navalny, requiring that Navalny be immediately released from prison due to the risk to his life and health.
Conor Monighan brings us the latest updates in human rights law
Credit: The Guardian
In the News:
Chelsea Manning, the ex-US intelligence analyst, was released from prison last week.
Manning was found guilty of a variety of charges in 2013, including espionage. She was subsequently given the longest sentence for a security leak in US history. After serving an initial period in jail, the remainder of her sentence was commuted by President Obama in 2017 on the basis that it was “disproportionate” to her crimes.
Ms. Manning has since refused to testify to a grand jury about her connections to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange (its founder). She claims that she has already given testimony as part of her trial in 2013, and objects to the grand jury system in principle. However, prosecutors have suggested that her evidence may have been inaccurate. A judge in Virginia ordered her to be taken into custody for 62 days.
She was released last week after the 62 day period elapsed. In the meantime, however, Ms. Manning was served with another subpoena which requires her to appear before a grand jury on May 16th in order to testify about the same issues. It seems likely, therefore, that she will be imprisoned again for contempt of court. Continue reading →
Those who have followed David Hart and Rosalind English’s posts on the long running saga of the Chagossians will be familiar with the extremely unedifying tale of the British Government’s removal and resettlement between 1968 and 1973 of the Chagossians from their homes in the British Indian Ocean Territories in order to enable the construction of the key US base of Diego Garcia. In 2000 the Divisional Court upheld a challenge to the original statutory ordinance prohibiting the Chagossians from entering or being resident in the BIOT on the grounds that the Commissioner for the BIOT’s power to legislate for the peace, order and good government of the BIOT did not include a power to expel its inhabitants. However, following the completion of a feasibility study into the resettlement of the Chagossians a new statutory order was enacted in 2004 again prohibiting them from living in the islands. The 2008 decision rejected a challenge to the rationality, legality and procedural fairness of that order.
The present claim sought to overturn the 2008 decision on the basis that (1) the Foreign Secretary failed in breach of his duty of candour in public law proceedings to disclose relevant documents containing documents that would have been likely to affect the factual basis on which the House of Lords made its decision; and (2) there was new material that undermined that factual basis. Specifically, further documents had been disclosed that cast significant doubt on the conclusions of the feasibility study that any long term resettlement on the Chagos Islands was infeasible except at prohibitive cost. Accordingly, the Claimant would have been in a position to challenge the reliability of those conclusions, it was highly likely that the challenged would have succeeded, and that if the 2008 judgment was set aside, a new hearing would reach a different conclusion.
The judgments
Lord Mance gave the leading judgment for the majority. He began by addressing the alleged breach of duty of candour, and emphasised that a party’s failure to disclose relevant documentary information was clearly capable of subjecting another party to an unfair procedure. However, when considering whether to re-open an appeal it had to be clearly established that a significant injustice had probably occurred and that there was no alternative effective remedy. Similarly, where fresh evidence has been discovered after a judgment that could not be appealed, then there had to be a powerful probability that an erroneous result was reached in the earlier proceedings.
Lord Mance analysed the 2008 judgment and set out citations from it that showed that the conclusions of the feasibility study had been given significant (perhaps even conclusive) weight by the majority. He summarised the issue as to whether it was probable or likely (he did not need to decide which it should be) that the material now available would have led the House of Lords to conclude that it was irrational and unjustified for the Foreign Secretary to accept and act on the feasibility study’s conclusions.
Lord Mance then turned to the feasibility study and to the documents disclosed that shed additional light on the degree to which the content of its ultimate conclusions had been influenced by pressure from the government and/or had not be based on sound science. Lord Mance noted that the critical conclusions had remained unchanged from the draft written by the consultancy who authored the report and the final version produced following comment and input from the FCO. Accordingly he held that there was no probability, likelihood or even possibility that the court would have seen anything in the new material that would or should have caused the Foreign Sectary to doubt the report’s conclusions, or made it irrational or otherwise unjustifiable to act on them in June 2004. The issue was whether the Foreign Secretary was justified in acting as he did on the material that was or should have been available to him, not whether his decision could be justified on a revisiting of the whole issue of resettlement in the light of any other material which either party could adduce in 2016.
Lord Mance went on to hold that even if the threshold test for setting aside the House of Lords’ decision had been met, it would have been decisive that a new 2015 feasibility study has found that there is scope for settled resettlement. According “in practical terms., the background has shifted, and logically the constitutional ban needs to be revisited… it is open to any Chagossian now or in the future to challenge the future to abrogate the 2004 orders in light of all the information now available.
Lord Kerr’s powerful dissent (with which Baroness Hale agreed) is worth reading. He began by stating that if the decision on the feasibility of resettlement was reached on information that was plainly wrong, or was open to serious challenge, and it was at least distinctly possible that a different decision would have been formed if the full picture had been known, then the rationality of the 2004 Order should be re-examined.
Lord Kerr identified that in light of the Divisional Court holding that the government was no legal obligation to fund a resettlement, the feasibility study’s conclusions had to be capable of sustaining the Foreign Secretary’s decision that the risk of the government coming under pressure to meet the cost of, and to permit the resettlement of the Chagossians was such that they had to refused the right to return to their homes. That was the decision whose rationality was being challenged. Accordingly he held that “any reservations about the veracity of the claims made in the report assume an unmistakable significance. Unless the report was compelling and irrefutable in its conclusions, its capacity to act as the sole justification for the denial of such an important right was, at least, suspect.” Lord Kerr also analysed the study, and the light shed by the new documents on how it had reached its final form. However, unlike Lord Mance, he concluded that there were questions raised about the validity of its conclusions. Therefore it was at least questionable that the majority of the House of Lords would have placed such heavy reliance on its conclusions, and a distinct possibility that there would have been different outcome. The appeal should therefore be re-opened.
The most trenchant part of Lord Kerr’s dissent is his categorical (and in my opinion compelling) argument that there was no possible juridical basis to deny a remedy solely because the Chagossians might be allowed to resettle in entirely different circumstances and for completely different reasons as underlay the original decision.
Where next?
It should be noted that the Supreme Court has given permission to appeal in Bancoult No 3 – in a challenge surrounding whether the Marine Protection Zone created around the Chagos Islands was created for the improper purpose of ensuring that the Chagossians would not be able to return. One day the Chagossians may yet be vindicated in their search for justice.
On another note – for those interested in the duty of candour see also a recent judgment of Sir Kenneth Parker in R (Biffa Waste Management Services Ltd) v the Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs [2016] EWHC 1444 (Admin).
This is an extract from an article published in the latest edition of The Critic, 17th October 2025. We post it here by kind permission of its authors and editors of The Critic.
In 2024, approximately 220 million animals were ritually slaughtered in England and Wales. Of these, roughly 30 million had their throats slit whilst fully conscious, and 190 million were stunned unconscious before being killed.
The Welfare at the Time of Killing (England) Regulations 2015 (“WATOK”) require that animals be effectively stunned before slaughter, in order to spare them “avoidable pain, distress or suffering” when they are killed. In its next breath, however, WATOK authorises the very practice it condemns (non-stun slaughter) where it is “in accordance with religious rites”.
Non-stun slaughter entails atrocious violence which all major animal welfare bodies, including the British Veterinary Association and RSPCA, agree should be prohibited. The failure of Parliament to make a decision about the normative value of animal welfare has left a gaping statutory hole that defers the fate of animals’ final moments to the whim of religious authority.
United Company Rusal Plc (R, o.t.a of) v. London Metal Exchange Trust [2014] EWCA 1271 (Civ) –read judgment
Deciding whether a given consultation process conducted prior to some administrative decision was or was not sufficiently unfair to warrant challenge is not an easy task. Three connected problems commonly arise:
(1) did the public body provide adequate information to enable properly informed consultation
(2) was the consultation at a formative stage of the decision-making process, so it was a real rather than sham process?
(3) did the consultation encompass sufficient alternatives?
In this case, the judge said (see my post here) that consultees were missing important information under (1), and, on the particular facts of the case ,it should have consulted on an option which it had rejected, and so found a breach of (3).
The Court of Appeal disagreed. Both findings were wrong. The consultation process was not unfair.
The pumping of raw, untreated sewage into Britain’s waterways is one of the defining political issues of the day. Its potency as a legal issue, however, is limited. That, at least, is the outcome of R (Wild Justice) v OFWAT [2023] EWCA Civ 28.
Sewage polluting the River Coln, at Fairford, Gloucestershire, this January. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Guardian
The Claimant, a not-for-profit organisation which advocates for the protection of wildlife and nature, asked the Court of Appeal for permission to apply for judicial review of the Respondent’s alleged failure to perform its duties to regulate the discharge of raw sewage.
Permission had already been refused twice below – on the papers by Ellenbogen J, and at an oral hearing by Bourne J. This appeal was heard by Bean LJ.
M, R (on the application of) Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority [2016] EWCA Civ 611 (30 June 2016)
The Court of Appeal has ruled that a 60 year old woman may use her daughter’s frozen eggs to give birth to her own grandchild. Her daughter, referred to as A in the judgment, died of cancer at the age of 28 in 2011. The High Court had dismissed M’s argument that the HFEA had acted unlawfully by refusing to allow the eggs to be exported to a fertility clinic in the United States where an embryo would be created using donor sperm, and implanted in the mother.
The HFEA is bound by statute (the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority Act) to provide services using a person’s gametes only where that person consents. The difficulty here was that while A had consented to treatment for egg removal and storage, including storage after her death, she had not completed a specific form giving details of the use that was now proposed.
The essence of the appellants’ challenge was there was “clear evidence” of what A wanted to happen to her eggs after she died. “All available evidence” showed that she wanted her mother to have her child after her death, the Court was told.
Arden LJ, giving the judgement of the court, found that the judge below had reached his conclusion on the basis of a “misstatement of certain of the evidence” about A’s consent by the Committee. Continue reading →
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular high water mark of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found here. You can find previous roundups here. Links compiled by Adam Wagner, post by Celia Rooney.
This week, the detention of David Miranda (pictured) was declared lawful by the High Court, while, in other news, the Court of Appeal has thrown in its lot to the saga of the whole-life tariff and the Supreme Court considered the thorny issue of religion and law.
A (Respondent) v British Broadcasting Corporation (Appellant) (Scotland)[2014] UKSC 25 – read judgment
This appeal related to whether the Scottish Courts took the correct approach to prohibit the publication of a name or other matter in connection with court proceedings under section 11 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981, and whether the court’s discretion was properly exercised in this case. The Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the appeal by the BBC.
The following report is based on the Supreme Court’s Press Summary. References in square brackets are to paragraphs in the judgment.
Background
A, a foreign national, arrived in the UK in 1991. He was later granted indefinite leave to remain, but in 1996 was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for sexual offences against a child. In 1998, he was served by the Home Secretary with a notice to make a deportation order [4]. He appealed against the decision and protracted proceedings followed in which A cited risks due to his status as a known sex offender of death or ill-treatment (contrary to Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights should he be deported. A’s identity was withheld in the proceedings from 2001 onwards [5]-[9]. Continue reading →
Charlotte Bellamy brings you the latest human rights news
The death knell has tolled on another of Grayling’s policies from his ill-fated tenure as Justice Secretary. The controversial criminal courts charge, which has seen over 50 magistrates resign since its imposition in April, is to join the jettisoned ranks of the prisons contract with Saudi Arabia, the prisoner book ban and plans for a super-sized child prison.
Criticised as a “tax on justice” which encouraged defendants to plead guilty, the charges ranged from £150 (for a guilty plea to a summary only offence) to £1,200 (conviction at trial for indictment). The charge did not take into account the means of the defendant, leading to a plethora of desperate situations including one homeless shoplifter ordered to pay £900 despite “not being able to afford to feed himself” and a £150 levy imposed on another for stealing a can of Redbull worth 99p.
The decision was announced by Gove at the annual meeting of the Magistrates Association last week, where he described the policy as “falling short of its honourable intentions”. His Ministerial Statement suggests he is standing by its “underlying principle”, that “those who break the law should make a contribution towards seeing justice done”. The courts charge came in addition to fines, victim surcharges, compensation orders and prosecution costs, a system Gove concedes is “complex and confusing”, and the whole panoply of which he has now announced a full review.
The Chair of the Justice Committee Bob Neill MP welcomed the change which was so swiftly made after the unequivocally damning report produced by the Committee in November. The Howard League for Penal Reform, who led an uncompromising campaign against the charge, has described Gove’s announcement as a “victory for justice”.
Is the “underlying principle” of which Gove speaks about making “those who break the law” contribute towards seeing justice done? One legal commentator writing in the Solicitors Journal suggests that the abolition of the charge is in fact a Trojan Horse disguising a trade-off for plans to impose in its place a 1 per cent levy on the turnover of the top 100 corporate City law firms – an idea first floated by Gove at a speech to the Legatum Institute in June – the ultimate aim of which is perhaps to remove the criminal justice system from the ambit of public funding completely, with lawyers themselves footing the bill. Continue reading →
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This piece asks whether, in the light of UK proposals for the reform of the ECtHR, and in the wake of the outcry in the UK over the Qatada decision (Othman v UK), the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is taking an approach that looks like one of appeasement of certain signatory states. 
L (A Child: Media Reporting), Re [2011] EWHC B8 (Fam) (18 April 2011) – 
Child Poverty Action Group v Secretary of State for Work & Pensions [2011] EWHC 2616 (Admin) – 
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular high water mark of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found 
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