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Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your recommended weekly dose 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.
Same-sex marriage was the talking point of this week, with the Bill passing its first vote in the House of Commons. The courts have also been passing judgment on various acts of the police and the UK military; and immigration, asylum and extradition remain in the headlines. Keep an eye out on some interesting cases from Russia reaching Strasbourg; and a double-header of events featuring former ECtHR President Jean-Paul Costa (see ‘Upcoming Events’).
The Claimant became pregnant in 2012 but, tragically, the baby died in utero and was stillborn in May 2013. The Claimant claimed damages to represent the loss of the pregnancy and also for a psychiatric injury which she suffered due to the stillbirth.
The NHS Trust admitted that their treatment of the Claimant was negligent and that they were responsible for the stillbirth. The only issue in the case was the amount (quantum) of damages.
The application for anonymity
The Claimant applied for an anonymity order
to prohibit press outlets from using her name. It would not have prohibited the
press from reporting on the legal proceedings themselves.
The Claimant argued that this should be granted because the trial included deeply personal matters concerning her mental health, medical history and her relationship with her two children. Identifying her would inevitably lead to identification of her children. It was also added that, in the age of social media, she might face the risk of receiving abuse and that, given her Polish background, this might even extend to racial abuse.
Importantly, the Claimant was not a child or a ‘protected party’ i.e. someone who is judged by a medical professional to not have full capacity. But she was described as a “highly vulnerable individual.”
On 1 October 2020, the Lord Chancellor, Robert Buckland QC, gave a speech at Temple Church to mark the opening of the legal year. He praised the “enduring success” of our legal system, our “healthy democracy”, and the “commitment to the Rule of Law” which steered the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Lord Chancellor delivered his speech two days after the controversial Internal Market Bill cleared its final hurdle in the House of Commons with ease, by 340 votes to 256. Earlier in September, Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, told the House of Commons that the government’s plans would “break international law in a very specific and limited way.” On September 29, the Lord Chancellor voted against a proposed amendment to the Bill “requiring Ministers to respect the rule of law and uphold the independence of the Courts.” He was joined in doing so by the Attorney General, Suella Braverman, and the Solicitor General, Michael Ellis.
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.
A relatively quiet week on the news front, with courts having a well-earned Easter break. Just a few items to focus on, with commentary appearing following the US Supreme Court’s oral hearing on the same-sex marriage. The Employment Tribunal has found that conference motions and debates surrounding Israeli boycotts do not constitute anti-Semitism; and assistance is out there for litigants in person following the enactment of LASPO.
Laura Profumo serves us the latest human rights happenings.
In the News:
Michael Gove appeared before the Justice Select Committee last Wednesday, in the first true baring of his political mettle as justice secretary. Overall, it seems, the MP made a largely favourable impression, though legal commentators remain wary. UKHRB’s own Adam Wagner deftly compared Gove’s success to “when they gave Obama the Nobel Peace Prize…because he wasn’t George Bush”. The “post-Grayling Gove-hope” may, then, prove deceptively shallow, defined by the simple relief that Gove is not Grayling.
Yet Gove’s evidence before the committee was laudable – reasonable, measured, and skifully non-committal. Gove’s comments on the Human Rights Act obliquely signalled the “proposals” will be published “in the autumn”, failing to specify whether they would be accompanied by a draft Bill. His substantive points were similarly vague. The Lord Chancellor invoked the “abuse” of human rights as justification for the repeal of the HRA, before conceding he could not offer a “one-hundred per cent guarantee” that the UK would remain a party to the Convention. Such a position suggests a British Bill of Rights may “seek to limit certain rights”, argues academic Mark Elliot, which would, “quite possibly”, precipitate British withdrawal from Strasbourg altogether. Gove also stressed the role of the judiciary in applying the common law to uphold human rights, holding that “there is nothing in the Convention that is not in the common law”. Such a view is “highly contestable at best, plain wrong at worst”, holds Elliot, whilst Conor Gearty finds it stokes the fantasy of “the civil libertarian common law”. Gove seems to suggest that HRA-repeal and possible ECHR-withdrawal would be “far from earth-shattering events”, Elliot notes, as judges could still invoke a panoply of common-law rights. Whilst Gove is right to remind skeptics that HRA-repeal would not leave domestic judges powerless, such “overstatement” of the common-law rights model “might end up hoist on its own petard….ringing hollower than its cheerleaders”. Continue reading →
Laura Profumo brings us up to speed with the latest human rights happenings.
In the News
“It seems hard to believe that Grayling will remain Lord Chancellor for long”. Joshua Rozenberg delivered a biting analysis of the minister’s future legacy in the Law Gazette last week. As the General Election looms, “perhaps Cameron has finally begun to realise how much anger and despair there is at the steady erosion in access to justice for which Grayling is held responsible”. If the Conservatives lead the next government, the Lord Chancellor will struggle to secure his place, Rozenberg warns.
Lord Neuberger has published his long-awaited report on super-injunctions. His committee was set up in April 2010 in order to “examine the issues around the use of injunctions which bind the press and so-called ‘super-injunctions“.
In summary, the report emphasises the principles of open justice and the right to freedom of speech, and that courts should “ensure that any derogation from open justice is the minimum necessary to secure the proper administration of justice”. It recommends that Civil Procedure Rule 39.2 (concerning public hearings) should be amended to make reference to the strict necessity test.
A Local Authority v Mrs A, by her Litigation Friend, the Official Solicitor, and Mr A [2010] EWHC 1549 (Fam) – Read judgment
In the first case of its kind, the court was asked to consider whether a young married woman lacks capacity to decide whether to use contraception, and whether it would be in her interests to be required to receive it.
Mrs A was a 29-year-old woman who suffered from serious learning difficulties, which put her intellectual functioning at approximately 0.1% of adults her age. In 2004 she gave birth to a daughter, and in 2005 she had a son. Both children were removed from her at birth because she did not have the capacity to take care of them.
One of the many outrages perpetrated by Donald Trump in the waning of his Presidency was granting a pardon to four private military contractors for their role in the Nisour Square massacre. Those military contractors had opened fire indiscriminately, killing 14 Iraqi civilians, including two children.
As with many of Trump’s assaults on the Rule of Law, the thought was that this kind of abuse could not happen in the UK. But certainty over our moral high ground will be short-lived if Parliament passes the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill – a Bill whose precise aim is to make it much harder to prosecute British military personnel for abuses (including murder) carried out overseas. The Bill reaches Second Reading this week in the House of Lords.
Hurdles to prosecution under the Bill
The Bill introduces three substantial hurdles to the prosecution of British soldiers if the incident took place overseas more than five years ago. The first is that prosecutions must only be “exceptional circumstances”. The second is that the consent of the Attorney General is required. The third is that, in contemplating prosecutions, prosecutors must place particular weight on a list of exculpatory factors, but with the absence of a list of factors tending in favour of prosecution.
Gilham (Appellant) v Ministry of Justice (Respondent) [2019] UKSC 44 – read judgment
The UK Supreme Court has unanimously granted an appeal by a district judge against the Court of Appeal’s decision that she did not qualify as a “worker” under the Employment Rights Act 1996 (the “1996 Act”), and therefore could not benefit from the whistleblowing protections it conferred.
In reaching its judgment, the Court held that the failure to extend those whistleblowing protections to judges amounted to a violation of the appellant’s right under Article 14 ECHR not to be discriminated against in her enjoyment of the Convention rights (in this case, her right to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR).
Update (10 October 2025): Kemi Badenoch has confirmed that Conservative Party policy will be to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and to repeal the Human Rights Act if they win the next general election. This was made clear in both her statements ahead of and during the annual Conservative Party Conference in October 2025, following a detailed legal review led by the Shadow Attorney General, Lord Wolfson, which found that remaining in the ECHR would fundamentally obstruct key party policies on immigration, veterans’ rights, prioritising citizens for public services, and reforming sentencing and protest laws.The Conservative Party leader explicitly stated in her conference speech: “We must leave the ECHR and repeal the Human Rights Act. The next Conservative manifesto will contain our commitment to leave. Leaving the Convention is a necessary step.”
Lord Wolfson’s advice was commissioned by the Conservative Party and is known as the Wolfson Report. It is important to note at the outset that, despite its title on the Party website, Lord Wolfson emphasises that this is “neither a policy paper nor a report. It is a legal analysis”, in other words, advice to the leader of the Conservative party. For reasons of economy in the following paragraphs I will refer to this 185 page document as a “report”.
David Wolfson KC is Shadow Attorney General Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, a prominent commercial lawyer and former justice minister. We have heard his views on the role of international law and his differences with government AG Richard Hermer domestic on Law Pod UK earlier this year.
In this paper he sets out an exhaustive examination of the relationship between the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and UK law, specifically focusing on areas where the ECHR constrains the government’s ability to enact domestic policies. This report could be pivotal in shaping the party’s commitment to leave the ECHR, as it concludes that such a move is necessary to fulfil a range of key policy priorities.
For balance, here is the late Conor Gearty’s column in the London Review of Books Unwelcome Remnant – the threat to the Human Rights Act , lamenting judicial avoidance of ECHR solutions to problems and relying on common law or UK legislative measures instead. Gearty cites many examples of this, most notably the Supreme Court’s ruling in the For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers which he says “completely ignores the impact of human rights law.”
Back to Wolfson.
Overview
The report scrutinises the effect of the ECHR in five core public policy areas: immigration control, prosecution of military veterans, prioritisation of British citizens in social policy, sentencing and protest laws, and economic growth impediments (particularly linked to climate-based challenges to infrastructure projects). Wolfson sets out a detailed legal analysis and a set of evaluative “tests” for national sovereignty, arguing that only by exiting the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act can the UK achieve these policy goals unimpeded.
The Iraq (Chilcott) Inquiry was broadcast live but it was not a public inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005, as Leveson’s is. The Inquiry’s website has been relaunched and will be hosting the live stream of hearings on this page. My only grumbles about the new website are that the live coverage should be more prominently advertised on the main page.
The central question facing the Supreme Court in Griffiths v TUI UK Limited [2023] UKSC 48 concerned the extent to which a party must put criticisms of a witness’ evidence to him in cross-examination. The Supreme Court made clear that the general rule in civil cases is that a party is required to challenge by cross-examination the evidence of any witness (whether factual or expert) if he wishes to submit that the evidence should not be accepted by the court. Importantly, this rule is not confined to allegations that the witness is dishonest. The rule is, however, a flexible one; it will not always be necessary for every point of challenge to be put to a witness, and in some cases (such as where evidence is “manifestly incredible”) it may not apply at all. Although the Supreme Court gave a conceptually clear answer to the question before it, difficult practical issues are likely to continue to arise for trial advocates who wish to challenge factual or expert witness evidence.
This time two years ago two obscure environmental groups, Clientearth and the Marine Conservation Society , took a step that may make more difference to the enforcement of environmental rights in this country than all the recent high-profile “green” NGO campaigns put together.
They submitted a complaint – euphemistically called a “communication” – to the enforcement body of the Aarhus Convention, a treaty which lays down baseline rules for proper environmental justice in the EU, alerting it to various shortcomings in the legal system of England and Wales (inelegantly but conveniently referred to in the report as E & W). Continue reading →
R (on the application of Daniel Faulkner) v Secretary of State for Justice and Anor [2010] EWCA Civ 1434 – Read Judgment
The Court of Appeal has upheld the appeal of prisoner who spent 10 more months in prison than he should have, due to unjustified delay in having his case heard by the Parole Board. The court found that there had been an infringement of his rights under Article 5(4) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
In 2001 Daniel Faulkner was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm with intent (an offence under section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861). As this was his second offence of this nature, he was sentenced to custody for life, with the minimum period he had to spend in custody being set at two years, eight and a half months. That period expired on 18th April 2004 and he became eligible for parole.
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Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your recommended weekly dose 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.
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular smorgasbord of human rights news. The full list of links can be found 
Lord Neuberger has 
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