We use cookies to enhance your browsing experience. If you continue to use our website we will take this to mean that you agree to our use of cookies. If you want to find out more, please view our cookie policy. Accept and Hide [x]
The High Court recently dismissed a claim of incompatibility with Article 5 ECHR arising from a detention of a minor for his own protection in the case of Archer v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis[2020] EWHC 1567 (QB).
Background
On 17 February 2012, the Claimant, then 15 years’ old, was struck on the head and stabbed in his back and head by persons he described as members of a local gang, the Deptford Boys. This took place near to his home. He was treated at King’s College Hospital.
But on 22 February 2012, he was arrested on suspicion of violent disorder and possession of an offensive weapon. He was placed in a cell at 7:25am, and by 7:45pm he was charged with those two offences. He was, however, refused bail at 7:53pm. The reasons for refusal by Sergeant Smith are recorded as follows:
[…] it is believed necessary to further detain the person for their own protection, that the detained person has been arrested for a non-imprisonable offence and it is believed necessary to further detain to prevent physical injury to another person, that the detained person has been arrested for an imprisonable offence and it is believed necessary to further detain in order to prevent the commission of a further offence.
The grounds are Dp [sc. detained person] has been involved in a ‘gang’ related fight where he has sustained injuries that required hospital treatment. It is feared that if released on bail there will be repercussions where he may sustain further injuries or inflict violence upon his original intended victims.
On the morning of 23 February, he was taken to Bexley Youth Court, where he was remanded in custody.
It is this period of 13 hours from the refusal of bail to the remand by Court that the Claimant sought to argue was unlawful.
London Borough Tower of Hamlets v B [2015] EWHC 2491 (Fam) 21 August 2015 – read judgment
When a judge waxes lyrical about a child, garlanded with starred GCSEs, their intelligence, their medical school ambitions, you wonder what is coming. It’s the judicial equivalent of those blurred reproductions in the press of murder victims’ graduate portraits. In this case, a sixteen year old girl “B”, the subject of a careful but nevertheless alarming judgment in the Family Division, turned out to be one of the many girls groomed by their family for exodus to Syria; all of whom appear to be:
intelligent young girls, highly motivated academically, each of whom has, to some and greatly varying degrees, been either radicalised or exposed to extreme ideology promulgated by those subscribing to the values of the self-styled Islamic State.
B herself seemed unoppressed by the situation she was in and indeed wrote to the judge in those terms. She and her family refused to give evidence and sat impassively whilst Heydon J gave judgment.
They have betrayed no emotion; they have been impassive and inscrutable as I have faced the challenge of deciding whether their family should be fragmented and their children removed. Their self discipline is striking. They have listened carefully. The mother has taken careful notes. They have revealed nothing in their responses.
These cases differ from the common run of family abuse cases in that these young women, in the judge’s words, have “boundless opportunities, comfortable homes and carers who undoubtedly love them”. But they have been seduced by a belief that travelling to Syria to become what is known as ‘Jihadi brides’ is somehow romantic and honourable both to them and to their families. Continue reading →
Review: The Ripple Effect: Guantanamo Bay in the United Kingdom Courts” by CRG Murray, International Law Review Online Companion, April 2010 – Read article
A new academic article by C.R.G Murray at Newcastle University analyses the interesting and important line of case-law arising from claims by men detained in Guantanamo Bay. The case-law has involved many issues of a politically sensitive nature and generated much media coverage and pressure on the British Government. The ripple effects from the detentions have led to a series of important judgments.
Murray’s article reviews important case-law arising from detention at Guantanamo Bay and the impact it has had on the decisions reached by the courts. Murray concludes that the case-law demonstrates two major ‘ripple effects’: (1) judicial review has been used to press the British Government into being more active in opposing detentions at Guantanamo Bay; (2) where serious human rights breaches are in issue, the courts have been more willing to disregard historic concepts of comity between courts in different jurisdictions and give their own view of the correct interpretation of law for the benefit of appellate courts in the United States.
We posted last week on Carson and Others v The United Kingdom (read judgment), in which the European Court of Human Rights rejected a claim that UK pensioners living abroad should have their pensions index-linked (i.e., that they be raised in line with inflation).
It turns out that it is not just the UK, or indeed Europe, being affected by the long reach of the ECtHR. Alison Steed in The Daily Telegraph reports that the Australian Government are footing the bill for 170,000 ex-pat British pensioners living there. They have said in response to the judgment:
“The Australian government believes this policy is discriminatory. We have been actively lobbying the UK government on this issue… This policy continues to place an increasing burden on all Australian taxpayers, as the Australian government picks up the tab for around 170,000 UK pensioners who also receive means-tested Australian pensions – estimated at about A$100 million (£60 million) per year in additional social security payments.”
Australia ended its social security agreement with the UK in 2001 in light of this issue, which affects around 500,000 ex-pat UK pensioners living worldwide.
Tonight, in the Old Hall, Lincoln’s Inn, Judge Robert Spano will deliver the inaugural Bonavero Institute Human Rights Lecture entitled “The Democratic Virtues of Human Rights Law” in which he responds to Lord Sumption’s Reith Lectures on the BBC last year. Jonathon Sumption will be there himself to respond to Robert Spano’s observations. The event, which is moderated by Helen Mountfield QC, principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, will be recorded and filmed, and the director of the Bonavero Institute Catherine O’Regan (whom I interviewed in Episode 97 on Law Pod UK has kindly given permission for the audio recording to be republished on Law Pod UK in due course.
So, here is Robert Spano in his own words.
At the outset let me say this, I bring an external perspective, I will not be commenting on domestic political issues or developments in the British legal system. For that I am not equipped. Rather, I will begin by focussing in general on Lord Sumption’s views on the expanding role of law at the expense of politics before engaging with his third lecture, entitled ‘Human Rights and Wrongs’, and his criticism of the European Court of Human Rights. I proceed in this manner as it is difficult to disentangle the third lecture from Lord Sumption’s overall thesis. The five lectures must in other words fairly be read as a whole. When referring to his lectures, I will use the language Lord Sumption deploys in his published volume entitled Trials of the State – Law and the Decline of Politics (Profile Books, London (2019). In my intervention, I offer my personal views which should not be ascribed to the Court on which I serve.
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your weekly bulletin 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.
by Wessen Jazrawi
In the news
It has been a quiet week in the blogosphere which suggests that everyone else has been as glued to the Olympics as I have. This week has seen the arrest of a 17 year old following abusive tweets to Tom Daley and a case looking at the interesting question of whether a Jewish girl could be allowed to have herself baptised, as well as cases concerning Article 8 applications. This week also marks the start of Parliamentary recess and the end of the Trinity legal term. The next couple of months will be quiet as the courts and parliament take their summer breaks.
In Rahmatullah (No 2) v MOD; Mohammed v MOD [2017] UKSC 1, the Supreme Court gave a further important judgment in the litany of cases arising out of the UK’s intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Court held unanimously that the doctrine of Crown act of state defeated claims brought by non UK citizens seeking to sue the Government in the English courts in respect of alleged torts committed abroad.
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your weekly smörgåsbord 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.
The news
This week has seen the Home Secretary Theresa May take on Article 8 – and the courts – with the announcement that she was seeking the backing of Parliament on the limits of Article 8, the right to private and family life, and that she would expect judges to “follow and take into account” the views of Parliament. In other news, the Church of England submitted its opposition to gay marriage in response to the Government consultation, which has now ended, a judge in the Court of Protection ordered that an anorexic woman should be force-fed, and the Supreme Court dismissed an application by Julian Assange to reopen his appeal against extradition.
The Plantagenet Alliance Ltd (R o.t.a) v. Secretary of State for Justice and others, Haddon-Cave J, 18 October 2013 (PCO) read judgment, and on permission, 15 August 2013 read judgment
I posted here on the original judgment giving the Plantagenet Alliance permission to seek judicial review of the Secretary of State’s decision to re-bury Richard III in Leicester. At the time, the judge had made a full Protective Costs Order in favour of the Alliance, so that it would not have to pay costs if it lost. The judge had also ordered what he envisaged to be a short hearing to determine in what sum the Alliance’s costs should be capped. if it won.
The judge was then somewhat surprised to be faced by a full-blown attempt by MoJ (Chris Grayling) to discharge the PCO, and seek an order for security of costs against the Alliance. The written argument in support was signed by the top barrister doing work for the Government, and the hearing about it took a day (think of the costs of that).
The application was conspicuously unsuccessful, as we shall see, but what was all this about? Something to do with proposed judicial review changes, I suspect – for reasons which will become evident.
The seminar had a special significance as the HRA has just celebrated its 10th birthday. Both speakers looked to the future of the act in light of the coming budget cuts and economic austerity policies.
Serdar Mohammed and Others v Secretary of State for Defence [2015] EWCA Civ 843 – read judgment
The Court of Appeal has held that UK armed forces breached both Afghan law and Article 5 of the ECHR by detaining a suspected Taliban commander for longer than the 96 hours permitted by ISAF policy.
The MOD was therefore potentially liable at both public and private law for the failures to make arrangements for extended detention and to put in place such procedural safeguards as were required by international human rights law. Moreover, the defence of ‘act of state’ was not available against either the public or private law claims. Continue reading →
In a long-awaited decision on country guidance on Iraq, the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) has held that the degree of indiscriminate violence in Iraq is not so high that the appellants were entitled to subsidiary protection under Article 15(c) Qualification Directive.
However, the IAT indicated that, should the degree of violence become unacceptably high, Article 15(c) might be engaged. The Upper Tribunal also used the opportunity to provide general advice as to how to approach country guidance cases.
This week, two Scottish children are playing a key role in the development of the UN Day of General Discussion (Friday, Sept 28). They are the only children from the UK represented, working alongside children from across the world, including Moldova, Norway and India. See below for more details of this event. Continue reading →
Following almost fourteen years of detention without trial, the last British resident to be held in Guantanamo Bay, Shaker Aamer, has been released. Amnesty International has described Aamer’s plight as “one of the worst of all the detainees at Guantanamo,” given the time involved, the lengthy spells in solitary confinement and the torture he was allegedly subjected to.
“The case against the US authorities that perpetrated this travesty of justice, and British ministers and security personnel who allegedly colluded with them, should now be vigorously pursued”, writes the Observer. Long-standing questions remain surrounding claims of UK complicity in human rights abuses: in the 2009 civil case of former Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, the High Court pointedly noted that the UK’s relationship with US authorities went “far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.” Continue reading →
Knowles and another, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2013] EWHC 19 (Admin) – read judgment
The High Court has rejected a claim that Gypsies occupying caravans on private land were discriminated against by legislation which resulted in them not being able to claim full Housing Benefit to cover their rent.
Occupiers of caravans on a site owned by a local housing authority receive a Housing Benefit rent rebate of the whole of the rent charged. But if the caravan is on a private site, then the rent on which HB can be claimed is subject to determination by a rent officer, and that is normally substantially less than the full contractual rent charged. The claimants maintained that this scheme fails to meet the essential housing needs of Gypsies on private sites, who have particular site infrastructure and management needs – which result in additional costs, and hence a legitimately higher rent, not reflected in the HB awarded. They contended that the scheme was therefore discriminatory, and in breach of article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, when read with article 1 of the First Protocol 1 (the right to property) and article 8 of the substantive Convention (the right to respect for family and private life). Continue reading →
This blog is maintained for information purposes only. It is not intended to be a source of legal advice and must not be relied upon as such. Blog posts reflect the views and opinions of their individual authors, not of chambers as a whole.
Our privacy policy can be found on our ‘subscribe’ page or by clicking here.
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your weekly smörgåsbord of human rights news. The full list of links can be found 
This week, two Scottish children 
This blog is run by
Recent comments