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UK Human Rights Blog - 1 Crown Office Row
Search Results for: prisoners/page/23/ministers have been procrastinating on the issue, fearing that it will prove unpopular with the electorate.
The Court of Appeal has delivered a judgment in PN (Uganda) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 1213 regarding unlawful detention under the Detained Fast Track system, which indicates that a fact sensitive approach must be adopted to each case. This judgment is likely to be particularly relevant in giving guidance to practitioners whose client has previously lost an appeal under the Detained Fast Track Rules who are considering or working on claims for damages for unlawful detention.
Legal Background
In July 2015 the Court of Appeal declared that the Detained Fast Track system, which provided strict time limits for preparing appeals alongside mandatory detention, was unlawful. This was primarily because “the time limits are so tight as to make it impossible for there to be a fair hearing of appeals in a significant number of cases” ([45], per Lord Dyson). It did not, however, say what would happen to appeals that had been decided under this system, where wrong results may have been reached owing to this unfair procedure.
In R (TN (Vietnam)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2838(‘TN (Vietnam)’), the Court of Appeal answered this question. Lord Justice Singh emphasised that whether a First-tier Tribunal decision must be quashed owing to unfairness will be a matter of fact based on how far the Detained Fast Track Rules touched on the decision. The Court of Appeal in PN (Uganda) summarised the principles established in TN (Vietnam) as follows:
35. … (1) a high degree of fairness was required in the proceedings; (2) the 2005 DFT Rules created an unacceptable risk of unfairness in a significant number of cases; (3) there was no presumption that the procedure was fair or unfair; (4) finality in litigation was important; and (5) a long delay in locating what was said to be critical evidence might suggest that the unfairness in the 2005 DFT Rules did not make the proceedings in the FTT unfair. The Court noted at paragraph 90 that whether the proceedings were in fact unfair and liable to be set aside would “depend on a careful assessment of the individual facts”.
The decision in PN (Uganda) provides a helpful application of these principles.
Updated | SG v St Gregory’s Catholic Science College [2011] EWHC 1452 (Admin) (17 June 2010) – Read judgment
Most people have their first taste of injustice at school. This is hardly surprising: an institution containing hundreds of teenagers for whom rebellion is a biological imperative is always going to be difficult to control. In trying to do so, teachers sometimes impose petty rules.
Many children fantasize of an external authority intervening to expose the injustice of those rules, particularly in relation to modes of dress. But few take their school to court to challenge a policy on hairstyle. And even fewer win, as a young boy – known in this case as SG – has just done in the High Court. SG took his school, St Gregory’s Catholic Science College of Harrow in Greater London, to court to challenge its ban on boys wearing their hair in “cornrows“, or braids.
Laura Profumo peruses the latest human rights happenings.
In the News:
Lord Janner died on Saturday, aged 87, after a long battle with dementia. The former labour peer was due to face a “trial of the facts” in April, after being accused of a string of child sex abuse offences. The special hearing, for suspects unfit to defend themselves in a normal criminal trial, takes place before a jury, yet there is no formal verdict, nor sentencing procedure. It is speculated that, if the trial had continued when Janner was alive, he would have been given a discharge, if not altogether acquitted. It now looks unlikely that the trial will proceed. “I can’t think of any way in which the Crown Prosecution Service could even reinstate the case. It dies with the unfit defendant”, writes academic Ronnie Mackay. It’s a dim prognosis for Janner’s alleged victims, who still hope to have their day in court, after many abortive attempts to bring their claims against Janner before he fell ill. Their hopes are now confined to the forthcoming civil proceedings against Janner’s estate, and the Goddard inquiry. Yet former DPP, Ken Macdonald, has held that the decision whether to proceed with the trial is “quite finely balanced” and, despite his personal preference, there stands a credible case for it taking place. As there’s no question of a penal sanction in a trial of the facts, the presence of the defendant is not strictly required. In light of this, Lord Macdonald has suggested “the argument for continuing is that [Janner] was not going to play any part in these proceedings in any event”. Continue reading →
Hayes v. Willoughby, Supreme Court, 20 March 2013 – read judgment
Harassment is both a civil wrong and a crime. It is a statutory defence to both that the conduct “was pursued for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime” s.1(3) Protection of Harassment Act 1997. This decision grappled with the problem of the apparently honest but irrational harasser. Was he guilty or did this defence help him? In answering this, the Supreme Court looked at some basic concepts running through great swathes of the law, “purpose”, “subjective”, “objective”, “reasonableness” and, critically, “rationality” – so the case is one not simply for harassment lawyers to look at.
The Court of Appeal has ruled that a claimant can recover damages for loss of control of their data under section 13 of Data Protection Act 1998 without proving pecuniary loss or distress. The first instance judge, Warby J, had dismissed Mr Lloyd’s application for permission to serve Google outside the jurisdiction in the USA, so preventing the claim getting under way.
The central question was whether the claimant, Mr Richard Lloyd, who is a champion of consumer protection, should be permitted to bring a representative action against Google LLC, the defendant, a corporation based in Delaware in the USA. Mr Lloyd made the claim on behalf of a class of more than 4 million Apple iPhone users. He alleged that Google secretly tracked some of their internet activity, for commercial purposes, between 9th August 2011 and 15th February 2012.
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.
Le Roux and others v Dey (South African Constitutional Court) – read judgment
With the new libel reform proposals doing the consultation rounds it is enlightening to see how other jurisdictions strike the balance privacy and dignity on the one hand, and freedom of expression on the other.
A recent case before the South African Constitutional Court raised two interesting issues: the extent to which liability for defamation should be reduced where children are concerned, and the question whether it should be actionable at all to refer to someone in terms of the condition protected by the Constitution – sexual orientation, for example.
While the press (and the rest of us) were preoccupied by the debate on equal marriage and the public dissection of the Huhne marriage, the Justice and Security Bill completed its next stage of passage through the Parliamentary process. Largely unwatched, a slim majority of Conservative members supported by Ian Paisley Jr., reversed each change made to the Bill by the House of Lords restoring the Government’s original vision: a brave new world where secret pleadings, hearings and judgments become the norm when a Minister claims national security may be harmed in civil litigation.
The Bill will return to the Commons for its crucial final stages on Monday. In anticipation of the debate, the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) has published a third damning critique of the Government’s proposals. The cross-party Committee was unimpressed by the Government rewrite of the Lords amendments. Most of Westminster was busy in Eastleigh and few political commentators flinched.
Faced with mounting criticism of his reluctance to impose restrictions on British society in the face of the Covid-19 crisis, this evening Boris Johnson ratcheted up Britain’s response by announcing a strict lockdown across the country. His address to the nation is available in full here.
Coventry v. Lawrence [2014] UKSC 13, 26 February 2014, read judgment
The law of private nuisance is the way of balancing the rights of neighours, the right to be noisy or smelly, and to be free of noise or smells. Hitherto it is has been explicitly a private law remedy, and has slightly odd rules. But it has been struggling with public interests for some years; are they irrelevant, or can they carry the day for claimant or defendant in a private nuisance claim?
Fortunately, enough of the big issues bedevilling this area of the law came before the Supreme Court in one fell swoop. And they have led to an important re-balancing of the rules. In particular, public interest is relevant, but not at the first stage of deciding whether someone has a claim, but later – can they get an injunction to stop the noise or should they be confined to damages?
And all this arose in the context of some speedway, stock car, banger and motocross racing in an otherwise fairly rural bit of Suffolk.
The judicial authority in Sweden -v- Julian Paul Assange – Read judgment
Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, must face charges of sexual assault and rape in Sweden, the chief magistrate Howard Riddle has ruled.
The case will almost certainly be appealed, so in reality there may not be a final decision for many months. Assange has a right of appeal on law or fact to the High Court under section 26 of the Extradition Act 2003. Assange has 7 days to appeal, but otherwise the extradition would usually take 10 days to execute.
Assange’s skeleton argument, that is a summary of his legal arguments during the hearing, can be found here. You can find my previous post on the subject here, including an explanation of the law surrounding his potential extradition. Carl Gardner, of the Head of Legal blog, also provides an excellent post here.
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 →
The following piece was also published here on 1 Crown Office Row’s Quarterly Medical Law Review.
AI is set to transform and disrupt the way in which healthcare is delivered. The Government’s 10-year health plan for England commits the NHS to becoming “the most AI-enabled healthcare system in the world”, supported by the delivery of a new regulatory framework for medical devices including AI.
On 18 December 2025 the “National Commission on the Regulation of AI in Healthcare” published its formal Call for Evidence.[1]
The CJEU ruled on Tuesday that Directive 2002/58/EC (‘the Directive’) precludes national legislation from ordering telecommunication companies to transfer data in a “general and indiscriminate” manner to security agencies, even for purposes of national security. This is following a challenge by Privacy International to UK security agencies over their practices of collecting bulk communications data (BCD).
The ruling could throw up roadblocks to a post-Brexit “adequacy” agreement over the UKs data protection regime. Adequacy is granted to data protection regimes to confirm that they conform to the data protection standards of GDPR, and thus that companies may move data about EU data subjects outside of the EU to those regimes. Recently, the adequacy rating of the US “Privacy Shield” was invalidated by the Schrems II judgment. This ruling could prove to be an analogous issue for the UK’s adequacy rating at the end of the transition period.
The current debate on legalising gay marriage was sparked by one of the more memorable speeches of this Government, when Prime Minister David Cameron said “I don’t support gay marriage in spite of being a conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a conservative.”
What has been missing from the debate since that speech has been a convincing, measured discussion from the political right on what he meant. Until now, that is. Today the Policy Exchange, a leading conservative think tank thank, has published What’s In A Name? Is there a case for equal marriage?Don’t be fooled by the question mark in the title. This report represents the best and most carefully considered case for equal marriage from a conservative (with a small ‘c’) perspective so far.
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While the press (and the rest of us) were preoccupied by the 
The current debate on legalising gay marriage was sparked by one of the more memorable speeches of this Government, when 
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