Search Results for: prisoners/page/48/[2001] EWCA Civ 1546
9 June 2010 by Adam Wagner
The Council of Europe has expressed “profound regret” that the UK has failed to implement its 5-year-old European Court of Human Rights ruling against the policy which prevents prisoners from voting in elections.
In a Committee of Ministers decision, the Council, which monitors compliance with European Court rulings, has:
expressed profound regret that despite the repeated calls of the Committee, the United Kingdom general election was held on 6 May 2010 with the blanket ban on the right of convicted prisoners in custody to vote still in place
It also appears to be giving the new Government a chance, expressing
confidence that the new United Kingdom government will adopt general measures to implement the judgment ahead of elections scheduled for 2011 in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and thereby also prevent further, repetitive applications to the European Court;
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11 December 2014 by David Hart KC
R (Haney and others) v. Secretary of State for Justice, 10 December 2014 – read judgment
Indeterminate sentences and the inadequate funding of rehabilitation during them has posed problems since Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences hamstrung the system. The courts here and in Strasbourg have been in two minds what to do about cases where prisoners have not received the assistance they ought to have received – and hence are not, by domestic standards, ready for release.
Two solutions have been proposed to date. The House of Lords in R (James) [2009] UKHL 22 decided that this did not amount to a breach of Article 5 of the Convention. When James got to Strasbourg, the ECtHR (2013) 56 EHRR 12 disagreed; continued detention was unlawful.
The Supreme Court found a third way, as we shall see. Another example of our courts’ increasing confidence when confronted with a Strasbourg decision they think to be wrong.
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16 October 2013 by Adam Wagner
R (on the application of Chester) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for Justice (Respondent), McGeoch (AP) (Appellant) v The Lord President of the Council and another (Respondents) (Scotland) [2013] UKSC 63 – read judgment / press summary
The Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling recently told The Spectator that he wants “to see our Supreme Court being supreme again“. In light of his respect for the court, he should read today’s judgment on prisoner votes very carefully indeed, as should David Cameron who has already endorsed the decision as a “great victory for common sense”.
The Supreme Court dismissed two claims by prisoners who argued their European Convention (Chester) and European Union (McGeogh) rights were being breached because they weren’t allowed to vote in various elections. I won’t summarise the detail of their arguments, which can be found in our previous posts on the Court of Appeal and Scottish Outer House Court of Session decisions.
We will aim to cover the substance of the decisions in due course. But what I find really interesting was the Justices’ views on the European Court’s various decisions on prisoner votes, which the Government argued were poorly reasoned.
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22 April 2010 by Adam Wagner
A prisoner is suing the UK Government in the European Court of Human Rights for the right to vote in the upcoming General Election. With voting registration already closed, he won’t be voting in the election, but he may receive compensation. This could open the door to claims from tens of thousands of prisoners in the UK.
The BBC reports that Leon Punchard, 19, who is serving an 18-month sentence at Norwich prison for burglary, has filed an application to the European Court for a declaration and compensation.
We have already posted on the ban on prisoners voting (see here and here). Four years ago, the European Court of Human Rights criticised the policy in Hirst v UK, which arose out of the 2002 case of R v Home Secretary ex parte Hirst. The European Court held that Section 4 of the Representation of the People Act 2000 which prevents prisoners from voting is in breach of the electoral right under Article 1 of Protocol 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Government insists that it is still considering the responses to its second stage consultation on the issue, despite it closing over six months ago. With voter registration for the 2010 General Election closing on 20 April, prisoners will not get their chance to vote in a general election for at least a few more years.
However, Mr Prichard may well win a compensation payment from the UK Government, which the European Court of Human Rights has the power to award in cases where a contracting state has breached a citizen’s human rights. This could open the door to the other 87,883 serving prisoners to bring their own legal actions.
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20 October 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated | The House of Lords debated the vexed issue of prisoner voting yesterday, leading to a somewhat bad-tempered clash between a former Lord of Appeal and the new minister of state for justice.
The debate related to the 2005 decision of Hirst No 2, in which the European Court of Human Rights held that preventing prisoners from voting breached their human rights. The judgment has not yet been implemented in the UK, leading to repeated condemnations from the Council of Europe, which monitors compliance the Strasbourg court’s rulings. The CoE will reexamine the issue on 30 November, when it may decide to sanction the UK.
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10 February 2011 by Adam Wagner
Updated | Parliament is currently debating on whether prisoners should be given the vote. The motion can be found here and you can watch the debate on Parliament TV.
A Washington Post correspondent recently said US President Barack Obama had been “bounding around like a ping-pong ball in a wind tunnel” on to the situation in Egypt. In many ways, the UK government has been doing the same on the 5-year-old judgment in Hirst v UK, in which, as has been endlessly repeated in the media, the European Court of Human Rights’ grand chamber ruled that the indiscriminate ban on prisoners voting breached Article 1 of Protocol 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
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12 May 2016 by Guest Contributor
John Wadham today takes on the role of National Preventative Mechanism chair. He was formally Chief Legal Officer for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Deputy Chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission and most recently the Director of the international human rights organisation, Interights. Throughout his career, John has worked to protect the rights of detainees.
We are delighted to feature this from John on his new role:
The National Preventive Mechanism describes the network of independent statutory bodies that have responsibility for preventing ill-treatment in detention. In every jurisdiction of the UK – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – the bodies in this network have the job of inspecting or monitoring every place of detention to try to prevent the ill-treatment of those detained. Whether a person is compulsorily detained in a prison, an immigration removal centre, a psychiatric hospital, or as a child in a Secure Training Centre, there is an organisation responsible for assessing how detainees are treated and ensuring that no ill-treatment will be tolerated.
The Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) is the international human rights treaty designed to strengthen the protection of people deprived of their liberty by requiring National Preventive Mechanisms to be set up in every country. OPCAT’s adoption by the United Nations General Assembly in 2002 demonstrated a consensus among the international community that people deprived of their liberty are particularly vulnerable to ill-treatment and that efforts to combat such ill-treatment should focus on primarily on prevention. OPCAT embodies the idea that prevention of ill-treatment in detention can best be achieved by a system of independent, regular visits to all places of detention. OPCAT entered into force in June 2006. There are already 80 countries party to OPCAT, and 62 designated NPMs across the world – all designed to prevent ill-treatment in their places of detention. The UK ratified OPCAT in December 2003 and designated its own NPM in March 2009.
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1 June 2010 by Adam Wagner
Article 9 | Right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion
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Article 9 of the Convention provides as follows:
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.
(2) Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
Article 10 of the EU Charter corresponds to Art.9 ECHR and is subject to the limitations set out in 9(2). This means, in effect, that where Member States are adopting Directives prohibiting discrimination or implementing EU working time rules, they are bound to respect the religious beliefs and activities of their citizens. This also authorises the slaughter of animals without pre stunning to satisfy the demands of Halaal consumers despite the provisions of Directive 93/104/EC on the protection of animals at the time of slaughter. The right to freedom of religion is also associated with the particularly highly protected EU right for individual to move across borders to join religious groups, preach etc.
Art.9 covers the sphere of private, personal beliefs and religious creeds. The Strasbourg authorities emphasise the democratic importance of an open forum of beliefs and opinions; atheists and agnostics may therefore claim the protection of this right (Kokkinakis v Greece (1993)17 EHRR 397).
The Strasbourg Court has accepted the following views and positions as beliefs under Art.9 :
(1) Veganism: United Kingdom Application No.00018187/91 (1993) Unreported.
(2) Scientology: Sweden Application No.0007805/77 (1979) 16 DR 68.
(3) Kosher diet: United Kingdom Application No.0008231/78 65 DR 245.
(4) Jehovah’s Witness: Kokkinakis v Greece (1993).
The right to freedom of conscience was argued in the right to die cases R v DPP ex parte Pretty and Pretty v UK following Sanles v. Spain [2001] EHRLR 348. The argument in both cases was that one’s own freedom to choose the manner and timing of one’s death should not be restricted by legislation fuelled by religious sensitivities. The argument was rejected in Strasbourg: see Pretty (2) for a critique of this element of the judgment. In general, positions taken in relation to politics and ideology do not qualify for Article 9 protection. There is no right, for example, under Article 9 to conscientious objection: Application No.0007705/76 (1977) 9 DR 196. Art.9 only protects actions and gestures that are intimately connected with a creed or belief. In Arrowsmith v United Kingdom (1978) 19 DR 5 the Commission rejected a complaint that the prosecution of the applicant for handing out leaflets to soldiers urging them not to serve in Northern Ireland breached her rights under Article 9. This was a specific action and not a general expression of her pacifist ideals. However the explicit exclusion of non-theistic belief systems by the Court may have to be reviewed in the light of the current inflamed debate about the impact of religion on various freedoms, such as the freedom to marry according to one’s choice, and of course the general freedom of expression.
There is some scepticism about an express right to respect for religion in a largely secular society and recent cases upholding the right to religious practices have attracted strong criticism. When the High Court ruled in May 2011 that a Muslim prisoner could not be disciplined for refusing to give urine for a drugs test because he was in the midst of a voluntary fast the general view was that the courts were once again cravenly giving way to abusive reliance on human rights by unsavoury characters: see the comments on our report of the case.
Furthermore, the idea that freedom of speech must give way to religious sensitivities under the increasing cloud of offence is becoming a highly contentious issue, made more so by the tensions surrounding Islamic extremism and the murderous attacks in Europe of those deemed offensive to the religion.
Article 9 does not impose a positive obligation on the State to introduce legislation to criminalise blasphemy or, where blasphemy laws are present, there is no duty on public authorities to bring proceedings against publishers of works that offend the sensitivities of any individual or group: Choudhury v United Kingdom Application No.00017439/90 (1991). States which impose conscription will not therefore be in breach of Article 9 if they sanction such objections.
Churches and associations with religious and philosophical objects are capable of exercising Article 9 rights. Profit-making corporations on the other hand cannot rely on Article 9 rights. In Refah Partisi v Turkey (2003)the Court held that the dissolution of a political party that was held to desire to establish a theocracy was consistent with the ECHR on the grounds that theocracy flew in the face of the liberal and democratic principles of the Convention.
Article 9 does not require active facilitation of religious beliefs in the workplace (Stedman v United Kingdom (1997) 23 EHRR CD 168, although the Strasbourg Court has adopted a more generous approach in Eweida and Others v United Kingdom (2013) by concluding that the applicant’s employer had breached her Article 9 rights by refusing to allow her to wear a crucifix. This was a minor victory however since the Court also decided that a policy requiring employees to serve all customers irrespective of sexual orientation was a legitimate restriction on religious freedom (this part of the case involved a Christian registrar disciplined for refusing to register same-sex couples and a second involving a marriage therapist dismissed for refusing to counsel same-sex couples). The Strasbourg Court is generally unsympathetic to individual claims for exemption on religious grounds to generally applicable laws; thus, in Pichon and Sajous v France (an inadmissibility ruling of 2001), the conviction of pharmacists who refused on religious grounds to supply contraceptives that had been lawfully prescribed was upheld on the basis of the need to take account of both health policy and the rights and freedoms of others. In Dahlab v Switzerland (2001) the Court upheld the refusal by the authorities to allow a teacher to wear a headscarf, on the basis that the state was entitled to seek to ensure the neutrality of the education system. Beyond the private sphere, therefore, states have a broad margin of discretion in deciding what religious actions and symbols to restrict.
Section 13 Human Rights Act 1998 provides that if a court’s determination of any question might affect the exercise by a religious organisation of the Convention right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion under Art.9 , the court must have particular regard to the importance of that right. See Alison Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions (1999) 7 BHRC 375 for judicial discussion of the practical effect of this section. However see comments by Laws LJ on the proposal to accord special treatment in the courts to claimants or defendants relying on supernatural backing for their behaviour: McFarlane v Relate Avon Ltd [2010] EWCA Civ B1 (29 April 2010)
The freedom of religion also includes a negative aspect, including the rigth not having to manifest one’s religion or beliefs. In the case of Sinan Isik v. Turkey the Strasbourg Court ruled that it was an interference with Art.9 to require a citizen to indicate his religion in his application for an ID card or formally ask for the religion box to be left empty. That in itself, in the Court’s view, violated the Convention. This presumably covers all forms of state-sanctioned identification documents or registers.
The Human Rights Act 1998 also provides that priests, ministers and officials of any church are excluded from liability under s.6 where they refuse to administer a marriage “contrary to [their] religious doctrines or convictions”.
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12 February 2012 by Matthew Hill
Rabone and another v Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust [2012] UKSC 2 – Read judgment (On appeal from [2010] EWCA Civ 698 and [2009] EWHC 1827 )
At first sight, Article 2 – the ‘right to life’ – seems to be a prohibition on extra-judicial executions and state-sponsored death squads. It does, of course have a role to play in that respect (and one that is not limited to those countries whose signature of the Convention is viewed with scepticism from Western Europe).
But through a combination of logic, inventive legal argument and what can either be characterised as the incremental development of a new area of law, or the expansionist tendencies of Strasbourg judges, the scope of Article 2 has broadened significantly, and can be cited in cases concerning prison administration and coronial procedural law.
In Rabone, the Supreme Court extended the obligations that the Article places on the state and its servants still further, beyond even the existing decisions from Strasbourg. They held that – in the specific circumstances of this tragic case – an NHS Trust had violated the positive duty that it had, under Article 2, to protect a voluntary patient from the risk of suicide.
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4 June 2015 by Guest Contributor
Last week the Queen revealed that the newly-elected government had delayed its promised proposals to repeal the Human Rights Act. If this signals a willingness to listen and reflect, rather than an opportunity to bring potential rebels into line, then so much the better. Let us keep talking.
In this post, I want to talk about the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
The government’s key concern – judging by the Grayling paper published last October – is that the Strasbourg Court has got too big for its boots and won’t stop telling us what to do. Hence the manifesto commitment to introduce a British Bill of Rights. The Prime Minister’s personal gripe – with some justification – is the Court’s 2005 ruling on prisoner voting: Hirst v UK (No.2) (2005) 42 EHRR 849.
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12 May 2020 by Samuel March
Manning, R. v (Rev 1) [2020] EWCA Crim 592 (30 April 2020) — judgment here
On 30 April 2019, giving the lead judgment in the Court of Appeal, the Lord Chief Justice considered that the impact of a custodial sentence is likely to be heavier during the coronavirus pandemic than it would otherwise be, and that this was a factor that judges and magistrates can and should keep in mind when sentencing.
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8 March 2016 by Kate Richmond
Two important Supreme Court judgments concerning vicarious liability were handed down last week.
Mohamud v WM Morrison Supermarkets [2016] UKSC 11 affirms the “close connection” test set out in Lister v Hesley Hall Ltd [2001] UKHL 22 and rejects the formulation of a new test for vicarious liability based on “representative capacity”.
Cox v Ministry of Justice [2016] UKSC 10 extends the sorts of relationships where a defendant can be made vicariously liable for the conduct of an individual and evaluates Various Claimants v Catholic Child Welfare Society [2012] UKSC 56 (the ‘Christian Brothers’ case)
The two judgments are intended to be complementary; Mohamud addresses the relationship between the defendant and the wrongdoer while Cox centres on the sufficiency of connection between that relationship and the wrongdoer’s act such that the defendant can be held vicariously liable.
Mohamud
The claimant was assaulted at a Morrisons petrol station by an employee, Mr Khan. The claimant had entered the petrol station and had enquired about using printing facilities. Mr Khan responded using foul, racist and threatening language before following the claimant out ino the forecourt where Mr Khan punched and kicked him.
The Court of Appeal found that there was not a sufficiently close connection between what Mr Khan was employed to do and his tortious conduct so as to give rise to vicarious liability on the part of Morrisons. The “close connection” test was applied as laid down by Lord Steyn in Lister.
Lord Toulson gave the leading judgment in Mohamud. He surveyed the origins and development of vicarious liability and explored the possibility of a new, broader test based on “representative capacity”. The new test was dismissed by the court, it being unclear whether the “representative capacity” approach was substantively different to the “close connection” test [46,53]. However, the judgment provides a clear exposition of the developments and shortcomings in the law on vicarious liability.
Lord Touslon draws together various authorities to identify the underlying public policy rationale for vicarious liability, first enunciated by Holt CJ in Boston v Sandford (1691) 2 Salk 440 [17]. It was described by Scarman LJ in Rose v Plenty [1976] 1 WLR 141 at p148 as follows:
“But basically, as I understand it, the employer is made vicariously liable for the tort of his employee… because it is a case in which the employer, having put matters into motion, should be liable if the motion which he has originated leads to damage to another”
Lord Touslon examined the second limb of the Salmond definition of vicarious liability (Salmond, J.W (1907) The Law of Torts London: Stevens & Haynes). The second limb relates to “unauthorised modes of authorised acts” which was unsatisfactorily applied to cases such as the Lister case concerning sexual abuse.
The Supreme Court preferred a broader approach and endorsed the dicta of Lord Cullen in Central Motors (Glasgow) Ltd v Cessnock Garage and Motor Co (1925 SC 796, 802). Lord Cullen considered whether the tortious conduct was “within the field of activities” assigned to the employee.
The thrust of the Supreme Court’s analysis in Mohamud case was: 1) the nature of the employee’s job was to be considered broadly; and 2) the court ought to examine whether there is sufficient connection between the employee’s position and his wrongful conduct to make it just for the employer to be held liable [44].
Lord Toulson then addressed the imprecision of the close connection test quoting from Lord Nicholls in Dubai Aluminium Co Ltd v Salaam [2002] UKHL 48, who pointed to:
‘…the lack of guidance on the type or degree of connection which will normally be regarded as sufficiently close to prompt the legal conclusion that the risk of the wrongful act occurring, and any loss flowing from the wrongful act, should fall on the firm or employer… this lack of precision is inevitable, given the infinite range of circumstance where the issue arises.’
Lord Touslon concluded that courts are required to make an evaluative judgement when applying the test and consider all of the circumstances. Lord Dyson agreed with the inevitability of imprecision, likening it to a ‘quest for a chimaera’ [54].
In the present case, the court found that Mr Khan had not “metaphorically taken off his uniform” when the tortious action occurred [47]. Lord Toulson considered it “a seemless episode” where Mr Khan also ordered the claimant to keep away from his employer’s premises. Taken together, Mr Khan’s actions were pursued in connection with the business in which he was employed and therefore Morrisons was vicariously liable.
Lord Dyson added that vicarious liability law is on the move but only in relation to the relationship between individual and defendant, not in regard to the circumstances when an employer may be held vicariously liable [55].
Cox
This was a case about a prisoner working in the kitchen of HMP Swansea who negligently dropped a 25kg bag of rice on to the claimant, causing serious injuries. Ms Cox was working at the time as the prison’s catering manager. She claimed that the Ministry of Justice was vicariously liable for the prisoner’s actions.
Lord Reed gave the leading judgment. He noted that the Christian Brothers case identified five features which could be applied in situations where there is a contract of employment and where there is no such contract but the relationship bears all the hallmarks of a contractual employment relationship. In that case, Lord Phillips said [19]:
“…There is no difficulty in identifying a number of policy reasons that usually make it fair, just and reasonable to impose vicarious liability on the employer when these criteria are satisfied:
- i) The employer is more likely to have the means to compensate the victim than the employee and can be expected to have insured against that liability; (“means”)
- ii) The tort will have been committed as a result of activity being taken by the employee on behalf of the employer;
iii) The employee’s activity is likely to be part of the business activity of the employer;
- iv) The employer, by employing the employee to carry on the activity will have created the risk of the tort committed by the employee;
- v) The employee will, to a greater or lesser degree, have been under the control of the employer.” (“control”)
Lord Reed said that the five features are not all equally significant. He added that features relating to “means” or “control” are no longer independently significant or realistic in modern life [20,21]. Lord Phillips in Christian Brothers weaved together the remaining three features ((ii),(iii) and (iv) above). These are inter-related and can produce a situation whereby a relationship other than one of employment is in principle capable of giving rise to vicarious liability.
Lord Reed focused on the integration, of the employee’s activities with the employer’s business, citing with approval Lord Phillips’ summary of Ward LJ’s approach in E v English Province of Our Lady of Charity [2012] EWCA Civ 938 where Ward LJ asked:
“whether the workman was working on behalf of an enterprise or on his own behalf and, if the former, how central the workman’s activities were to the enterprise and whether these activities were integrated into the organisational structure of the enterprise” [26]
Lord Reed confirmed that the scope of vicarious liability extends beyond acts or omissions during the course of the worker’s employment. However, it does not extend to where a tortfeasor’s activities are entirely attributable to his independent business or a third party’s business. The court considered that this new wider scope should protect victims whilst acknowledging changes in the legal relationships between enterprises and their workforces [29].
Applying the above analysis, the court considered (i) that prisoners are integrated into the operation of prisons and (ii) that prisoners’ activities are an integral part of the prison service’s activities. Consequently, the MoJ was vicariously liable in the present case.
In short, many will see these judgments as extending further the circumstances in which vicarious liability will be held to exist. The concept of workers acting ‘on a frolic of their own’ has perhaps never been so tightly circumscribed.
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29 September 2013 by Sarina Kidd
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular airport departure board of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found here. You can find previous roundups here. Post by Sarina Kidd, edited and links compiled by Adam Wagner.
This week the Conservative Party Conference is likely to generate human rights headlines. Meanwhile, previous controversies still bubble away. Chris Grayling, taking a break from legal aid cuts, offered his opinion on the Europe debate. Meanwhile, others considered the role of transparency, demeanour, religious freedom and niqabs in the courts, and, with the proposed smoking ban in prisons, smokers may have found another reason not to break the law.
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20 December 2011 by Rosalind English
Rahmatullah v Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Secretary of State for Defence [2011] EWCA Civ 1540 – read judgment
A Pakistani detainee was sufficiently in the control of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and the Secretary of State for Defence to support the issue of a writ of habeas corpus, and it should not be withheld on any grounds concerned with diplomatic relations.
“Habeas corpus” is a legal action through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention, that is, detention lacking sufficient cause or evidence. The original Latin designation simply means the initiation of a process requiring a person to be brought before a judge. It is a fundamental principle of English law that, where an individual is detained against his will, it is for the detainer to show that the detention is lawful, not for the detainee to show that his detention is unlawful.
In this case the appellant (R), a Pakistani national, had been captured by British forces in Iraq in 2004, handed to United States forces and transferred to a US airbase in Afghanistan as a suspected member of a proscribed organisation with links to Al-Qaeda. There he continued to be detained without trial. He sought the issue of a writ of habeas corpus, relying on a 2003 memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the United Kingdom, the US and Australia, active at the time of R’s capture, under which the UK retained full rights of access to any UK-detained prisoners of war and a right to request their return.
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20 December 2011 by Matthew Flinn
Malcolm v Secretary of State for Justice [2011] EWCA Civ 1538 – Read Judgment
The Court of Appeal has decided that a failure to provide a life sentence prisoner with a minimum of one hour in the open air each day did not constitute a breach of his human rights under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (“ECHR”).
Oliver Sanders of 1 Crown Office Row represented the Secretary of State in this case. He is not the author of this post.
Between 26 April and 2 October 2007, a period of 159 days, Mr Leslie Malcolm was detained in the Segregation Unit at HMP Frankland. During that time, he was provided with an average of 30 minutes in the open air each day. However, paragraph 2(ii) of Prison Service Order 4275 (“PSO 4275”), which contained policy guidance for prison officers operating under the Prison Rules 1999, stated that he should have had the opportunity to have at least one hour each day in the open air.
When Mr Malcolm first brought his claim, he complained that not only had his human rights under the ECHR been infringed, but also that the prison officers at HMP Frankland were liable for misfeasance in a public office. Both aspects of the claim were rejected by Sweeney J at first instance, and it was only the human rights question that was considered on appeal.
The judgment of Richards LJ, in leading a unanimous Court of Appeal, is an elucidating one insofar as it breaks down and draws attention to the various questions which need to be addressed when a human rights claim under Article 8 is brought.
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The Council of Europe has expressed “profound regret” that the UK has failed to implement its 5-year-old European Court of Human Rights ruling against the policy which prevents prisoners from voting in elections. 
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