Search Results for: prisoners/page/56/[2001] EWCA Civ 1546

Water into gas should not go

3 February 2018 by Rosalind English

Southern Gas Networks Plc v Thames Water Utilities Ltd [2018] EWCA Civ 33, 25 January 2018 – read judgment

When the supply of gas to your house fails, you are entitled to compensation from the gas undertaker for the inconvenience. If that failure has been caused by another utility’s burst water main, the gas undertaker may seek to recoup its expenses for repair to its own infrastructure and the compensation it has had to pay out to consumers. A simple enough picture.

But behind this straightforward seeming network of liabilities is a labyrinth of common law and statutory relationships whose exploration is not for the faint hearted.  As society’s dependence on the provision of energy, water and sewage services grew, during the Industrial Revolution and beyond, parliament had to think of ways to level the playing field between these increasingly centralised powers. This is not a trend that will go away, as the gas, electricity and fibre optic cables become ever more essential to the way we live our lives.
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Will the Detainee Inquiry be human rights compliant?

8 August 2011 by Matthew Flinn

Ten human rights campaign groups and the lawyers for a number of detainees alleging UK involvement in their mistreatment have confirmed that they will be boycotting the impending Detainee Inquiry.

We recently posted on the publication of the Terms of Reference and the Protocol for the Detainee Inquiry and set out some of the reaction to it. At the time, a number of lawyers representing those who claimed to have suffered mistreatment threatened to boycott the inquiry, claiming it would be a whitewash. As the BBC has reported, they have now been joined by a number of Human Rights organizations, and it seems that the clear intention is for the boycott to go ahead.

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MI5 undercover agent policy held lawful

26 March 2021 by Sapan Maini-Thompson

In Privacy International & Ors v Secretary of State for Foreign And Commonwealth Affairs & Ors [2021] EWCA Civ 330, the Court of Appeal held that the policy which authorises officers of the Security Service (MI5) to run undercover agents who participate in the commission of criminal offences is lawful.

Background and Legal Framework

The appellants’ challenge focused on the alleged participation of undercover MI5 agents in criminality. Particular emphasis was placed upon the infamous killing in 1989 of Northern Irish solicitor, Pat Finucane, who was involved in representing those accused of terrorist activities. Of note, in 2012, the Prime Minister, David Cameron, stated that there was “state collusion” in the murder [17]. This led to a report prepared by Desmond de Silva QC in December 2012, who expressed “significant doubt” that the murder would have occurred without the involvement of “elements of the State”; and suggested that there were “positive actions by employees of the State” to further and facilitate the murder [18].

In this case, the focus of challenge was a policy document issued by the Security Service in March 2011 entitled, “Guidelines on the Use of Agents who participate in Criminality – Official Guidance” (“the Guidance”). This document delineates the Security Service’s procedure for “authorising” the participation in criminal conduct by Covert Human Intelligence Sources. Ultimately, the Court had to determine the legitimacy of this policy by reference to the provisions of the Security Service Act 1989, which was the first piece of legislation to put the activities of the Security Service on a statutory footing. The Service had previously been governed by the Royal Prerogative.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (“the Tribunal”) found by a majority for the respondents, but the minority disagreed on the issue of whether the relevant policy amounted to an unlawful de facto power to “dispense” with the criminal law (and therefore also whether it was compliant with the ECHR).

Please stow your rights in the overhead compartment

9 February 2012 by Rosalind English

Stott v Thomas Cook Operators and British Airways Plc [2012] EWCA Civ 66 – read judgment

If you need reminding of what it feels like when the candy-floss of human rights is abruptly snatched away, take a flight.  Full body scanners and other security checks are nothing to the array of potential outrages awaiting passengers boarding an aircraft. Air passengers in general surrender their rights at the point of ticket purchase.

The Warsaw Convention casts its long shadow. It was signed between two world wars, at the dawn of commercial aviation, when international agreement had to be secured at all costs. These strong interests survived the negotiation of the 1999 Montreal Convention, now part of EU law as the Montreal Regulation.

Yet so powerful is the desire to travel, and so beleaguered it is now with the threat of spiralling aviation fuel prices and environmental taxes, that we are happier to surrender our freedoms at airports than we are anywhere else – hospitals, doctors’ surgeries, schools, and even on the public highways.

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Law Pod Latest: do rivers have rights? The Environmental Law Foundation and Aarhus

10 November 2025 by Rosalind English

In this episode three environmental law experts gather to discuss how people without deep pockets can avail themselves of the Aarhus Convention to take legal action in respect of environmental harms like pollution and sewage. Environmental law, a subject that barely existed thirty years ago, is now an established part of English law and is where international law, government policy and public interest litigation often meet head-on. Rosalind English introduces the panel moderator, Richard Wald KC, who chairs ELF. Emma Montlake, an executive director of the charity, helps to ensure that environmental decision making is both robust and transparent. And Carol Day of Leigh Day solicitors is one of the most experienced lawyers in bringing environmental challenges through the courts. The full citations of the cases discussed in this episodes is set out below.

River Action intervention in The National Farmers’ Union v Herefordshire Council & Ors [2025] EWHC 536 (Admin) (10 March 2025) (Admin)

The King (on the application of) The Badger Trust, Wild Justice v Natural England and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [2025] EWHC 2761 (Admin)

Wildlife & Countryside Link intervention in C G Fry & Son Limited (Appellant) v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (formerly known as Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) and another (Respondents) UKSC/2024/0108

Council for National Parks intervention in New Forest National Park Authority v (1) Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (2) Mr Simon Lillington [2025] EWHC 726 (Admin)

HM Treasury v Global Feedback Ltd [2025] EWCA Civ 624 (Global Feedback Ltd has now changed its name to Foodrise Ltd and PTA to Supreme Court granted on 31 October 2025 (see here)

Wild Justice v Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority and Adventure Beyond Ltd (Interested Party) [2025] EWHC 2249 (Admin)

Venn v SSCLG [2014] EWCA Civ 1539

Gary McKinnon, Prince Charles’ letters and free speech – The Human Rights Roundup

22 October 2012 by Sam Murrant

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.

In the news

This week, free speech and social media has again created a lot of online commentary, with UKHRB founder Adam Wagner chairing a panel discussion on the subject. Also hitting the blogosphere this week: the government’s proposal to opt out of 130 EU criminal law measures; the progress of the Azelle Rodney Inquiry; comments on the Gary McKinnon case and Prince Charles’ letters to government ministers.

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Unelected judges decline to prevent deportation of foreign criminal

16 November 2016 by Jim Duffy

Amid a level of scrutiny unprecedented in the Supreme Court’s seven-year history, that is a headline unlikely to make it into tomorrow’s tabloids.

Nevertheless, as Lord Wilson explains in Hesham Ali (Iraq) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] UKSC 60:

“Today is an important day in the life of our court. For it is the first occasion upon which either we or our predecessors in the House of Lords have had occasion to address the interface between the power of the Secretary of State to deport a foreign criminal and the latter’s ability to resist deportation by reference to his right for respect for his family life under article 8 of the ECHR.”

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Environmental judicial review is “prohibitively expensive”, uncertain and insufficient

31 August 2010 by David Hart KC

A Geneva-based international committee has just said (provisionally) that domestic judicial review law is in breach of international law in environmental cases. Why? And does it matter? In this post we will try and explain why, and suggest that it does matter.

On 25 August 2010, the UN-ECE Aarhus Compliance Committee issued draft rulings in two long-running environmental challenges which, if confirmed, may have wide implications for how environmental judicial reviews are conducted in the UK. A key finding was that such challenges were “prohibitively expensive” to mount and this puts the UK in breach of its “access to justice” obligations under Article 9(4) of the Aarhus Convention. In addition, the Committee ruled that the UK’s grounds for judicial review of the substantive legality of decisions were too narrow, and said that the domestic rules as to timing of these challenges were insufficiently certain.

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Law Pod UK Ep. 93: Taxation and Human Rights

23 September 2019 by Emma-Louise Fenelon

In Episode 93, Emma-Louise Fenelon speaks to Isabel McArdle about the ways in which taxation and human rights overlap, with a particular focus on how this has arisen domestically in relation to the licensing of wholesale alcohol trading.

False imprisonment not synonymous with breach of right to liberty

10 March 2020 by Shaheen Rahman

R (on the application of Jalloh (formerly Jollah)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] UKSC 4

In a pithy parting shot to the Home Secretary, Lady Hale has given the unanimous judgment of the Supreme Court on the question of whether a person subject to a home curfew under immigration powers had been falsely imprisoned at common law and whether that concept should now be aligned with the concept of deprivation of liberty in article 5 of the ECHR.  The Court decided the case against the defendant, as did every court below (the Blog covered the Court of Appeal’s decision here).  The defendant had been required to pay the claimant £4,000. 

False imprisonment at common law

The opening sentence sets the scene:

The right to physical liberty was highly prized and protected by the common law long before the United Kingdom became party to the European Convention on Human Rights.

The claimant had been subject to an overnight curfew, enforced by way of monitoring equipment and an electronic tag, under paragraph 2(5) of Schedule 3 of the Immigration Act 1971.

Court rules on injunctions against animal rights protesters

19 November 2009 by Rosalind English

(1)Novartis Pharmaceuticals Uk Ltd (2) Andrew Roy Grantham v (1) Stop Huntingdon Aminal Cruelty (SHAC) by its representative Max Gastone (2) Greg Avery (3) Natasha Avery (4) Heather James [2009] EWHC 2716 (QBD)

Sweeney J 30 October 2009

An injunction against animal rights protesters could not be altered to increase the restriction on their protest without a disproportionate interference with the protesters’ rights under Articles 10 and 11 of the Convention.

Click below for summary and comment by Rosalind English or here to read the full judgment

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ECHR-lite, Secret Supreme Court and Levesonline – The Human Rights Roundup

25 March 2013 by Daniel Isenberg

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.

There was a lot of reaction this week to the proposed Royal Charter on press regulation and the auxiliary legislation upon which it relies.  Commentators are divided on whether the move will work or not, with most controversy surrounding the concept of a ‘relevant publisher’ and how this will affect small, online media.  Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has declared that it does have the power to read closed judgments of courts below, and therefore could, too, issue closed judgments.  Debate continues about the shape of human rights in the UK, especially after the next election; whilst the ECHR slowly evolves with a new protocol ready for ratification.

by Daniel Isenberg

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Challenge upheld to Covid-19 changes to care regime for children

7 December 2020 by Charlotte Gilmartin

R (Article 39) v Secretary of State for Education [2020] EWCA Civ 1577

The issue before the Court of Appeal was whether the Secretary of State for Education had acted unlawfully in failing to consult certain bodies representing children in care, including the Children’s Commissioner for England, before introducing the Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (“the Amendment Regulations”) following the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic.

On 24 November 2020, the Court of Appeal allowed the appellant’s appeal, granting a declaration that the Secretary of State for Education had acted unlawfully by failing to consult those bodies before introducing the amendments.

Court of Appeal dismisses challenge to increase in state pension age

9 October 2020 by Sapan Maini-Thompson

In Delve and Anor v SSfWP [2020] EWCA Civ 1199, the Court of Appeal dismissed the challenge brought against the series of Pensions Acts between 1995 and 2014 which equalised the state pension age for women with that of men by raising the state pension age for women from 60 to 65 and then raising the age at which both men and women can claim their state pension.

The Appellants were two women born in the 1950s, whose pension age has been raised to 66. They contended that although one of the aims of the Pensions Act 1995 was to end the discrimination based on gender, “this equalisation has run ahead of actual improvements in the economic position of women in their age group.” [2]

It was their contention that this gives rise to:

1. direct age discrimination contrary to Article 14 ECHR in conjunction with Article 1 of the First Protocol (A1P1); and

2. indirect sex discrimination contrary to EU law and indirect discrimination contrary to Article 14 on grounds of sex or of sex and age combined.

It was also argued that the Secretary of State failed in her duty to notify them far enough in advance of the fact that they would not, as they expected, start receiving their pension at age 60.

The Court rejected each ground of appeal.

Court of Appeal launches offensive against secret justice with three linked judgments

5 May 2010 by Adam Wagner

… but not too blind

Home Office v Tariq [2010] EWCA Civ 462  – Read judgment, Bank Mellat v HM Treasury [2010] EWCA Civ 483 – Read judgment

[Updated 7/5/10]

The Court of Appeal has told the Government three times in 24 hours that it cannot keep evidence secret in civil proceedings. Similar reasoning was applied in three different contexts; the employment tribunal, a case relating to Iranian nuclear proliferation and a claim for damages for foreign torture.

An identically constituted court as in the Al-Rawi and others judgment had already held on the same day that evidence in a high-profile torture compensation claim should not be kept entirely secret.

In two further decisions, the same judges held that the Treasury must give sufficient disclosure to allow a bank accused of involvement in Iranian nuclear proliferation to not just deny but refute the allegations (Bank Mellat v HM Treasury), and that the Home Office must provide the “gist” of material it had wanted to keep secret from an employment tribunal (Home Office v Tariq). The court did not, however, go as far as saying that evidence can never be kept secret in cases involving national security.

All three cases revolve around the controversial “closed material procedure“, which allows certain evidence to be kept from the public and sometimes a defendant, and the use of “special advocates” (SA). As the Court of Appeal said in para 1 of the judgment, these procedures, developed as part of the fight against terrorism, represent “exceptions to the fundamental principle of open justice.” We have posted about the issues surrounding the special advocate system in relation to control orders (read post).

The cases higlight the strong line the courts have taken towards open justice since the AF case in 2009, a criminal matter in which the House of Lords (now the Supreme Court) held that it was a breach of the right to a fair trial under Article 6 to hold someone under a control order without sufficient information about the allegations against him even where disclosure would compromise the country’s national security (read our case comment).

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