Search Results for: puberty blockers consent/page/15/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)

Are human rights to blame for the riots?

16 August 2011 by Adam Wagner

Many explanations have been proposed for the recent British riots, including poor policing, Twitter and violent video games. Yesterday, the Prime Minster suggested that the Human Rights Act is to blame.

In a major speech, he said that when considering questions of attitude and behaviour, “we inevitably come to the question of the Human Rights Act and the culture associated with it“. What is “exerting such a corrosive influence on behaviour and morality“? No less than “the twisting and misrepresenting of human rights in a way that has undermined personal responsibility“.

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Council acted unlawfully in refusing tenancy

29 January 2014 by Rosalind English

Trafford v Blackpool Borough Council [2014] EWHC 85 – read judgment

The High Court has held that a local authority had abused its powers by refusing to offer a solicitor a new lease of the claimant’s office premises.

The claimant solicitor was aggrieved by the fact that the stated reason for the defendant’s refusal was that her firm had brought claims against the Council on behalf of clients seeking compensation for injuries alleged to have been caused by the negligence of the Council, predominantly in highways “tripping” type claims.

HHJ Davies held that the Council had exercised its “wide discretion” under Section 123 of the Local Government Act 1912 for an improper purpose and was “fundamentally tainted by illegality” on that basis. The Council’s refusal was both Wednesbury unreasonable and procedurally unfair.

Public versus private

The interesting question central to this case was whether or not a public body, acting under statutory powers in deciding whether or not to renew or terminate a contract, was acting under public law duties, and therefore amenable to judicial review, or whether  the relationship between the claimant and the defendant was one governed exclusively by private law, where judicial review has no part to play .
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Equality and Human Rights Commission reverses position on religious cases intervention

22 August 2011 by Adam Wagner

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has reversed its plans to intervene in two European Court of Human Rights cases about religious discrimination. 

Last month the Commission announced that it would intervene in European Court of Human Rights cases on behalf of religious believers who failed to convince the UK courts that they were being discriminated against in the workplace. Two of the proposed interventions – in which the EHRC proposed a “reasonable accommodation” for religion and belief cases (an idea proposed on this blog by Aidan O’Neill QC) – courted controversy, as Alasdair Henderson explained in his post, A leap of faith?

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Mr Cameron goes to Strasbourg

24 January 2012 by Adam Wagner

Updated | In the 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, James Stewart plays a local Boy Rangers leader who becomes a US Senator and, against all odds, triumphs agains the corrupt bureaucrats in Washington. Tomorrow, according to The Sun, “battling” Prime Minister David Cameron will be travelling to Strasbourg in, it would seem, similar style to “tell Euro judges to stop meddling in British justice”.

Meanwhile, back in London, the British president of the European Court of Human Rights launched a preemptive strike on Mr Cameron’s speech in today’s Independent, arguing that the criticism from “senior British politicians” relating to the court’s interference is “simply not borne out by the facts“.

Bratza is right that the us-vs-them narrative is partly the result of mischievous human rights reporting by the press. Recent examples are the Daily Mail’s extravagant claim that the UK loses 3 out of 4 cases in Strasbourg, resting on a partial reading of the court’s statistics, and the Telegraph’s seemingly endless run of articles based on low-level immigration decisions, the latest being: Bigamist wins ‘family life’ human rights case. In that case, the original tribunal knew nothing about his alleged other marriages, so it is hard to see what it shows about human rights defences to deportation decisions, except that a claimant possibly lied in court, was found out and will probably now be deported.

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A human right to object to war

13 December 2011 by Rosalind English

R v Michael Peter Lyons [2011] EWCA Crim 2808- read judgment

Moral objections to the UK’s involvement in Afghanistan do not constitute a defence to an insubordination charge, the Court Martial Appeal Court has ruled. The appellant was not entitled to disobey a lawful command on the ground of conscientious objection.

At the age of 18 the appellant had volunteered for the Royal Navy and under its auspices was posted to submarines as Leading Medical Assistant. Five years in to his service, he was told that he would be deployed to Afghanistan. He applied for discharge on the basis that he objected to the UK’s role in Afghanistan. His application on grounds of conscientious objection was refused. Before his appeal against this refusal was decided he was ordered to undertake a pre-deployment weapons training course, because of the risk all personnel faced in that theatre, combatant or not. On refusing to submit to this he was convicted of insubordination.

In this appeal against his sentence he argued that  Article 9  protected him from active service from the moment when he told his commanding officer of his objections, until his appeal on grounds of conscientious objection was finally determined. He also contended that he had protected status under the Geneva Convention 1949 and it was unlawful to require him to undergo weapons training.  His appeal was dismissed.
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The Weekly Round-up: Sentencing Hearings, the Letby Inquiry, and Equal Pay Legislation

8 September 2023 by Grace Storrie

In the news 

This week, the Ministry of Justice has proposed new laws which would allow judges to force defendants to attend sentencing hearings. Judges can already issue an order requiring a defendant to attend court, and failing to comply can result in a prosecution under the Contempt of Court Act. The Ministry of Justice says, however, that these powers are rarely used by judges. The proposed reforms will allow custody officers to use “reasonable force” to make defendants appear in court. The reforms would also allow judges to extend a defendant’s sentence by two years if they refuse to comply. The new measures were prompted by a number of defendants convicted of murder refusing to attend sentencing hearings, including Lucy Letby who was given a life sentence for the murder of 7 babies and attempted murder of 6 others. While the victims’ families have welcomed the reforms, others have expressed concern that the policy will overburden the court system and place prison staff in unnecessarily dangerous situations. 

Another Strasbourg judgment which Putin may wish to ignore – Scientologists win

5 October 2014 by David Hart KC

Church of Scientology v. Russia, ECtHR, 2 October 2014 – read judgment

Amidst all the current posturing about the Strasbourg Court and how we would like to ignore its judgments we don’t like in future, one cannot help thinking about the old rule of behaviour that your enemy’s enemy is your friend. Western interests have been caught out, time and time again, when they intervene/interfere (insert, as appropriate) in the Middle East, and their enemy’s friend often turns out to be far from its friend.

Cue this case. Scientologists may not be widely favoured, in the UK, but then neither is Russia. And Russia would so love to ignore the slew of Strasbourg judgments against it – think Kordokovsky (€1.6bn, here), Chechnya and the environmental claims (here) against the various businesses which had so seamlessly ended up in the oligarchs’ pockets. But do we really want to feed Putin a line to get out of his difficulties in Strasbourg? This week’s back of an envelope announcements from the Conservative party conference about Strasbourg decisions would appear to do so.

The trigger for this claim in Strasbourg by the Church was the Russian courts’ decision that they were unwilling to allow the Scientologists to register their operations as a legal entity. And, as we shall see, Strasbourg thought that was not on.

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Is it legal to teach gay hate in schools?

19 February 2012 by Adam Wagner

Updated, 20 Feb 2012 | Following the news recently it would seem that the UK is convulsed by a raging battle between religious observers and, in the words of Baroness Warsi, militant secularists. On the same day, the High Court ruled that Christian prayers held before a council meeting were unlawful, and the Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the High Court that two Christian hotel owners had discriminated against gay clients by not offering them a double room.

Today’s spat, according to The Guardian, involves a letter sent to the Education Secretary Michael Gove by the Trade Union Congress leader “expressing alarm that a booklet containing “homophobic material” had been distributed by a US preacher after talks to pupils at Roman Catholic schools across the Lancashire region in 2010.” From the quotes provided in The Observer, the book sounds pretty offensive:

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Irascible does not mean incapable – Court of Protection

10 April 2014 by Rosalind English

Wandsworth Clinical Commissioning Group v IA (By the Official Solicitor as his Litigation Friend) [2014] EWHC 990 (COP) 3 April 2014 – read judgment

This was a case about determination of mental capacity,  which both judge and counsel described as “particularly difficult and finely balanced”.  The judge was confronted with a great deal of conflicting evidence about the capabilities of the individual in question, but concluded in the end that

His capacity may be seen to have fluctuated in the past; this is in my judgment more likely to be attributable to transient cognitive dysfunction due to metabolic reasons as a result of his physical illness … than the progression of symptoms of his acute brain injury.

Background

IA is a 60 year old man from a professional family and himself a physics graduate who once ran his own business. But his life has been eroded by extremely poor health, Type II Diabetes and related disabilities such as anaemia and partial blindness. Then in 2007 he was the subject of a violent criminal assault, being repeatedly kicked in the head, leaving him with a serious head injury, involving skull fractures, brain haemorrhage and contusions to the right frontal area of the brain. 
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Another skirmish on the boundaries of vicarious liability: data protection this time

7 April 2020 by Rosalind English

WM Morrison Supermarkets plc (Appellant) v Various Claimants (Respondents) [2020] UKSC 12 On appeal from: [2018] EWCA Civ 2339 – read judgment

The following summary is based on the Supreme Court’s press report.

This appeal concerned the circumstances in which an employer can be held to be vicariously liable for wrongs committed by its employees, and also whether vicarious liability may arise for breaches by an employee of duties imposed by the Data Protection Act 1998 (“DPA”).

The appellant operates a chain of supermarkets and employed Andrew Skelton on its internal audit team. In July 2013, Skelton received a verbal warning after disciplinary proceedings for minor misconduct and bore a grievance against the appellant thereafter. In November 2013, Skelton was tasked with transmitting payroll data for the appellant’s entire workforce to its external auditors, as he had done the previous year. Skelton did so, but also made and kept a personal copy of the data. In early 2014, he used this to upload a file containing the data to a publicly accessible filesharing website. Skelton later also sent the file anonymously to three UK newspapers, purporting to be a concerned member of the public who had found it online. The newspapers did not publish the information. Instead, one alerted the appellant, which took immediate steps to have the data removed from the internet and to protect its employees, including by alerting police. Skelton was soon arrested and has since been prosecuted and imprisoned.

Justice and Security Bill: The Government is not for turning – Angela Patrick

29 May 2012 by Guest Contributor

Publishing the Justice and Security Bill this morning, the Secretary of State for Justice said “I have used the last few months to listen to the concerns of … civil liberties campaigners with whom I usually agree.”

There are many people who today would sorely like to agree that Ken has listened and has taken their concerns on board.  Unfortunately, the Government’s analysis remains fundamentally flawed.  The Green Paper was clearly a “big ask”.  There have undoubtedly been significant changes made from the proposals in the Green Paper.  However, the secret justice proposals in the Justice and Security Bill remain fundamentally unfair, unnecessary and unjustified.

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Sentences in PC Harper case upheld by Court of Appeal

17 December 2020 by Samuel March

R v Long, Bowers and Cole [2020] EWCA Crim 1729 (16 December 2020) — judgment here

The Court of Appeal held yesterday morning that the sentences of the three men responsible for the manslaughter of PC Harper in 2019 were neither ‘unduly lenient’ nor ‘manifestly excessive’. The Court rejected applications from both the Defendants and the Attorney General (AG), meaning there will be no substantive change to the manslaughter sentences passed at first instance. The Court also refused to grant permission to two of the co-defendants to appeal against their convictions.

BACKGROUND

The case concerned the killing of PC Andrew Harper which in August 2019. PC Harper was killed as he tried to apprehend the three defendants, all part of a group of thieves in the process of stealing a quad bike. As the defendants made off at speed in a car driven by the first Defendant (Henry Long), PC Harper was caught and dragged for more than a mile behind the car.

Long (18 at the time, now 19) alongside co-defendants Albert Bowers (17 now 18) and Jessie Cole (17 now 18), were jointly charged with conspiracy to steal, murder and manslaughter. In the lead-up to trial, all three pleaded guilty to the conspiracy to steal, and Long pleaded guilty to manslaughter. On 24 July 2020, after a 5-week trial at the Central Criminal Court, all three were acquitted of murder, but Bowers and Cole were found to be guilty of manslaughter.

The outcome means that, whilst the jury could be sure that PC Harper died as a consequence of the unlawful acts of the Defendants, they could not be sure that the Defendants actually intended to kill anyone, or to cause anyone really serious harm. In this instance, it means that the jury will have had at least some reasonable doubt as to whether the Defendants knew that they were dragging PC Harper behind them as they drove away.

On 31 July 2020, Long received an extended determinate sentence of 16 years with an extended licence period of 3 years. Bowers and Cole were sentenced to 13 years detention in a Young Offenders Institution. Concurrent sentences were imposed in respect of the conspiracy to steal (32 months for Long, and 38 months for Bowers and Cole).

THE COURT OF APPEAL

There were three applications before the Court of Appeal:

1. Bowers and Cole applied for leave to appeal against their convictions of the offence of manslaughter;
2. The Attorney-General (“AG”) applied for leave to refer the sentences arguing that all three were unduly lenient; and
3. All three defendants sought leave to appeal their respective sentences.

Successful compensation appeal by rape victim

22 August 2016 by Guest Contributor

By Pritesh Rathod

RT v (1) The First-Tier Tribunal (Social Entitlement Chamber) and (2) Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority [2016] UKUT 0306 (AAC) – read judgment.

The Upper Tribunal has ruled that, in deciding whether or not an applicant has cooperated with the prosecution of her assailant where she made and later retracted an allegation of rape, it was necessary to see why that retraction was made and whether it was done truly voluntarily, rather than simply assessing whether she was responsible for the retraction.

Background facts

The Applicant (“RT”) was married to H and had four children with him between 2001 and 2008.  From 2004, she was subject to physical and mental abuse by H, culminating in three incidents of rape.  What followed was a somewhat protracted and complicated course of events relating to H’s prosecution.

Initially, H was arrested and charged with six counts of rape.  He was bailed subject to certain conditions.  While H was in custody, RT wrote to him saying that she missed him and wanted him back home.  Over Christmas 2009, H returned home and he and RT had “something of a reconciliation”, including having consensual sexual intercourse.

By January 2010, RT sought to withdraw the complaint (she had commenced divorce proceedings against him).  In February 2010, RT telephoned the police to ask what would happen if she had lied about the rapes.  Later that month, she retracted her allegations, saying that all of them were untrue.  H appeared at the Crown Court and was acquitted after the prosecution offered no evidence.
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Film those pesky judges?.. The Human Rights Roundup

6 June 2011 by Graeme Hall

It’s time for the human rights roundup, a regular bulletin of all the law we haven’t quite managed to feature in full blog posts. The full list of links, updated each day, can be found here.

by Graeme Hall

In the news:

Joshua Rozenberg, critical of the decision to appoint Jonathan Sumption QC to the Supreme Court, reports that Parliament is consulting on whether it should intervene in judicial appointments. Indeed, a guardian.co.uk Editorial has suggested that the best way for the judiciary to defend itself against accusations by Parliament of over-stepping its authority, is to make itself more diverse. Adam Wagner has previously blogged about the (lack of) diversity in the upper echelons of the judiciary and has also published a two-part series on the power of unelected judges here and here.

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The Weekly-Round up: Scottish referendums, cohabitation rights, and up-skirting crimes

22 August 2022 by Lucy Stock

In the news

• The UK government has submitted its argument in the case which may settle whether Members of Scottish Parliament could legislate for a vote on Scottish independence without Westminster’s backing. The submission from the Advocate General precedes a full hearing on 11 and 12 October when oral arguments will be heard. The Supreme Court will rule on whether Holyrood alone has the power to hold an independence vote, which First Minister Nicola Sturgeon wants to hold on 19 October 2023. Last month, the Scottish government published its own case, arguing the referendum is ‘advisory’ and would have no legal effect on the union.

• The House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee published a report on 4 August recommending the government should improve legal protections for unmarried couples by introducing an opt-out cohabitation scheme proposed by the Law Commission in 2007. The scheme aims to protect eligible cohabitants who are economically vulnerable, preserve individual autonomy, maintain a distinction with marriage and civil partnership, and provide certainty about who qualifies as a cohabitant. The committee said the government should commit to publishing draft legislation for scrutiny in the 2023-24 parliamentary session.

• On 10 August, Suella Braverman delivered a speech for the Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power Project stressing the need for the government to better clarify the scope of fundamental rights. She called to curb the influence of the European Court of Human Rights, citing the ‘intensive standard of proportionality under the Human Rights Act’. The speech dealt with issues including the Equality Act, Single Sex Spaces- specifically in schools- convention rights and illegal migration.