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UK Human Rights Blog - 1 Crown Office Row
Search Results for: puberty blockers consent/page/15/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)
The Upper Tribunal has concluded that new Immigration Rules do not adequately reflect the Secretary of State’s obligations under Article 8 of the ECHR.
This is the second determination of the “fit” between the immigration rules, introduced last year, and the UK’s obligations under Article 8 of the Convention. I covered the Upper Tribunal’s assessment of the rules in MF (Article 8–new rules) Nigeria [2012] UKUT 00393 (IAC) in a previous post and it will be remembered that the Tribunal held there that the new rules fall short of all Article 8 requirements.
Background
The claimant was a Nigerian national who had raised a claim to private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights as part of a claim for asylum. She had travelled to the UK previously, with periods of overstaying and having obtained employment by using false identity papers. Whist in the UK she met her husband, a dual British/Nigerian citizen and argued that her removal would interfere with her right to family life under Article 8. Continue reading →
Sanade, Harrison & Walker v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] UKUT 00048(IAC) – Read judgment.
This case concerns the application of human rights exceptions to the deportation of individuals who were married to British citizens or who had British children.
The Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) (the “Tribunal”) noted that in Mr. Walker’s case, it was accepted before the Court of Appeal that there was an error of law by reason of the failure of the Tribunal to examine the interests of British national children as a primary consideration in light of the guidance in (ZH) Tanzaniav SSHD [2011] UKSC 4. It found that similar errors existed in the other two cases and, as such, it would set aside and re-make the decisions.
Refugees are airlifted out by British forces. Image: The Guardian
On 15 August, the government of Afghanistan collapsed, President Ashraf Ghani fled and shortly afterwards the Taliban took power. Thousands of the 39 million population have been scrambling to flee the future that now awaits Afghanistan. Countries are working to accommodate Afghan refugees — including the UK, which decided to resettle 20,000 refugees.
What is happening in Afghanistan?
The Afghan government’s rapid collapse came two decades after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to as part of the ‘War on Terror’ to seek to deny Al-Qaeda a safe base for operations in the country following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the refusal of the Taliban government to extradite Osama bin Laden. The immediate context is the decision in April of this year by President Biden to withdraw the 3,200 troops U.S. and NATO troops by the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Although Afghan security forces were well funded and equipped, in the event they put up little resistance as Taliban militants seized much of the country as soon as the troops began withdrawing. The Taliban regime that was once toppled in 2001 is now back in power. Moreover, the fall of Kabul came much sooner than expected by U.S. intelligence analysts.
Welcome back to the human rights roundup. Our full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here.
Constitutional and international lawyers, behold! The issue of a referendum into whether Scotland should become independent from the UK is promising to give you plenty to read and talk about.
There are already a number of pieces on the subject matter, with some of the most interesting ones featuring in the UKCLG Blog and the UKSC Blog. For example, Nick Barber, writing for the UKCLG Blog, discussed whether it should be the UK Parliament or the Scottish Parliament who should hold the referendum, and what role should the UK Parliament play in the process to enable a negotiated transition into independence, should that be the outcome of the vote.
Neil Garnham QC (now Mr Justice Garnham) and Robert Wastell of 1COR acted for the Secretary of State for the Home Department at the Litvinenko Inquiry. David Evans QC and Alasdair Henderson acted for AWE Plc. None was involved in preparing this post.
The publication on Thursday of the long awaited report by Sir Robert Owen into the circumstances of the death of Alexander Litivenko from polonium poisoning on 23 November 2006 has (unsurprisingly) resulted in bitter criticism by the Russian Government of the Inquiry’s conclusions that the poisoning was probably directed by the Russian Federal Security Service, and probably approved by President Putin. The report is long (246 pages not including Appendices), but in page after page of readable and measured prose Sir Robert Owen tells the extraordinary story of Alexander Litvinenko’s death and the subsequent 9 year investigation into it. Continue reading →
The Ministry of Justice has published its annual report to the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the Government response to human rights judgments 2011–12. By signing up to the European Convention on Human Rights, the UK has committed to “abide by” judgments of the court. This commitment is monitored by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers.
The report presents a snapshot of the current state of play in relation to the European Court of Human Rights, makes for very interesting reading (trust me!). Here are some tidbits:
There were 28 judgments involving the UK from 1 August 2011 to 31 July 2012, nine of which the UK lost (UK loses 3 out of 4 cases, anyone?). See the handy table at pages 12-13.
The UK currently has 24 cases before the Committee of Ministers, which means that they have not been implemented.
The UK paid out €454,457 [this originally and wrongly said £] in damages for human rights violations (known as ‘just satisfaction’) in 2011, compared to €371,160 in 2010 (p.58). Fear of this figure ending up in the Daily Mail may be the reason that it is on the last page.
Headlines are important. They catch the eye and can be the only reason a person decides to read an article or, in the case of a front page headline, buy a newspaper. On Thursday The Times’ front page headline was “Britain can ignore Europe on human rights: top judge”.
But can it? And did Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, really say that?
To paraphrase another blog, no and no. The headline, which I am fairly sure was not written by Frances Gibb, the Times’ excellent legal correspondent and writer of the article itself, bears no relation to Lord Judge’s comments to the House of Lords Constitution Committee (see from 10:25). It is also based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the European Convention on Human Rights has been incorporated into UK law.
The Sun have printed another correction today in relation to its misleading human rights reporting. The correction, on page 2, can be read online or to the right of this post.
The correction was the outcome of a complaint I made about this article – I posted on it here. The main part of the correction relates to the entirely false claim that “The European Court stopped a British judge imposing a whole-life tariff on Ian McLoughlin”. The reality is that although judges were unsure whether they could impose the orders following Vinter v UK in the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Appeal clarified in February 2014 that they definitely could. The Sun have now admitted that was the case.
I am happy that the correction has been made although as I have said before, the damage has to a large extent been done as – let’s be honest – how many people read the clarifications and corrections box (which is located immediately adjacent to the eye-catching Page 3…).
But what I found most interesting about the process, which was started by the Press Complaints Commission and concluded by its post-Leveson successor, the Indepenndent Press Standards Orgaisation (IPSO), was the initial response to my complaint (PDF here) by The Sun’s Ombudsman, Philippa Kennedy OBE, which I thought was needlessly aggressive and demonstrates a worrying approach to this issue. I will select a few choice quotes:
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular glittering galaxy of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found here. You can find previous roundups here. Links compiled by Adam Wagner, post by Sarina Kidd.
Military intervention in Syria has been greatly discussed this week in the media. Here, we look at how legal it would be for the UK to send troops over. Meanwhile, David Miranda’s hearing continues, and many judicial review claims are due, soon, to move from the High Court to the Upper Tribunal.
How to determine “best interests” in the case of an adult lacking capacity, where a proposed medical donation for the benefit of a close relative may cause lasting harm to the donor?
Almost ten years after the death of Rachel Corrie on 16 March 2003, her case still raises troubling questions. How was a 23-year-old protester killed by an Israeli military bulldozer? Did the driver do it deliberately, as the family have claimed? Were the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) responsible in some other way?
Those questions were all in play in a civil negligence claim brought against the Israeli state by Corrie’s family, who claimed $1 in damages. Having exhausted other avenues, the family were looking for answers, not a pay out. The Haifa District Court examined the issues over 15 days of oral testimony, and two weeks ago Judge Oded Gershon released a 73-page ruling (Hebrew) as well as a detailed summary of the Judgment (English).
I was particularly interested in the judgment as a significant proportion of my work recently has involved public inquiries into allegations against the British Armed Forces over events which happened in Iraq in 2003/4. Unfortunately, the reporting of the ruling has been fairly poor. The Guardian published eight articles and a cartoon about the ruling (by comparison, the appointment of a new Justice Secretary generated four). But despite the sheer volume of commentary, I had no sense from reading the articles that the writers had attended the oral hearings, read the judgment (which is long and in Hebrew) or even consider the court’s English summary. The Guardian’s legal section is very good so it is disappointing that the legal interest of the story was largely ignored.
With this in mind, I thought I would post a summary of the judgment and brief discussion of how an equivalent claim would work in the UK.
A number of legal developments put free speech under the spotlight this week.
First, media commentators disputed the significance of the Duchess of Sussex’s successful privacy claim against Associated Newspaper Limited, covered in last week’s round-up. A leader in The Times issued the grave warning that ‘Mr Justice Warby’s judgment creates a precedent that will have a chilling effect on the media,’ not least ‘given that what was at stake…were issues that affect society as whole’. Some media lawyers took a dim view of such alarm, suggesting there was little to be surprised at in Warby J’s carefully reasoned conclusion that no legitimate public interest was to be found in publishing the intimate contents of a daughter’s letter to her father.
Then came Education Secretary Gavin Williamson’s announcement of a proposed free speech law targeting universities, designed to reverse ‘the chilling effect on campuses of unacceptable silencing and censoring’. Its reception was mixed to say the least. The scheme would impose a statutory free speech duty on universities and student unions, enabling ‘no-platformed’ academics, students and visiting speakers to sue for compensation. Potential infringements would be investigated by a mandated ‘free speech champion’, empowered to recommend various forms of redress. While many academics welcomed the basic principles behind the proposal, others complained that it fomented “phantom fears” of a “cancel culture” crisis.
Lord Carlile QC, former Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, has said that in the aftermath of the Paris attacks last weekend, Parliament should fast-track the Investigatory Powers Bill into law. Given his extensive experience in the field, Lord Carlile’s views should not be taken lightly. But Lord Carlile is wrong. To fast-track the Investigatory Powers Bill is undesirable and unnecessary. It would also end a crucial public conversation in a wrong-headed paroxysm of governmental action.
An Undesirable Response
Fast-track national security law is undesirable for (at least) two reasons. First, legislatures tend not to function well in the aftermath of any emergency. If they legislate immediately, the result is often not just overreach, but legislation that is bad in technical terms. Second, these general concerns are of especial significance in this field of law, because existing flaws in our investigatory powers law are a result of failures of scrutiny in the past. Continue reading →
In Episode 70 Emma-Louise Fenelon talks to Robert Kellar about consent and causation, discussing the development of the law since Chester v Afshar through to Khan v MNX.
Listeners can find recent interviews on informed consent with James Badenoch QC here and John Whitting QC here.
– Hughes-Holland v. BPE Solicitors and Another [2017] UKSC 21
– South Australian Asset Management Corporation v. York Montague Limited (“SAAMCO”) [1997] 1 AC 19
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Izuazu (Article 8 – new rules) Nigeria [2013] UKUT 45 (IAC) – read judgment
Sanade, Harrison & Walker v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] UKUT 00048(IAC) – Read 
Welcome back to the human rights roundup. Our full list of links can be found 
The Ministry of Justice has published its annual report to the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the 
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular glittering galaxy of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found 
Almost ten years after the death of 
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