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One of the many outrages perpetrated by Donald Trump in the waning of his Presidency was granting a pardon to four private military contractors for their role in the Nisour Square massacre. Those military contractors had opened fire indiscriminately, killing 14 Iraqi civilians, including two children.
As with many of Trump’s assaults on the Rule of Law, the thought was that this kind of abuse could not happen in the UK. But certainty over our moral high ground will be short-lived if Parliament passes the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill – a Bill whose precise aim is to make it much harder to prosecute British military personnel for abuses (including murder) carried out overseas. The Bill reaches Second Reading this week in the House of Lords.
Hurdles to prosecution under the Bill
The Bill introduces three substantial hurdles to the prosecution of British soldiers if the incident took place overseas more than five years ago. The first is that prosecutions must only be “exceptional circumstances”. The second is that the consent of the Attorney General is required. The third is that, in contemplating prosecutions, prosecutors must place particular weight on a list of exculpatory factors, but with the absence of a list of factors tending in favour of prosecution.
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular kicking collection 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 Celia Rooney.
This week, the legal community reacts to Tory plans to repeal the Human Rights Act. Given the significance of the proposals for human rights protection in the UK, this week’s roundup focuses on how those plans have been received. Continue reading →
McMorn (R, on the application of) v Natural England[2015] EWHC 3297 (Admin) – read judgment
An interesting point arose in this judicial review (for which see Rosalind English’s post here). Could the claimant could get the benefit of an order that any costs he might have had to pay were capped at £5,000? The original judge, Thirlwall J, when granting permission, had refused this costs protection. Ouseley J granted it, though, because the claimant won, the order is academic (short of a successful appeal by the defendant).
This kind of costs protection only applies when the claim is an environmental claim covered by the Aarhus Convention: see a whole list of posts at the end of this one, including the true bluffer’s guide here. The UK has been dragged kicking and screaming into compliance with the Aarhus costs requirements, that environmental challenges not be “prohibitively expensive”, thanks to a combination of the Convention’s own enforcement body and the EU Court in Luxembourg.
But the domestic courts have had some difficulty in deciding what is or is not comes within an environmental challenge.
As we will see, the judge also thought that an Aarhus claim requires a more intensive review of the substantive decision than might have been applied had the claim been a typical domesticchallenge on grounds of irrationality. I deal with that point first.
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.
This week the eyes of the United Kingdom, and quite possibly the whole of Europe, were trained on Luxembourg for an eagerly awaited judgement from the Court of Justice of the European Communities. However, before we embark on a lengthy and forensic analysis of the German/Slovakian case of AlzChem v Commission (State aid – Chemical industry – Judgment) [2018] EUECJ T-284/15 (13 December 2018), we should pay some attention to the week’s legal Brexit developments…
The CJEU this week delivered judgement in the case of Wightman and Others – (Notification by a Member State of its intention to withdraw from the European Union – Judgment) [2018] EUECJ C-621/18 (10 December 2018). The case had been referred to the Luxembourg court by the Inner House of the Court of Session and addressed the feasibility of unilateral revocation of Article 50 TEU. The UK government sought to have the application ruled inadmissible on the grounds that the question posed was hypothetical, no such revocation of Article 50 having been attempted or even contemplated. The European Council and Commission meanwhile contended that although revocation was possible, the right was not unilateral. They appeared to fear abuse of Article 50 by member states who could unilaterally seek to terminate their membership of the European Union, revoke that termination and then repeat the exercise as necessary to circumvent the two-year time limit imposed by Article 50 on withdrawal negotiations. Continue reading →
The National DNA database has become another key human rights issue in the 2010 Election. It is by far the largest such database in the world, with over 1 in 10 people now on the database. The issue of whether innocent people will have their DNA retained has now become highly politicised.
The Tories have now dropped their opposition to the Crime and Security Bill 2010, which has since become law. They had initially opposed provisions which allowed the police to retain the DNA samples of innocent people for up to 6 years. However, they have pledged if elected to bring in early legislation to ensure the DNA profiles of innocent people accused by minor crimes would not be retained.
The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary recently accused the Tories of not being tough enough on crime, whilst appearing at a press conference with Linda Bowman, whose daughter was raped and murdered at age 18. Her killer was convicted in 2008 with the help of DNA evidence. Liberty, the civil liberties organisation, commented that Labour had deliberately confused the issue.
The Conservatives pledge in their manifesto to “Reform Labour’s DNA system with the slimmer and more efficient Scottish system as our model” and “Change the rules on the DNA database to allow a large number of innocent people to reclaim their DNA immediately”.
The Liberal Democrats agree they will “Remove innocent people from the police DNA database and stop storing DNA from innocent people and children in the future, too.”
For their part, Labour say they will “ensure that the most serious offenders are added to the database no matter where or when they were convicted – and retain for six years the DNA profiles of those arrested but not convicted.”
It is probably no coincidence that the criticism of the Tory policy coincides with the Government’s recent concession to strong criticism from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
In two related judgments, Lieven J considered an application made by a Hospital Trust to withdraw treatment from a child receiving mechanical ventilation to keep him alive and an application for anonymity on behalf of his treating clinicians. The Trust succeeded in both.The decision has been upheld by the Court of Appeal.
The application to withdraw treatment was opposed by the parents. As always in such cases the circumstances were tragic and emotions ran high, which provides some context to the anonymity application.
The Geneva-based Aarhus Compliance Committee is considering a wide-ranging pair of challenges to the planning system claiming that it does not comply with the Aarhus Convention on Environmental Matters. The Committee (ACC) heard oral submissions on 27 June 2012, and on 12 August received what should be the last of the written submissions of the parties. A decision may emerge before the end of the year, but there is so much interesting material in the papers before the Committee (for which see this and this link) which is worth having a look at.
The challenges raise a whole host of issues – the key ones are:
(i) not all planning committees allow objectors to address them orally before making a planning decision – when they do, they get a bare 3 minutes to say their piece;
(ii) an objector cannot appeal the grant of planning permission; all he can do is seek judicial review if the planning authority err in law, with the potential costs consequences which that involves; compare the developer who has a full appeal on fact and law;
(iii) an objector cannot enforce planning conditions attached to a grant; all he can do is challenge the local authority if it refuses to enforce, again on a point of law;
(iv) the UK does not comply with Article 6 of the Convention in that not all projects likely to have an effect on the environment are properly challengeable;
(v) the UK does not comply with Article 7 of the Convention in respect of public participation in all plans which may relate to the environment.
Though strategic litigation and test cases make essential contributions to the rule of law, there’s concern that they’re being abused. And, as funding comes under attack, there’s a greater need than ever for pro bono lawyers to take on test cases to ensure access to justice and accountability.
Following the fall of communism, the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) identified a significant problem with the educational segregation of Roma children in parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Roma children were ending up in what were termed ‘special schools’, supposedly set up for children with intellectual disabilities, and thus segregated from mainstream schooling. In 1998, the ERRC decided to investigate.
To try and bring about reform, it became apparent that the ERRC needed to identify a test case to put before the courts. In order to find the right applicant it interviewed hundreds of Roma families in the region and found 18 Roma children in the Czech Republic to be the test case. The legal angle the ERRC adopted was indirect discrimination: entry tests to mainstream schools were set for all children but they were biased against Roma children because they focused on Czech customs and language. The Roma children often failed and so were subsequently put in the special schools. The centre found that Roma children were twenty-seven times more likely than non-Roma children to be sent to a special school. Continue reading →
Dudgeon Offshore Wind v. Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government et al, HHJ Waksman QC, hearing 23 March 2012, read judgment
Running a hearing can be difficult enough when you are sitting as a judge and are faced with parties in a civil case. At least then you have an agenda set by the legal documents (or pleadings) and your primary role as judge is to decide whether the points made by one or other side are good or bad. Sometimes you may be sorely tempted to suggest better ones, but usually you do not run parties’ cases for them. And if you do, it is obviously fair for you to tell both parties what is going through your mind. After all, there may be very good reasons why a party has not taken a point apparently advantageous to them. Anyway, you must give the other side the opportunity to deal with the point.
All the more difficult in an inquiry, of which a planning inquiry is a good example. Here you are not just the judge. Your job is to inquire into whatever you think is necessary to decide whether to let a scheme proceed. Much of the time, it is a bit like a civil case, with the local planning authority trying to uphold its grounds for refusal, and the developer trying to show why the grounds do not stack up. But then in many planning appeals you have the third or fourth dimension, a group or groups of (usually) objectors who are saying that there are additional grounds for refusing the scheme. Sometimes, these issues come out all tidily before the inquiry starts, because the objectors have asked to participate in the formal procedures (Rule 6 parties in the jargon). On other occasions, it all just comes out as the inquiry proceeds.
The higher courts may have shut for the summer and judges escaped to tropical retreats, but the UK Human Rights Blog rumbles on. Welcome back to 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. You can also find our table of human rights cases here.
by Graeme Hall
In the news:
Legal Aid
The Pink Tape blog picks up on another “teensy glitch” with the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, noting that applicants for non-molestation orders will be disinclined to accept an undertaking from a respondent (“a solemn promise to the court not to behave in a particular way, which is punishable by imprisonment and can stand in the stead of an non-molestation order”), as in doing so, s/he will be disqualified from legal aid entitlement.
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular bustling bonanza 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.
After a long wait, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment on state immunity in civil proceedings in Jones and Others v UK. Meanwhile, an atheist has been granted asylum on religious grounds and the Supreme Court ruled that a child’s views are relevant to the evaluation of their habitual residence.
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the applications to the ECtHR in Nicklinson and Lamb v UK, cases concerning assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, are inadmissible.
This is the latest development in a long running series of decisions concerning various challenges to the UK’s law and prosecutorial guidelines on assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. You can read the press release here and the full decision here. Continue reading →
Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government v. Venn, Court of Appeal, 27 November 2014 – read judgment
Back to Aarhus and the constant problem we have in the UK making sure that the cost of planning and environmental litigation is not prohibitively expensive.
Article 9 of the Aarhus Convention (to which the EU has subscribed) says that members of the public should be able to challenge environmental decisions, and the procedures for doing so shall be adequate and effective and “not prohibitively expensive”. If this means nothing to you, you might want to limber up with my bluffers guide to Aarhus – here -not least on how to pronounce it and how it fits into domestic law.
Ms Venn wanted to stop the owner of land next door to her London property “garden-grabbing”, namely building another dwelling in his garden. The local authority had refused permission, the landowner successfully appealed to a planning inspector, and on further review, Ms Venn said that the inspector had failed to have regard to emerging planning policy in determining the appeal against her.
Lang J gave Ms Venn a protective costs order (PCO), limiting her costs exposure to £3,500 if she lost. The CA reversed this. As ever, the devil is in the detail. Had her appeal been by way of judicial review, she would have got an order in her favour. So why didn’t she?
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Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular kicking collection of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found 
The higher courts may have 
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular bustling bonanza of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found 
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