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UK Human Rights Blog - 1 Crown Office Row
Search Results for: puberty blockers consent/page/23/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)
Armes v Nottinghamshire County Council[2016] EWHC 2864 (QB) – read judgment
In a nutshell
The right of a claimant to name the people who abused her prevailed over the rights of the perpetrators and others to private and family life.
The claimant, Natasha Armes, applied to set aside an anonymity order granted at the start of a previous trial to protect the identities of witnesses accused of physically and sexually abusing her in foster care.
Mr Justice Males undertook the balancing exercise between the rights to private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the right to freedom of expression under Article 10.
Freedom of expression won the day. Males J lifted the anonymity order, accepting that since most of the allegations had now been proven anonymity was no longer justified.
The underlying question was whether the Duchy of Cornwall had to answer Michael Bruton’s requests for information about the Duchy’s oyster farm, and in particular whether the farm had undergone environmental assessment before it commenced operation. Bruton’s concerns were that the Duchy’s oysters were non-native Pacific oysters, and he wanted to know whether the Duchy had considered whether the establishment of such a fishery affected existing oysters or had other effects upon the environment. In many regards, the case is round 2 of a battle started by Bruton in 2009 challenging the original grant of a licence by the Duchy to the oyster fisherman: see the 2009 decision by Burton J granting permission for this challenge. In the present case, the Information Commissioner said that the Duchy was not obliged to provide the information. The FTT disagreed.
Updated | JXF (a child) v York Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust [2010] EWHC 2800 (QB) – Read judgment
Mr Justice Tugendhat has held that the High Court should withhold the identity of a child claimant when approving the settlement of a clinical negligence case. The decision represents a restatement of the orthodox principle that cases should be heard in public and reported without restrictions, and that anonymity orders should only be granted after careful scrutiny.
His reason for coming to this particular decision was that revealing the name of the claimant would “make him vulnerable to losing the [settlement] money to fortune hunters or thieves.”
Mr R Fraser -v- University & College Union – Case Numbers: 2203390/201 – Read judgment
In this case, a member of the Union brought various claims of harassment related to his “race, religion or belief” under section 57 of the Equality Act 2010. The wide ranging allegations made by the Claimant arose, in essence, from the way in which Union had handled the Israel/Palestine debate. For example, claims arose from motions debated at the Union’s congress on proposals for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions and related questions. The Claimant alleged that the Union was guilty of “institutional anti-Semitism” which he alleged constituted harassment of him as a Jewish member of the Union.
The Tribunal described the litigation as being “gargantuan” in scale. It heard from 34 witnesses including academics and MPs. The hearing lasted 20 days and required 23 hearing bundles. Ultimately, in an extremely robust decision, the Tribunal rejected the Claimant’s allegations in their entirety. It found them to be “manifestly unmeritorious” and an “impermissible attempt to achieve political end by litigious means”. The Tribunal also expressed themselves as being worried by the implications of the claim. They sensed that underlying the litigation was a “worrying disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression”. Of particular interest was the way in which the Tribunal dealt with issues of legal principle at heart of the claim.
Lady Hale, who delivered the court’s judgment (Photo: Guardian)
R(C) v. Secretary of State for Justice [2016] UKSC 2 – read judgment.
When is it right to keep the names of parties to litigation a secret? That was the difficult question the Supreme Court had to grapple with in this judgment, handed down on Wednesday. The decision to allow a double-murderer to remain anonymous led to outraged headlines in the tabloids. Yet the Court reached the unanimous conclusion that this was the right approach. Why?
The Facts
C, who had a long history of severe mental illness, was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend and her new partner in 1998 and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 11 years before parole could be considered. The murder was described by Lady Hale as “a particularly savage killing which must have caused untold suffering to the victims and has continued to cause great grief to their families.” During his sentence C was transferred from prison to a high security psychiatric hospital. Whilst there, in 2012, C’s treating doctors applied for permission to allow him unescorted leave in the community in order to assess how well his treatment was progressing and whether he would be suitable for discharge. The Secretary of State refused to allow this.
Samuel March is a paralegal and is due to start the Bar Professional Training Course later this year.
R (Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 452 (Admin), Spencer J, 01 March 2019, judgment here
The government’s ‘hostile environment’ policy took a hit in a High Court judgment on Friday. Martin Spencer J declared the “right to rent” scheme, laid out in sections 20-37 of the Immigration Act 2014, incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). He also declared that a decision by the Secretary of State for the Home Department to roll out the scheme in devolved territories without further evaluation of its efficacy and discriminatory impact would be irrational and would constitute a breach of s. 149 Equality Act 2010.
Background
The case challenged an element of the government’s ‘hostile environment’ immigration policy, which was recently rebranded the “compliant environment” following criticism.
The sections of the Act relevant to this case contained the provisions of the controversial “right to rent” scheme. This required private landlords to check the immigration status of tenants and potential tenants. Knowingly leasing a property to a disqualified person became a criminal offence, punishable by up to 5 years’ imprisonment, an unlimited fine, or both.
This claim was brought by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) a small charity seeking to ensure that “immigration law and policy are based on sound evidence, promote the rule of law and are underpinned by respect for human rights and human dignity.” They were supported by interventions from Liberty, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Residential Landlords Association (RLA).
A lot is happening in various challenges related to the long-running and shameful exclusion of the Chagossian people from their islands in the Indian Ocean.
Here are the headlines, with a reminder of what these cases are about:
First, the Court of Appeal has just (2 April 2014) heard an appeal by the Chagossians against the dismissal of their challenge to the designation of the waters around the islands as a Marine Protected Area.
Second, the closed hearing of the UNCLOS Arbitral Tribunal on the merits of the Chagos dispute (Mauritius v UK) is to be held at Istanbul on 22 April 2014. This also concerns the designation of the MPA.
Thirdly, the public hearing in the UK Information Tribunal on access to Diego Garcia pollution data appeal under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, which the FCO — contrary to the view of the Information Commissioner — says is inapplicable to overseas territories) is to be held on May 1st, 2014.
In Soltany and Others v SSHD [2020], the High Court dismissed a challenge to the conditions at Brook House Immigration Removal Centre (IRC), which at the material times in 2017 and 2018, was run by G4S.
The claim for judicial review, which was brought by three individuals of Afghan origin, principally contended the night-time lockdown regime, pursuant to which detainees were locked in their rooms overnight from 9pm to 8am, was both “unnecessary and unduly harsh” [2].
Additionally, two of the claimants argued that the combination of the night state, which meant that observant Muslims had to perform some of their daily prayers in their rooms, and the conditions of the rooms (especially the proximity of the toilet) amounted to unlawful religious discrimination.
In a complex judgement extending to over 400 paragraphs, Cavanagh J refused the application on each ground. First, the Court held that Brook House’s overnight lock-down regime and room conditions are compatible with both ECHR Articles 5 and 8. Second, the Defendant did not act contrary to either the common law or Article 5 in failing to give reasons for the allocation of detainees to specific removal centres. Third, there was no religious discrimination under ECHR Article 9, either read alone or together with ECHR Article 14. Nor was there any indirect discrimination contrary to section 19 of the Equality Act 2010.
The South African ANC led government is proposing to introduce a Protection of Information Bill, a highly controversial piece of proposed legislation which aims to regulate the classification, protection and dissemination of state information, weighing state interests up against transparency and freedom of expression.
Critics have attacked the Bill because it defines the concept of “national interest” very broadly, granting wide powers to classify documents as secret in the name of national interest. And the absence of a public-interest defence is seen as problematic because it would have functioned as an important means for information of serious concern to citizens to be disclosed, regardless of the fact that the information was classified. The penalties for disclosure of protected information are harsh. Anyone who unlawfully discloses classified information could be guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to imprisonment for a maximum of five years. There is limited protection under the Protected Disclosures Act 2000, but this statute only protects employees from being subjected to occupational censure for having made a protected disclosure. Journalists and other members of the public are not covered by this Act and therefore cannot claim its protection. Continue reading →
Someone pointed out to me yesterday that our blog roll, that is our list of links to other sites, had disappeared. To my horror, they were right, and to my double horror, it turned out that the list of links was woefully inadequate.
So, the much-improved list is back, a bit lower down on the right. And below is a list with some short descriptions of the links. I have tried to limit the list to sites relevant to legal blogging and (to a lesser extent, because there are so many) human rights: for a much better roundup of the state of legal blogging in the UK, please read the almost impossibly comprehensive UK Blawg Roundup #6 by Brian Inkster.
Also, if you think you or someone else should be on this list, please let me know via the contact tab above. And the next #Lawblogs event is on 19 May at 6:30pm at the Law Society – details this week on how to reserve your place.
Ex-Guantanamo Bay prisoner Binyam Mohamed failed this weekend to prevent the Daily Mail reporting that he had been granted permanent residency in Britain. The case highlights a growing trend for the courts to enforce open justice in two significant ways, both which rely heavily on protections guaranteed under human rights law.
Interestingly, two crucial aspects of open justice have been reinforced as a result of a case involving Mohamed himself. In fact, the open justice aspects of Mohamed’s case against the security services will probably emerge as amongst the most important legal rulings arising from the ‘war on terror’ era. Unfortunately for him, this may have had the unintended consequence of destroying any chances of maintaining his privacy.
Dink v. Turkey (applications no. 2668/07, 6102/08, 30079/08, 7072/09 and 7124/09) – This summary is based on the European Court of Human Rights press release.
In the case of Dink v. Turkey the European Court of Human Rights concluded that the authorities failed in their duty to protect the life and freedom of expression of the journalist Firat (Hrant) Dink, a prominent member of the Armenian minority in Turkey who was murdered in 2007.
Dink was a Turkish journalist of Armenian origin, and the publication director and editor-in-chief of Agos, a Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper.
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular spring bouquet 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.
In the News
Legal aid, judicial review and the role of the Lord Chancellor dominated the headlines last week – with the Operation Cotton case and the Joint Committee on Human Right’s report on judicial review putting increasing pressure on the Government’s reforms.
Here we are, back with the access to environmental information question…From rape, bees and lettuces , a coda, involving a diversion via a new road scheme planned for Aberdeen taking in pearls and badgers, crossing the River Dee Special Area of Conservation.
An opponent of the project brought a claim against the UK government before the Aarhus Compliance Committee; findings of the Committee were adopted on 25 February 2011. The complaints ranged far and wide but the point of interest arose under an exemption to disclosure in Article 4 of the Aarhus Convention, namely that disclosure would adversely affect “(h) the environment to which the information relates, such as the breeding sites of rare species.” This has found its way into reg.12(5)(g) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004/3391, shorn, in a typically English way, of the helpful explanatory words underlined. Wouldn’t want the reader to get its meaning at a glance, would one?
Opinion has been divided this week after a landmark High Court ruling on Friday declared that the government’s right to rent scheme is breaching human rights laws and actively creating racial discrimination in the housing market.
The scheme requires landlords in England check the immigration status of tenants, with fines of up to £3,000 and a potential prison term if they fail to do so. Introduced by sections 20-37 of the Immigration Act 2014, right to rent is a cornerstone of the government’s hostile environment policy, which aims to reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the UK. The High Court said that it would be illegal to roll the scheme out out in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland without further evaluation. Mr Justice Spencer noted that the scheme had ‘little or no effect’ on immigration control, and that independent evidence ‘strongly showed’ the scheme was ‘indirectly’ discriminatory, causing landlords to turn down potential tenants because of their nationality or ethnicity.
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Armes v Nottinghamshire County Council [2016] EWHC 2864 (QB) – read judgment
Mr R Fraser -v- University & College Union – Case Numbers: 2203390/201 – 
Someone pointed out to me yesterday that our blog roll, that is our list of links to other sites, had disappeared. To my horror, they were right, and to my double horror, it turned out that the list of links was woefully inadequate. 
Welcome back to the UK Human Rights Roundup, your regular spring bouquet of human rights news and views. The full list of links can be found 
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