Search Results for: puberty blockers consent/page/42/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)
27 January 2025 by Catherine Churchill
In UK News
Axel Rudakubana, who murdered three children at a dance class in Southport earlier this year, pleaded guilty last week and has been sentenced to a minimum of 52 years. He unexpectedly pleaded guilty to all charges last Monday, including weapons and terrorism offences. Mr Justice Goose stated in his sentencing remarks that Rudakubana’s actions had ‘caused such extreme shock and revulsion that it must be seen as the most extreme level of crime’. Given Rudakubana was 17 when the attack occurred, he cannot legally be sentenced to a whole life order (which would mean he could never be considered for release). Despite the chances being very high that Rudakubana will never be released under his current sentence, some believe the sentence is not harsh enough. Southport MP Patrick Hurley has said the sentence is ‘not severe enough’ and does not ‘reflect the crimes committed’. Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has called for the law to be changed so that whole life orders can be imposed on under 18s. However, a spokesperson for Downing Street said that while they ‘share the public’s disgust’, they are ‘restricted in [their] ability to extend whole life orders by UN laws’ – specifically the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Rudakubana’s sentence has been referred to the Attorney General, who has 28 days to decide whether to ask the Court of Appeal to reconsider it for being ‘unduly lenient’.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights announced on Friday that it is launching an inquiry into transnational repression in the UK. While acknowledging that there is no universal definition, the Committee stated that transnational repression ‘is generally understood to include instances of intimidation, violence and harassment by a state against people in another state’. Lord Alton, launching the inquiry, said: ‘People from countries around the world come to the UK as a place of safety from repression. It is deeply concerning to hear reports that foreign governments are moving beyond their own national borders to persecute people here’. The inquiry seeks to investigate whether the human rights of immigrants in the UK are being respected by foreign governments, and whether the UK should be doing any more to safeguard them. The inquiry is calling for evidence to be submitted over the coming month.
In Other News
Donald Trump was sworn in last Monday as the 47th president of the United States. On his first day in the White House, he signed multiple executive orders he said in his inaugural speech will lead to the ‘complete restoration of America’. Among the orders were ones providing for the US to leave the World Health Organisation and the Paris Climate Accords, to end birthright citizenship (the guarantee of citizenship to anyone born on US soil), to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, and to create a policy that the US only recognises ‘two genders, male and female’. The American Civil Liberties Union has accused the administration of ‘undoing decades of federal anti-discrimination policy’ with these orders. US District Judge John Coughenour has granted a temporary block on the order ending birthright citizenship on the grounds that it is ‘blatantly unconstitutional’. The executive order and any enforcement measures will now be held for the coming 14 days pending further legal proceedings.
In the Courts
The European Court of Human Rights ruled last week in HW v France that France’s divorce laws, which recognise a refusal to engage in sexual relations as grounds for fault in a divorce, constitutes a violation of Article 8 ECHR – the right to respect for private and family life. The case was brought by a French woman after the divorce, which was granted in 2019 by the Versailles Court of Appeal, attributed fault to her on the basis that not having sex with her husband constituted a ‘serious and repeated breach of marital duties and obligations, making it impossible to continue in a state of matrimony’. In judgment, the ECHR objected to the fact that the concept of ‘marital duties’ recognised in French law pays no attention to the importance of consent to sexual relations. The very existence of this fault-based ground infringed upon the right to sexual freedom and bodily autonomy. The Court could not find any possible justification for the interference with the applicant’s Article 8 rights.
Prince Harry has proclaimed a ‘monumental’ legal win after reaching a settlement moments before his lawsuit against Murdoch newspapers was due to return to court last week. The case alleged that Murdoch’s media group, News Group Newspapers, had carried out unlawful information gathering, the principal allegation concerning the phone hacking scandal that came to light in 2006. Prince Harry’s barrister, David Sherborne, said in a statement read outside of court that ‘News UK is finally held to account for its illegal actions and its blatant disregard for the law’. The settlement includes a specific admission of wrongdoing by The Sun newspaper against Prince Harry; a formal apology was issued and read in court. The apology was said to finally take accountability for wrongdoing against not only the Duke of Sussex, but all the other victims of the information scandal whose cases never reached court.
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1 February 2015 by Jim Duffy
Northamptonshire County Council v AS, KS and DS [2015] EWFC 7 – read judgment
A Family Division judge has awarded damages under the Human Rights Act against a local authority in what he described as an “unfortunate and woeful case” involving a baby taken into foster care. Mr Justice Keehan cited a “catalogue of errors, omissions, delays and serial breaches of court orders” by Northamptonshire County Council. Unusually, the judge decided to give the judgment in this sensitive case in public in order to set out “the lamentable conduct of this litigation by the local authority.”
On 30 January 2013, the local authority placed the child (known as ‘DS’) with foster carers. He was just fifteen days old. In the weeks prior to DS’s birth, his mother’s GP had made a referral to the local authority due to her lack of antenatal care and because she claimed to be sleeping on the street. The mother then told a midwife that she had a new partner. He was a heroin addict.
After the birth DS’s mother avoided seeing her midwife. She frequently moved addresses and conditions at home were exceedingly poor. Three days before DS was taken into care, his mother told social workers that her new partner was being aggressive and threatening to her. She reported that he was leaving used needles around the house.
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27 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
A, R (on the application of) v B [2010] EWHC 2361 (Admin) (21 July 2010) – Read judgment
When should the police disclose a person’s private sexual practices to his employer? The high court has just ruled that a detective inspector breached a man’s human right to privacy by telling his employer that he had been taking pictures of short-skirted women in the street without their knowledge.
The case of ‘A’ raises important questions of the extent of the police’s duty to keep the peace and prevent crimes before they happen. This duty can come into conflict with the human right to respect of private and family life , which can be breached by the state in order to keep the public safe.
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14 September 2011 by Lucy Series
Last month the Ministry of Justice published a report of a pilot project that ran last year whereby participating family courts produced and published on Bailii written judgments of specified Children Act 1989 cases. The project had three main aims:
- to increase transparency and improve public understanding of the family justice system by publishing anonymised judgments in all serious children cases;
- to help parties by providing written judgments in all cases, even where a matter was not contested;
- to provide judgments which the children involved could access in later life.
The family courts are often perceived as ‘secretive’ or aloof; Munby LJ has made excellent arguments for greater transparency far more eloquently than I could hope to do in this speech (pdf)
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28 May 2010 by Adam Wagner
Set the ball rolling
The recent announcement of the review of libel and privacy law by a high-profile panel has led to a flurry of conjecture, comment and proposals. The new Government has pledged to reform the law of libel, but what shape will the reforms take?
The committee, which was announced last month, is being led by Lord Neuberger, the head of the Court of Appeal, and will be composed of legal and media experts. One notable absence, as Joshua Rozenberg blogs, is Mr Justice Eady, who has been responsible for many of the more controversial “super injunctions”.
The new Coalition Government have pledged to “reform libel laws to protect freedom of speech“. Cases involving libel, defamation and super-injunctions have seen two competing European Convention rights fighting it out; Article 8 (right to privacy) versus Article 10 (freedom of expression).
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8 June 2010 by Adam Wagner
HH Sant Baba Jeet Singh Ji Maharaj v Eastern Media Group & Anor [2010] EWHC 1294 (QB) (17 May 2010) – Read judgment
The High Court has effectively thrown out a libel action against a journalist who claimed in an article that a Sikh holy man was a “cult leader”. The judge’s reasoning was that the disputed points of religious principle were not questions which a secular court could properly decide. In refusing to rule on such cases, are the courts taking an increasingly anti-religious view, and are they now in breach of the human right to religious freedom?
The decision was reported in mid-May, but Mr Justice Eady’s judgment was made publically available yesterday. It highlights controversial issues of whether religious believes are getting a fair hearing in the English courts, and whether “secular” judges are qualified to decide points of religious principle.
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6 November 2011 by Matthew Flinn
Raed Mahajna v Secretary of State for the Home Department IA/21/21631/2011 – Read Judgment
1 Crown Office Row’s Neil Sheldon appeared for the Secretary of State in this case. He is not the writer of this post.
The First-Tier Tribunal (Asylum and Immigration Chamber), has upheld the decision of the Home Secretary to deport Raed Mahajna, who had come to the UK to attend a number of meetings and speaking engagements.
Mr. Mahajna (also known as Raed Saleh) was born in Israel in 1968. He is however of Palestinian origin and has been a vocal critic of the Government of Israel. Aware of his intention to travel to the UK, the Home Secretary issued an exclusion order against him on the basis that he had publicly expressed views that fostered hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK. However, this order was never served upon him, and he entered the UK on 25th June 2011. He was subsequently arrested on 27th June and detained until released on bail on 18th July.
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31 January 2011 by Adam Wagner
Shergill v Purewal & Anor [2010] EWHC 3610 (QB) (15 December 2010) – Read judgment
In the commotion surrounding the Christian hotel gay discrimination case, it is easy to forget that there is a long-standing principle that English courts will not decide matters of religious doctrine. This principle has been in play in a run of recent cases involving an Indian holy man and libel claims against journalists.
The most recent case was brought by
Dajid Singh Shergill, a UK-based Sikh activist suing the Panjab Times in relation to 3 articles published in the summer 2008, relating to His Holiness Sant Baba Jeet Singh Ji Maharaj (Jeet Singh), an Indian based preacher. The articles claimed, amongst other things, that Jeet Singh had “
abandoned Sikh Principles“, that he and his supporters were a “
sham“, that Shergill had “
sought to instigate serious riots and create an atmosphere of terror” by proclaiming that Baba Jeet Singh had won a court case in India and was seeking to misappropriate local Sikh temples.
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14 March 2013 by Rosalind English
Eon v France, no. 26118/10 14 March 2013- read judgment (in French only)
The applicant, Hervé Eon, is a French national, a socialist and anti-GM activist living Laval (France). The case concerned his conviction for insulting President Sarkozy.
During a visit by the President to the département of Mayenne on 28 August 2008, Mr Eon had waved a placard reading “Casse toi pov’con” (“Get lost, you sad prick”), a phrase uttered by the President himself several months previously when a farmer had refused to shake his hand at the International Agricultural Show. The utterance was widely disseminated in the media and on the internet, attaining the status of a slogan.
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17 April 2012 by Guest Contributor
This piece asks whether, in the light of UK proposals for the reform of the ECtHR, and in the wake of the outcry in the UK over the Qatada decision (Othman v UK), the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is taking an approach that looks like one of appeasement of certain signatory states.
Two very recent decisions will be looked at which, it will be argued, contain appeasement elements. Each can be compared with a previous counter-part decision against the same member state which adopts a more activist approach; and each is not immediately obviously reconcilable with the previous decision. Is the Court revisiting the ‘true’ scope of the ECHR in a more deferential spirit?
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25 April 2012 by Rachit Buch
Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust, R (on the application of) v Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts & Anor [2012] EWCA Civ 472 – Read judgment.
Marina Wheeler of 1 Crown Office Row appeared for the successful Appellant in this case. She is not the author of this post
When is reorganisation of healthcare services unlawful? When can consultation, rather than a final decision, successfully be challenged? These were the questions dealt with by the Court of Appeal in relation to the reconfiguration of paediatric heart surgery services. The Bristol Royal Infirmary scandal had left these services in need of change; the Court of Appeal found that there was nothing unlawful in the consultation process resulting in the Royal Brompton failing to be chosen as one of the two specialist centres in London.
Following the failures in Bristol that were subject to a public inquiry in 1998, there have been a number of reports on paediatric heart surgical care. This is an extremely specialised area of medicine. The recent trend has been for such specialist areas (another example is major trauma care) to become concentrated in fewer hospitals: the principle being that when professionals come into contact with such work more regularly they become better at it; spreading such cases wide and thin results in poor outcomes.
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6 May 2011 by Adam Wagner
L (A Child: Media Reporting), Re [2011] EWHC B8 (Fam) (18 April 2011) – Read judgment
The thought of being personally criticised in a reported judgment would make most lawyers break into a cold sweat. Some journalists wear such treatment as a badge of honour. But surely it is professionally embarrassing for a high court judge to label an article as “unbalanced, inaccurate and just plain wrong“.
That was the treatment handed out by His Honour Judge Bellamy to the Telegraph’s Christopher Booker in a recent ruling. The facts of the case are sad and I will not repeat them in any detail. HHJ Bellamy was asked to make a factual ruling relating to the alleged mistreatment of a baby by its family. He found that the mother was responsible for breaking the baby’s arm, an injury which led to the council forcibly removing the child from its parents’ care, as well as bruising to his hand and cheek. The judge did question, however, why it was necessary for the police to march the parents through a hospital wearing handcuffs.
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14 October 2011 by Richard Mumford
Child Poverty Action Group v Secretary of State for Work & Pensions [2011] EWHC 2616 (Admin) – Read judgment
On 13 October 2011 Mr Justice Supperstone in the High Court held that changes to rules for calculating housing benefit were lawful and in particular did not breach equality legislation.
Two particular measures were under challenge. The first was the introduction of maximum weekly caps on the amount of local housing allowance (LHA). The second was the reduction of the maximum size in accommodation eligible for housing benefit from five bedrooms to four bedrooms.
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22 October 2011 by David Hart KC
Cost Protection for Litigants in Environmental Judicial Review Claims
In this consultation announced this week, the Ministry of Justice is trying to get itself out of the multiple Aarhus problems facing UK justice. Infraction proceedings are threatened in the EU Court, and adverse conclusions were reached by Aarhus Compliance Committee; all much posted about on this blog, for which see below. The main problem is that the Aarhus Convention requires that environmental challenges not be “prohibitively expensive”, and everybody now appears to agree that the basic UK system of “loser pays the costs” does not achieve that objective without changes. So what does MoJ propose to do about it?
It says that costs protection should be provided via codification of the rules concerning Protective Costs Orders. That means that a claimant in any public interest case may ask the court for a PCO, to “cap” his liability to pay the other side’s costs to such a figure as does not deter him from bringing those proceedings. The boundaries of when a PCO can be ordered are much fought over – leading to more costs – but it certainly extends in principle to all public interest judicial review cases, not simply environmental ones. It is possible (at its very lowest) that PCOs can be made in public interest environmental challenges not involving judicial review, though there is not yet a decision either way on that.
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3 March 2021 by Joanna Curtis
On 16 February 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) granted further interim measures against Russia in relation to political opposition figure Alexei Navalny, requiring that Navalny be immediately released from prison due to the risk to his life and health.
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