Search Results for: puberty blockers consent/page/45/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)

Annulment: all or nothing? Walloons in a mess about muck-spreading

4 March 2012 by David Hart KC

Case C-41/11,Inter-Environnement Wallonie ASBL,Terre wallonne ASBL v Région wallonne, CJEU, 28 February 2012, read judgment

Some years ago, Belgium got itself into trouble for not properly implementing the Nitrates Directive, a measure designed to limit the amount of water pollution arising from muck-spreading and other good old-fashioned agricultural activities. And then it got itself into trouble under another Directive (the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive) for the way that it then went about amending the law to address nitrates. So the nitrates amending law got annulled. But what to do then? Because a defective nitrates law was better than none at all. This was the conundrum which faced the CJEU in this recent case.

The latest round of this saga started when NGOs challenged the way in which the Walloon government sought to amend their water law in line with the Nitrates Directive. They went to the Conseil d’Etat to annul the amendment, because it did not comply with the SEA Directive. In 2009, the Conseil d’Etat referred the case to the CJEU, asking whether the nitrates amendment was a strategic plan or programme with the meaning of the SEA Directive. In 2010, (C-105/09) the CJEU said it was, in principle, it being for the domestic court ultimately to rule on the issue. In due course, the Conseil d’Etat confirmed this view by ruling that the nitrates amendment was in fact such a measure.

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Strikes, abuse, contempt: a day in the life of a Labour Court Judge in South Africa

25 March 2019 by Rosalind English

We have had the rare opportunity to interview a high court judge in South Africa. Mr Justice Steenkamp is a member of the specialist branch of the high court bench which reviews employment decisions from the lower courts on their way to the appeal courts and ultimately the Constitutional Court. In a country where people are plentiful and employment is scarce, strike action, even protests protected under the Constitution, is fraught with difficulty, particularly where violence abounds and the police force is inactive or overwhelmed. Rosalind English speaks to Labour Court Judge Steenkamp in his chambers at the Labour Court in downtown Cape Town. Citations for the cases referred to in the interview are set out below, along with the relevant legislation.

Robertson Winery v CSAAWU 18 Nov 2016

Dagane v SSSBC 16 March 2018

The Labour Relations Act (LRA), Act 66 of 1995

Gurkha defeat in claim for equal pension rights

18 October 2010 by Matthew Hill

No victory this time

R (British Gurkha Welfare Society and ors) v Ministry of Defence [2010] EWCA Civ 1098 – read judgment

The Court of Appeal has rejected a fresh attempt, based on Article 14 of the European Convention on Human rights (anti-discrimination), to obtain equal pension rights for Gurkhas who served in the British Army before 1997.

The long-running campaign for Gurkha rights has been highly publicised and successful, but it has not ensured equality of treatment in respect of pensions. The MoD continues to calculate  accrued pension rights at a lower rates for Gurkhas than for other soldiers in respect of service performed before 1997, the date on which the majority of Gurkhas ceased to be based in Hong Kong and were instead moved to the UK.

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The sovereignty of parliament and property: this week’s human rights roundup

11 April 2011 by Melina Padron

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.

by Melinda Padron

At a time when the sustainability of the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty in modern British society is being called into question, Lord Neuberger gave a speech entitled “Who are the masters now?”, where he made a case for Parliamentary supremacy.

He suggested the principle remains absolute for five main reasons:

(1) Parliamentary sovereignty is the cornerstone of our constitutional settlement;

(2) Parliament does not want judges to have the power to overrule statutes (and he added that neither do judges);

(3) arguments to the contrary are far removed from reality that they undermine the main proposition they seek to support;

(4) even the strongest advocates of limiting Parliamentary sovereignty accept that such could only be done in the most exceptional of circumstances;

(5) we live in a world where democratic accountability is of the essence, and as such it would be undesirable for unelected judges to exercise powers to limit Parliament.
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When their Lordships open their mouths extra-judicially …

23 March 2012 by Matthew Flinn

Do Lord Phillips, Baroness Hale and other members of the judiciary have the right to say what they think? At first glance that seems like a ridiculous question. Firstly, it is their job to express their views on the legal disputes coming before them on an almost daily basis. Secondly, to look at it from an entirely different perspective, they enjoy the same protections granted by article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) as the rest of us. Of course they have the right to say what they think.

But what about when they are acting in a non-judicial capacity – when they are giving speeches or participating in conferences or being interviewed? What about when the topic of discussion is not a narrowly defined legal point but a more politically charged issue of public debate? The answer must be the same. They have the right to express their views, but whether or not they should is a more nuanced question. This was the topic selected by the Lord Neuberger MR in his Presidential Address to the Holdsworth Club on 2 March 2012.

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Holden v Ministry of Defence and the Police Service of Northern Ireland: accountability and the Northern Ireland conflict 

9 August 2023 by anuragdeb

In the early hours of 24 March 1922, a group of men, of whom most were in police uniform, broke into the North Belfast home of prominent Catholic businessman Owen McMahon and shot him dead, along with four of his sons and a male employee. Between 1920 and 1922, hundreds of people were killed, and thousands forced out of their homes, particularly in Belfast and the surrounding townlands. These grizzly events marked the birth of Northern Ireland. 

Many European human rights decisions left unimplemented for years

9 August 2010 by Adam Wagner

The Strasbourg court

A new Government report on the implementation of European Court of Human Rights judgments has highlighted the vexed issue of the rightful place of such rulings in domestic law. Many decisions, for example on prisoner voting rights, have languished unimplemented for years and it remains to be seen whether the Coalition Government will do any more to fulfil its legal obligations to the thousands affected.

The report sets out the Government’s position on the implementation of human rights judgments from the domestic and European courts. It is a response to the Joint Committee on Human Rights‘ March 2010 report, in which the committee criticised “inexcusable” delays in implementation.

The United Kingdom is obliged to implement judgments of the European Court of Human Rights under Article 46 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In 2009, the UK was found to have violated the European Convention 14 times, which represents 1% of the overall total of violations found by the Court. However, the UK has a high proportion of leading cases outstanding for more than 5 years.

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The Weekly Round-Up: Amnesty unimpressed and government care home guidance “grossly discriminatory”

12 April 2021 by Byul Ryan-Im

In the news:

On Wednesday, Amnesty International released its 2020/21 report on the state of the world’s human rights.  Amnesty’s UK director, Kate Allen, also called for an inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic and said “the government is now shamefully trying to strip away our right to lawfully challenge its decisions, no matter how poor they are.”  The report highlighted human rights concerns related to the government’s response to COVID-19, including health, immigration, domestic abuse and housing.  There were also concerns around police conduct around racial discrimination and excessive use of force against protesters; during the first national lockdown in May, 10,000 of 43,644 recorded stop and searches conducted against young black men.  Several legal developments were criticised for falling short of human rights standards, including the Immigration Act, the Gender Recognition Act, the Domestic Abuse Bill, the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill, the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill, which would create a “presumption against prosecution” for members of the British Army accused of overseas crimes, including torture, committed more than five years earlier.

Law Pod UK Latest Episode: Permacrisis in Public Law? With Sir Jonathan Jones

12 December 2022 by Emma-Louise Fenelon

In Episode 174 Emma-Louise Fenelon speaks to Sir Jonathan Jones about recent developments in public law and the Constitution, including recent political turbulence, the Union, the Northern Ireland Protocol, Judicial Review reforms,  Human Rights Act reforms and Standards and Ethics in public life. 

Sir Jonathan Guy Jones KCB KC is a British lawyer, appointed in March 2014 and serving until his resignation on 8 September 2020 as HM Procurator General, Treasury Solicitor and Head of the Government Legal Service, and so the Permanent Secretary of the Government Legal Department. He is now a Senior Consultant, Public and Constitutional Law, at Linklaters. He tweets at @SirJJKC 

This Episode mentions:  

• HM & Ors [2022] EWHC 2729  (14 October 2022), judgment here, covered by Marina Wheeler KC on the Blog here 
• The Good Law Project v SSHSC [2022] EWHC 298 (15 February 2022) judgment here 
• Reference by the Lord Advocate (Rev1) [2022] UKSC 31 (23 November 2022) judgment here 

LAA must give reasons about funding expert assessments in care proceedings – Eleanor Battie

2 May 2013 by Guest Contributor

R (on the application of T) v Legal Aid Agency (formerly Legal Services Commission) [2013] EWHC 960 (Admin) Collins J, 26 April 2013 read judgment This successful challenge to a decision by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) arose from an expert assessor in family proceedings – not unnaturally – refusing to begin work unless funding was in place. If the LAA are asked to fund an assessment on behalf of a party with legal aid, then it is common for lawyers to obtain prior authority from the LAA to ensure that the expert will be paid for their work. If not, then the lawyers themselves can be liable for an expert’s costs. In this case, prior authority to pay for the expert assessment had been refused by the LAA thus resulting in further court hearings and delay in the resolution of the case for the children.

The application for judicial review of the LAA came before Collins J. He concluded that:

For the reasons given the decision of the defendant was wrong in law. Reasons have not been given. This might not have led to any relief beyond a declaration if I were persuaded that the only result could be that the decision was confirmed. Not only am I not so persuaded but I find it difficult to see that it would be reasonable, at least without engaging with the judge whether in writing or orally, to fail to comply with what she has decided is necessary.
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What is a continuing nuisance?

30 January 2021 by David Hart KC

Harrison Jalla and others v. (1) Shell International Trading and Shipping Company (2) Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited [2021[ EWCA Civ 63 – read judgment

A traditional phrase in the common law, such as “continuing nuisance”, may mean a number of things in different contexts, as we will see clearly from this oil spill case. The claimants argued, unsuccessfully, that the presence of oil from the spill which had come onto their land was a continuing nuisance for as long as it remained there – which, they said, should get them around the limitation problems in their claims.

The march of “dignity” – an anti-libertarian force?

22 October 2012 by Rosalind English

The recognition of a right to life, liberty, and the autonomy of the individual and the mandate of government to secure these rights is being threatened by an increasingly illiberal notion of “human dignity”, says evolutionary psychologist Stephen Pinker.

His 2008 broadside in The New Republic took to task a now defunct body, the US President’s Council on Bioethics whose publication Human Dignity and Bioethics is shot through with disquiet about advances in biotechnology. It could not be more different from the enlightened report issued earlier this year by  the Council’s successor calling on the current administration not to stifle biomedical research with over-restrictive regulation (see my post). Does the contrast between the  present advisory body’s recommendations and the report put before the previous President signal a fundamental change in the way we approach progress in this field? Probably not. Only two weeks ago, Sir John Gurdon (the Nobel physiologist whom schoolteachers had written off as a scientist) bemoaned the regulatory restrictions that make important therapies too costly to pursue. Pinker’s dismay at the “scientific illiteracy” of society rings true today:

Ever since the cloning of Dolly the sheep a decade ago, the panic sown by conservative bioethicists, amplified by a sensationalist press, has turned the public discussion of bioethics into a miasma of scientific illiteracy. Brave New World, a work of fiction, is treated as inerrant prophesy. Cloning is confused with resurrecting the dead or mass-producing babies. Longevity becomes “immortality,” improvement becomes “perfection,” the screening for disease genes becomes “designer babies” or even “reshaping the species.” The reality is that biomedical research is a Sisyphean struggle to eke small increments in health from a staggeringly complex, entropy-beset human body. It is not, and probably never will be, a runaway train. 
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The Weekly Round-up: Anti-strike laws, war crimes, and gender recognition certificates

16 January 2023 by Matthew Johnson

In the news

Grant Shapps, the Business Secretary, has set out the anti-strike laws that are planned to enforce minimum levels of service during strike action. Under the proposals, some employees would be required to work during a strike and could be fired if they refuse. It would be for the ministers to set the minimum levels of service, and there would be no automatic protection from unfair dismissal in breaching these levels. Unions have criticised the bill for being ‘undemocratic, unworkable, and almost certainly illegal’, and Labour have stated it would repeal the legislation if it wins the next general election. The bill has been defended by Shapps, who states it is aimed to protect lives and livelihoods.

The investigation into alleged war crimes in Ukraine will be considered in a major international meeting to be held in London in March. In attendance will be the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, in order to inform about the court’s work in investigating war crimes. The meeting comes as Putin continues to target crucial energy infrastructure as he destroys central heating supplies in the heart of winter. Dominic Raab has stated that ‘Russian forces should know they cannot act with impunity and we will back Ukraine until justice is served’; the meeting is designed to determine how to further assist the ICC in bringing that justice.

Welfare of child not a trump card against deportation

29 November 2013 by Rosalind English

 Zoumbas (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) On appeal from the Inner House of the Court of Session, [2012] CSIH 87 [2013] UKSC 74 – read judgment

The Supreme Court has clarified the principles to be applied when considering the welfare of children in deportation cases. The following summary is based on the Supreme Court’s Press Summary.

The appellant (Mr Z) and his wife (Mrs Z) are nationals of the Republic of Congo currently living in Glasgow with their three children, now aged 9, 5 and 2. Mr Z entered the UK illegally in May 2001 using a French passport that did not belong to him. He married Mrs Z in November 2003 after she had entered the previous year using a forged French passport and both their asylum claims had been refused. Their appeals were unsuccessful . In October 2005 Mrs Z and the couple’s daughter (A) were detained and removed to Congo. For the following ten months, Mr Z was treated as an absconder having failed to report to the authorities.

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Challenge upheld to Covid-19 changes to care regime for children

7 December 2020 by Charlotte Gilmartin

R (Article 39) v Secretary of State for Education [2020] EWCA Civ 1577

The issue before the Court of Appeal was whether the Secretary of State for Education had acted unlawfully in failing to consult certain bodies representing children in care, including the Children’s Commissioner for England, before introducing the Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (“the Amendment Regulations”) following the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic.

On 24 November 2020, the Court of Appeal allowed the appellant’s appeal, granting a declaration that the Secretary of State for Education had acted unlawfully by failing to consult those bodies before introducing the amendments.