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UK Human Rights Blog - 1 Crown Office Row
Search Results for: puberty blockers consent/page/53/Freedom of information - right of access) [2015] UKUT 159 (AAC) (30 March 2015)
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.
Google have announced the launch of a new Government Requests tool, which according to the Official Google Blog aims to “give people information about the requests for user data or content removal we receive from government agencies around the world.”
According to the tool, the UK currently ranks number 2 in Europe for information removal requests, behind Germany, and 3rd in the world for data requests, behind the US and Brazil.
It appears that the internet search company, whose unofficial corporate motto is “Don’t be Evil“, is attempting to make up for recent public controversies over censorship in countries where rights to freedom of information and expression are lacking. Google has had a particularly rocky relationship with China, who insisted that certain sites were blocked from Google search. After public pressure and a number of public confrontations, Google have recently moved operations to Hong Kong and shut down the search service completely.
Yesterday’s announcement begins by quoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is similar to the European Convention on Human Rights. It says:
Standard Verlags GmbH v. Austria (no. 3) (no. 34702/07) – read judgment
On the face of it this judgment is no more than a run of the mill case ( in a line running from Bladet Tromso through Fressoz and Roire to Flinkkilä and Others) concerning freedom of speech in one of the Convention signatory states where media controls are a great deal more stringent than they are here. However with the ongoing Leveson inquiry and speculations about its future recommendations occupying many column inches in the UK media it is instructive to see how other countries apply their press restrictions and indeed how Strasbourg approaches any challenge brought against them.
Background
The applicant company, Standard Verlags GmbH, owns the Vienna daily newspaper Der Standard. The case concerned an article it published in April 2006 reporting on enormous speculation losses incurred by a state-backed bank, and the ensuing criminal investigation for embezzlement brought against the bank’s senior management. The article identified a member of the bank’s treasury department as Christian Rauscher, the son of a former regional government member with responsibility for finance. The article reported that in 2004 Rauscher was not dismissed but merely demoted and transferred, being relieved of his duties only after the incident of the losses had become known. But it made it clear that the losses had thus been incurred under his responsibility. Continue reading →
Last month, the Central London Employment Tribunal held that a woman’s belief that “sex is biologically immutable” was not protected as a philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010.
This finding sparked a great media frenzy, with proponents of the ruling arguing that it was a victory for trans rights whilst critics – including JK Rowling — argued that it was a defeat for freedom of expression.
Such questions lead us well to an analysis of the Claimant’s belief in Forstater, which will illustrate how philosophical beliefs are generally defined and assessed in the courts.
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.
by Melinda Padron
In the news
The Leveson Inquiry begins
Last week saw the start of the Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press, headed by Lord Justice Leveson. Proceedings can be followed via the Inquiry’s website, where you can either watch live hearings or videos of past hearings, a move welcomed by Adam Wagner as a “minor landmark for open justice.” Hugh Grant (pictured) as well as other celebrities and victims will be appearing this week to give evidence.
Blogger Obiter J reported that Lord Justice Leveson gave an interesting warning to journalists against unjustified coverage of the Inquiry proceedings. Such unjustified and hostile coverage, said Lord Justice Leveson, might lead to the “conclusion that these vital rights are being abused which would itself give evidence of culture, practice and ethics which could be relevant to my ultimate recommendations.” The warning, remarks Obiter J, may be perceived as the imposition of restriction on the media. The Inquiry’s opening day has been described as “dramatic”, particularly due to the powerful submissions made by Robert Jay QC, counsel for the Inquiry. Mr Jay QC, in a long speech, set out the purposes and concerns of the Inquiry and referred to evidence which may indicate that the practice of phone hacking at News International was a systematic one.
R (o.t.a Soma Oil & Gas) v. Director of the Serious Fraud Office [2016] EWHC 2471 (Admin) 12 October 2016 – read judgment
Soma are investing heavily ($40m spent on seismic work) in looking at oil and gas extraction in Somalia, so it was a bit of a set-back, to say the least, when their “capacity-building” efforts – funding infrastructure in the relevant Ministry – were alleged to fall under the Bribery Act 2010, and this led to a fraud investigation by the UK SFO. The investigations, as investigations do, dragged on, and Soma brought these, somewhat ambitious, proceedings to get an order telling the SFO to stop them.
As you may have guessed, the claim failed, though, as we will see, it may have achieved rather different benefits.
The judgment of the Administrative Court is a concise account of when the private challenger can and cannot seek orders in respect of investigations and prosecutions – whether to stop or start them. Here Soma wanted to stop the investigation. In other circumstances, a victim may want the authorities to start an investigation or prosecution into another party: see, e.g. Chaudhry, decided earlier this week.
The case of R (TTT) v Michaela Community Schools Trust [2024] EWHC 843 (Admin) in the High Court before Mr Justice Linden concerned a claim brought by a pupil referred to as a TTT (“the Claimant”) against the Michaela Community Schools Trust; (“the School”). The School is a secular secondary free school in the London Borough of Brent, which appeared as an interested party. The School is ethnically and religiously diverse, although over half of the pupils, including the Claimant are Muslims [1].
This post addresses only Ground 1 of the Claimant’s claim – alleged breach of the right to religious freedom under Article 9, ECHR – although the judgment (all 83 pages of it!) includes extensive discussion on Indirect Discrimination [214-232], the Public Sector Equality Duty (“PSED”) [257-273] and school exclusions [294-311], none of which were successful save for Ground 4b which concerned procedural unfairness around exclusions.
Conor Monighan brings us the latest updates in human rights law
Credit: The Guardian
In the News:
The legal battle between Sir Cliff Richard and the BBC has begun in the High Court.
In August 2014, police raided Sir Cliff’s home based on an allegation of historic child sexual abuse. The BBC broadcast live footage of the raid filmed from a helicopter. The singer was interviewed under caution, but never charged.
Sir Cliff alleges that the BBC’s coverage of the police raid on his home was a serious invasion of his right to privacy, for which there was no lawful justification. He also alleges breaches of his data protection rights. The singer seeks substantial general damages, plus £278,000 for legal costs, over £108,000 for PR fees which he spent in order to rebuild his reputation, and an undisclosed sum relating to the cancellation of his autobiography’s publication. He began giving evidence on the first day of the hearing. Continue reading →
In the news: Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce the removal of the last remaining COVID-19 restrictions this afternoon. It is expected that the legal requirement to self-isolate after testing positive will be scrapped alongside free PCR and lateral flow tests. Mr Johnson is set to announce the end of restrictions to be a “moment of pride”, although some groups have expressed concerns about the approach, including NHS leaders and the chair of the British Medical Association Dr Chaand Nagpaul, who said the decision “is not based on current evidence and is premature”.
The Welsh Parliament on Tuesday voted to withdraw consent for the British Nationality and Borders Bill, on the basis that reforms to methods for determining asylum-seeker age would undermine the Senedd’s legislative competence, as they related to a devolved matter. In a letter to Minister for Immigration Kevin Foster, the Welsh Minister for Social Justice outlined this and a further ten matters of concern for the Senedd. These included the establishing of Accommodation Centres, which she said would be “fundamentally incompatible with our Nation of Sanctuary approach”, and the fact that the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has said that the Bill “is fundamentally at odds” with the UK’s obligations under the UN Refugee Convention.
In the introduction, this Guidance note announces that “It updates and replaces the guidance document issued in April 2025”, which shows the speed at which AI is developing. It “sets out key risks and issues associated with using AI and some suggestions for minimising them”. And there have indeed been problems facing the judiciary lately arising particularly out of “AI hallucinations”. These are incorrect or misleading results that AI models generate.
Delfi AS v Estonia (Application no. 64569/09) 10 October 2013 – read judgment
This case concerned the liability of an Internet news portal for offensive comments that were posted by readers below one of its online news articles. The following summary is based on the Strasbourg Court’s press release.
The applicant company owns one of the largest internet news sites in Estonia. In January 2006, Delfi published an article on its webpage about a ferry company. It discussed the company’s decision to change the route its ferries took to certain islands. This had caused ice to break where ice roads could have been made in the near future. As a result, the opening of these roads – a cheaper and faster connection to the islands compared to the ferry services – was postponed for several weeks. Below the article, readers were able to access the comments of other users of the site. Many readers had written highly offensive or threatening posts about the ferry operator and its owner. Continue reading →
Hoon v. United Kingdom, 13 November 2014, ECtHR, read judgment
Most people’s political memories are short, but we may recall Geoff Hoon’s exquisite discomfiture when he was duped by a journalist, and then criticised by a Parliamentary Committee for his conduct in trying to drum up work. Still piqued, he complained of his treatment to Strasbourg, but, as we shall see, to no avail.
In February 2010, Hoon was an MP and a former Secretary of State for Defence. He had also taken up a voluntary position as one of twelve special advisors to the Secretary-General of NATO. He then announced he would not be contesting the May 2010 elections. He was contacted by Claire Webster on behalf of “Anderson Perry Associates”, an organisation that purported to be a “US communications company”. The company was looking to hire consultants who had an intimate and expert knowledge of government affairs.
The Children’s Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) v Secretary of State for Justice and G4S Care and Justice Services (UK) Ltd and Serco plc [2012] EWHC 8 (Admin) – read judgment
Although certain restraining measures had been taken unlawfully against young people in secure training centres for a number of years, the court had no jurisdiction to grant an order that the victims of this activity be identified and advised of their rights.
The claimant charity alleged that children and young persons held in one or other of the four Secure Training Centres in the UK had been unlawfully restrained under rules which approved certain techniques of discipline. It sought an order requiring the defendant to provide information, to the victims or their carers on the unlawful nature of restraint techniques used in Secure Training Centres (“STCs”) and their consequential legal rights.
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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. 
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