Article 8
27 June 2012 by Rachit Buch
The Queen, on the application of (1) RMC and (2) FJ – and – Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. Read judgment.
Liberal societies tend to view the retention of citizens’ private information by an arm of the state, without individuals’ consent, with suspicion. Last week, the High Court ruled that the automatic retention of photographs taken on arrest – even where the there is no prosecution, or the person is acquitted – for at least six years was an unlawful interference with the right to respect for private life of Article 8 of the ECHR, as enshrined in the Human Rights Act.
The case was brought by two individuals. One, known as RMC, was arrested for assault occasioning actual bodily harm after she was stopped riding a cycle on a footpath. The second, known as FJ, was arrested on suspicion of rape of his second cousin at the age of 12. In both cases, the individuals voluntarily attended the police station, where they were interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed and DNA samples were taken form them, but the CPS decided not to prosecute.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
9 January 2012 by Rachit Buch
Mr Abdullah Manuwar and Secretary of State for the Home Department IA26/543/2010 – Read decision
We have posted on this blog previously on some of the poor reporting of human rights cases. Alarm bells were ringing as the Sunday Telegraph reported student Abdullah Munawar’s appeal on human rights grounds against a refusal to grant him leave to stay in the UK, citing his playing cricket as a reason he had a private life under Article 8 of the ECHR.
However, considering the judgment, the Telegraph article makes a valid point on the limits provided by human rights on immigration decisions, and shows that not all journalism critical of the Human Rights Act is inaccurate.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
2 October 2011 by Guest Contributor
Ferdinand v Mgn Ltd (Rev 2) [2011] EWHC 2454 (QB) – Read judgment
In the first “misuse of private information” trial against a newspaper since Max Mosley in 2008, Mr Justice Nicol dismissed a claim brough by England and Manchester United footballer Rio Ferdinand against the “Sunday Mirror”.
The Judge found that, although the claimant’s Article 8 rights to private and family life were engaged, there was a public interest in correcting a false image promoted by the claimant. It was also held that the article contributed to a debate as to the claimant’s fitness to be a role model in the light of his appointment as England football captain.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
1 August 2011 by Lucy Series
Since BBC Panorama revealed shocking abuse of adults with learning disabilities in a private hospital run by Castlebeck Care Ltd, the care sector has engaged in widespread soul searching.
Paul Burstow instructed the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to carry out a national audit of all hospital services for adults with learning disabilities. Similar national audits were conducted following previous scandals relating to widespread abuse of adults with learning disabilities in Cornwall (here and here). In the CQC’s preliminary report on other Castlebeck services they expressed serious concerns about compliance with essential standards of quality and safety.
The human rights issue that stand out most powerfully in these reports is the widespread interference with patients’ autonomy and privacy. Take these finding from the report on Arden Vale, for instance:
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
16 June 2011 by Alasdair Henderson
Neary and his father
London Borough of Hillingdon v. Steven Neary [2011] EWHC 1377 (COP) – read judgment here.
The Court of Protection (“COP”) emphatically ruled last week that a local authority unlawfully detained a young man with autism and learning difficulties for almost an entire year, breaching his right to respect for family life as a result.
Take a 21-year-old disabled person, the Mental Capacity Act 2005, a devoted father and an adversarial social care department. Mix in centuries-old principles laid down in Magna Carta, recent case-law on Article 5 and Article 8 of the ECHR, and some tireless campaigning by legal bloggers. The result? A landmark decision on the use of deprivation of liberty (“DOL”) authorisations in respect of individuals without full legal and mental capacity.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
1 June 2011 by Isabel McArdle
CD v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWHC 1273 (Admin) Read judgment
As readers of this blog will know, control orders have often been successfully challenged in the courts on human rights grounds. But in this case, an order forcing a person to relocate to a different part of the country was found to be lawful.
The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 gives the Home Secretary the power create to control orders, which impose obligations on persons “for purposes connected with protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism”. One of the obligations permitted is a restriction on an individual’s place of residence.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
25 November 2010 by Caroline Cross
Application no. 32666/10 by X, Y & Z against the UK, lodged on 8 June 2010 – Read statement of facts
In a potentially landmark case, the European Court has been asked to determine the extent to which a local authority is under a duty prevent a breach of a person’s rights under Articles 3 (against inhuman and degrading treatment) and 8 (home and family life) in a case where two people with learning difficulties were violently harassed and threatened by a group of teenage youths.
The case concerns vulnerable adults who rely on social services. X and Y, who are married, both have learning difficulties. Z is the mother of X, and acted as a carer and advocate for both X and Y. X and Y lived in Hounslow Borough with Y’s two young children. Three local authority departments were involved with X and Y’s family, providing for their housing needs and allocating social workers for both the adults and children. Over a period from August 1999 until November 2000, X and Y were continually harassed and threatened by a group of teenage youths, who used the flat as a general ‘doss house’, dumping stolen goods, having sex and staying overnight.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
24 November 2010 by Maria Roche
The Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Commitee of the United Nations has narrowly voted to remove sexual orientation from a draft resolution against extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.
In light of the guarantee of the right to life, liberty and security of person in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the resolution condemns all extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and demands that all States take effective action to prevent, combat, investigate and eliminate such executions.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
18 November 2010 by Isabel McArdle
Adakini Ntuli v Howard Donald [2010] EWCA Civ 1276 – Read judgment
Take That’s Howard Donald has failed to maintain an injunction against the press reporting details of his relationship with a former girlfriend. He had originally sought the injunction after receiving a text from the woman saying: “Why shud I continue 2 suffer financially 4 the sake of loyalty when selling my story will sort my life out?”
‘Superinjunctions’ have received a great deal of press coverage recently, not least because they are usually granted in cases involving celebrities’ private lives. They are injunctions, usually in privacy or breach of confidence cases, which prevent not only the publication of certain matters, but even the publication of the existence of legal proceedings. These cases are of particular interest because of the competing ECHR rights in play: Article 8, the right to respect for private and family life, and Article 10, the right to freedom of expression.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
6 September 2010 by Adam Wagner
What does Wayne Rooney’s alleged philandering have to do with human rights? In itself, not very much. But a recent spate of exposés in and of the press has exposed more than a footballer’s indiscretions.
The starting point from a human rights perspective is the fragile relationship between two articles of the European Convention on Human Rights; namely, the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression. Article 8 provides that everyone has the “right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.” This right is qualified, in the sense that it is possible for a state authority to breach privacy rights if it is (amongst other things) necessary in a democratic society.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
5 June 2010 by Guest Contributor
The European Convention - now it has its own blog page
We have added a new “ECHR” page where you can access an index of the Articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The page can be accessed by clicking here, or by clicking on the “ECHR” tab at the top of any page on the blog.
Each Article has its own separate page with the wording of the Article itself and a brief summary of how it works in law.
You can access this summary by clicking on the “more info” link. You can also click on the “posts” link to see all posts on the UK Human Rights Blog relating to that Article. A few articles don’t have a live link “posts” as we have not posted on it yet. We would welcome your comments on this or on any way we can make the blog better.
The index is reproduced below:
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
28 May 2010 by Adam Wagner
General Dental Council v Rimmer [2010] EWHC 1049 (Admin) (15 April 2010) – Read judgment
A dentist has been ordered to hand over his patients’ medical records to a court in order to help his regulator prosecute him for misconduct. The case raises interesting questions of when the courts can override patient confidentiality which would otherwise be protected by the Human Rights Act.
When health professionals are being prosecuted for misconduct,their patients’ confidential records will almost invariably be disclosed to the court if requested, even without the patients’ consent. Some may find this surprising, given the fact that medical records almost invariably contain highly private and potentially embarrassing information which a person would justifiably not want disclosed in a public court. However, the situation is not as simple as it first appears, as demonstrated by the recent case of an allegedly dodgy dentist.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
26 May 2010 by Adam Wagner
Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, is in trouble for offering to sell her influence for cash. She proposed to sell access to her ex-husband Prince Andrew, a “trade envoy”, for £500,000 to an undercover reporter from the News of the World. The circumstances of the sting raise interesting issues in respect of the right to privacy under the Human Rights Act.
Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides that “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence“. The right is not absolute, and can be breached by a public authority “in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society”, that is, if the breach is in the public interest. Only public authorities need to keep within these rules.
The Inforrm Blog has posted an interesting analysis of the issue, concluding that
it seems to us that there is a proper justification for the publication of the story. What the Duchess was offering was “access to a public official”, for a payment which appears to be wholly disproportionate to the “monetary value” of the service offered… The fact that neither the Duchess nor the businessman had any specific wrongdoing in mind does not matter. The whole transaction was “tainted” and its exposure was, we suggest, justified for that reason.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
21 April 2010 by Adam Wagner
R (JF (by his litigation friend OF)) & Anor v SSHD [2010] UKSC 17
(Read Judgment or Supreme Court press summary)
The Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that lifelong requirements for sex offenders to notify the police when they move house or travel abroad are a breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. 24,000 former offenders will potentially be affected by the decision.
Under section 82 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 all persons sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment or more for a sexual offence become subject to a lifelong duty to keep the police notified of where they are living and when they travel abroad. Crucially, there is no right to a review of the necessity for the notification requirements.
The Respondents were convicted sex offenders. Both challenged the notification requirements by way of judicial review, on the basis that the requirements were a disproportionate manner of pursuing a legitimate aim of preventing crime and therefore breached their rights under Article 8.
Lord Philips gave the leading judgment. He emphasised that the question (as in the case of all human rights claims involving a “qualified” right in general and Article 8 in particular) was one of proportionality, and that the correct test, as had been set out in previous decisions, was:
whether: (i) the legislative objective is sufficiently important to justify limiting a fundamental right; (ii) the measures designed to meet the legislative objective are rationally connected to it; and (iii) the means used to impair the right or freedom are no more than is necessary to accomplish the objective (para 17)
The Court went on to discuss UK and European authorities, and in particular referred to the Marper judgment, which we discussed earlier this week in relation to the retention of DNA samples (para 31). The European Court of Human Rights had been particularly concerned that in cases involving DNA there was no provision for independent review, as was the case with the notification requirements in this appeal.
The Court were concerned about risks of disclosure to third parties inherent in offenders having to visit police stations to report. They said:
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
20 April 2010 by Rosalind English
EH v London Borough of Greenwich and AA and REA and RHA (through their guardian), A (children) [2010] EWCA Civ 344
Read judgment
This was an appeal against the decision of the judge at first instance granting the local authority a full care order and placement order in respect of the appellant mother’s children. One of the children had been admitted to hospital as a baby with a fracture injury that was diagnosed as being non-accidental, following which both children were immediately taken from their parents’ care and placed with their maternal grandmother.
A later fact finding hearing determined that the baby’s injury had probably been caused by her father and that the mother had failed to protect the baby, although the judge did find that the mother had very many good qualities and her parenting abilities, per se, were not in issue, and that apart from the fracture injury there was no evidence that the children had suffered any harm.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
This blog is run by
Recent comments