4 December 2025
By Georgina Pein
To what extent does the law afford protection to couples looking to foster children, in circumstances where that couple possesses (and vocalises) strong religious beliefs? This was the issue for consideration before Turner J, who heard this appeal in the King’s Bench Division of the High Court. Judgment was handed down on 18 November 2025.
7 October 2025
Update (10 October 2025): Kemi Badenoch has confirmed that Conservative Party policy will be to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and to repeal the Human Rights Act if they win the next general election. This was made clear in both her statements ahead of and during the annual Conservative Party Conference in October 2025, following a detailed legal review led by the Shadow Attorney General, Lord Wolfson, which found that remaining in the ECHR would fundamentally obstruct key party policies on immigration, veterans’ rights, prioritising citizens for public services, and reforming sentencing and protest laws. The Conservative Party leader explicitly stated in her conference speech: “We must leave the ECHR and repeal the Human Rights Act. The next Conservative manifesto will contain our commitment to leave. Leaving the Convention is a necessary step.”
Lord Wolfson’s advice was commissioned by the Conservative Party and is known as the Wolfson Report. It is important to note at the outset that, despite its title on the Party website, Lord Wolfson emphasises that this is “neither a policy paper nor a report. It is a legal analysis”, in other words, advice to the leader of the Conservative party. For reasons of economy in the following paragraphs I will refer to this 185 page document as a “report”.
David Wolfson KC is Shadow Attorney General Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, a prominent commercial lawyer and former justice minister. We have heard his views on the role of international law and his differences with government AG Richard Hermer domestic on Law Pod UK earlier this year.
In this paper he sets out an exhaustive examination of the relationship between the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and UK law, specifically focusing on areas where the ECHR constrains the government’s ability to enact domestic policies. This report could be pivotal in shaping the party’s commitment to leave the ECHR, as it concludes that such a move is necessary to fulfil a range of key policy priorities.
For balance, here is the late Conor Gearty’s column in the London Review of Books Unwelcome Remnant – the threat to the Human Rights Act , lamenting judicial avoidance of ECHR solutions to problems and relying on common law or UK legislative measures instead. Gearty cites many examples of this, most notably the Supreme Court’s ruling in the For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers which he says “completely ignores the impact of human rights law.”
Back to Wolfson.
Overview
The report scrutinises the effect of the ECHR in five core public policy areas: immigration control, prosecution of military veterans, prioritisation of British citizens in social policy, sentencing and protest laws, and economic growth impediments (particularly linked to climate-based challenges to infrastructure projects). Wolfson sets out a detailed legal analysis and a set of evaluative “tests” for national sovereignty, arguing that only by exiting the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act can the UK achieve these policy goals unimpeded.
1 October 2025
By Lewis Graham
In 2005, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights handed down its landmark decision in Hirst v the United Kingdom, finding that the effect of section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, bringing into effect a blanket ban on the ability of prisoners in the UK to vote in elections, constituted a breach of Article 3 of Protocol 1 of the Convention (the right to free elections).
To say the case was controversial is an understatement, with the judgment becoming something of a bête noire for Strasbourg sceptics. Murray suggests that the judgment was pivotal in the “monstering” of the European Court. It is often presented as a case which epitomises Strasbourg overreach, taking the number 1 spot in the Judicial Power Project’s buffet of unfavourable, “problematic” legal cases. David Cameron, of course, famously remarked that the idea of complying with the judgment and giving (some) prisoners the vote made him feel “physically sick”.
16 July 2025
Introduction
On 10 July 2025, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in Semenya v Switzerland. The case arose from the legal challenge by Olympic champion Caster Semenya to World Athletics’ regulations (“the DSD Regulations”)requiring athletes with differences in sex developments, also known as ‘intersex’ athletes, to lower their testosterone levels in order to compete in the female category of certain events.
Importantly, the Applicant’s case in the ECtHR was not against World Athletics (since World Athletics is not an entity directly subject to the Convention) but against Switzerland for the role of its Federal Supreme Court (“SFSC”) in upholding the arbitral award of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (“CAS”). The case therefore highlights the complexities involved in protecting human rights in the realm of international sports arbitration.
The Grand Chamber’s judgment, while ostensibly narrow in some respects, affirms the importance of Article 6 ECHR safeguards and arguably broadens the scope of its protection, particularly where fundamental rights are concerned in compulsory arbitration.
27 June 2025
By guest contributor Saira Turner
In U3 (AP) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] UKSC 19, the Supreme Court has unanimously dismissed an appeal against a decision taken by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (“SIAC”) relating to deprivation of citizenship and refusal of entry clearance on the basis of national security concerns.
19 November 2024
Deb and Graham characterise my argument as follows: “the right to life under Article 2 is absolute and allows no exception; there is a negative obligation upon the UK not to take life; any euthanasia laws would necessarily involve the taking of life; therefore euthanasia laws would breach Article 2.” They then point out that this argument has been rejected in Mortier v Belgium.
The problem is that this completely mischaracterises my argument and as result Deb and Graham dedicate several paragraphs to attacking a strawman. My argument was much narrower than they claim. As I explained in my blog post the “negative obligation prohibits the State from conducting euthanasia and assisted suicide itself, even as part of a well-regulated scheme with appropriate safeguards. This means that, under the Convention, States may allow/tolerate private parties from conducting euthanasia/assisted suicide with appropriate safeguards but the State itself cannot conduct them.” (emphasis added)
1 November 2024
In this guest post, Rajiv Shah argues that the provision of assisted suicide in the England and Wales via the NHS would constitute a substantive breach of the negative obligation imposed on the State under Article 2 of the ECHR.
Introduction
Article 2 of the ECHR protects the right to life. That article contains two distinct substantive obligations: “the general obligation to protect by law the right to life, and the prohibition of intentional deprivation of life, delimited by a list of exceptions.” (Boso v Italy, at [1])
That first obligation is a positive one and requires States to take steps to protect life from third parties and even from individuals themselves. The precise content of that obligation is necessarily nebulous and the Court affords States a margin of appreciation in deciding what that obligation requires, and how it is to be fulfilled. So, in two recent Chamber decisions – Mortier v Belgium and Karsai v Hungary – the Strasbourg Court held that this positive obligation does not require States to forbid assisted suicide and euthanasia, but that if it does want to allow it, it must create legal safeguards to ensure that the decision of individuals to end their own life/or be killed by third parties is freely taken.
5 January 2024
In Lord Tennyson’s Arthurian ballad ‘The Lady of Shalott’, the eponymous heroine is stranded in her island castle. Continually weaving a web in her loom of the reflections of the outside world she sees in her mirror, she knows she will be cursed if she stops and looks out to nearby Camelot. But one day, Sir Lancelot rides by her castle and she abandons her loom and looks outside. Her mirror cracks “from side to side” and she is cursed. She leaves her castle and floats down to Camelot in a boat, dying before she reaches it.
Victorian poetry scholar Erik Gray analyses the Lady of Shalott as Tennyson’s exploration of the role of an artist: knowing what is better (staying inside and looking at reflections of the real world) and choosing to do what is worse (going outside into the real world). Just as the Lady of Shalott’s mirror cracked, the Supreme Court in Dalton’s application for judicial review marked possibly one of the largest cracks yet in the mirror principle: that the rights provided under the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) should mirror those under the ECHR. But this analogy with the Lady of Shalott raises two important questions: was the jurisprudence flowing from the mirror principle better and is the turn away from it worse?
At the outset, I acknowledge my involvement in the Dalton litigation. This post is not an exploration of that litigation. Instead, I look at the possible impact of the Supreme Court’s judgment on the mirror principle and what it may tell us more broadly about the HRA.
17 July 2023
Last month marked one year since the startling repeal of Roe v Wade on the 24th June 2022 – the day the US Supreme Court rowed back the right of American women to obtain an abortion. Almost exactly a year later, back in the UK, last month saw the conviction of Carla Foster for the late abortion of her 32-week-old foetus. The case has brought abortion law back into the public conscience this year and reignited the fears around the safety of women’s rights to abortion in the UK. Thousands of protestors descended on the steps of the Royal Courts of Justice days after the conviction was announced, fighting for a woman’s right to abortion to be enshrined in UK law and opposing the fact that, legally, abortion remains a crime in the UK.
10 May 2023
On 29 November 2019 Usman Khan attended a rehabilitation event at Fishmongers’ Hall and stabbed five people, two fatally. On 2 February 2020 Sudesh Amman attacked two passers-by in Streatham High Road with a knife before being shot dead by police. Both men had previously been convicted of terrorism offences. Both men had been automatically released on licence halfway through their custodial sentences.
Following these attacks, on 3 February 2020, the Secretary of State for Justice made a statement to the House of Commons highlighting that in the interests of public protection immediate action needed to be taken to prevent automatic early release halfway through an offender’s sentence without oversight by the Parole Board. He announced that terrorist offenders would now only be considered for release once they had served two-thirds of their sentence and would not be released before the end of the full custodial term without Parole Board approval. This proposal was passed in England and Wales with the enactment of the Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Act 2020. It was extended to Northern Ireland by the Counter Terrorism and Sentencing Act 2021 (“the Act”).
The Supreme Court in Morgan and others v Ministry of Justice (Northern Ireland) [2023] UKSC 14 considered whether this change in release provisions in Northern Ireland was contrary to Articles 5 and/or 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”).
4 November 2022
The storm raging around small boats arriving on the south coast has been brewing for some time. In early summer the focus was a policy to send arrivals to Rwanda. Intervention by the European Court of Human Rights effectively suspended flights while a domestic ruling on the policy’s legality is awaited. Meanwhile, in Dover a migrant processing centre has been firebombed, another is dangerously overcrowded, and the new Home Secretary raises tensions by speaking of an “invasion”.
Amidst this swirl is an eye-catching Divisional Court Decision about a secret and unlawful Home Office policy to seize and download data from the mobile phones of all those arriving in small boats. The substantive Judgment in R (HM, MA and KH) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 695 (Admin) was delivered on 25 March 2022, followed by an Order distilling the Court’s conclusions on 18 October 2022.
20 September 2022
On 8 September 2022, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) handed down its decision in Drelon v France (application nos. 3153/16 and 27758/18).[1] The Court unanimously found a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in relation to the collection by the French Blood Donation Service, the Établissement Français du Sang (EFS), of personal data relating to a potential blood donor’s presumed sexual orientation and the excessive length of time the data was kept in a public institution.
21 September 2020
In the News:
The Joint Committee on Human Rights has published a report which proposes that the Government must urgently consider the human rights implications of its Covid-19 measures.
The report drew attention to eight problem areas, claiming:
23 March 2020
Last month European football’s governing body, UEFA, announced that English champions Manchester City had been fined 30 million Euros and banned from the Champions League – the most illustrious competition in European football. The Adjudicatory Chamber of UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) handed down a two-year ban on the basis that Man City had breached Financial Fair Play Regulations. The club have responded fiercely, complaining of a ‘prejudicial process’ and alleging that the case was ‘initiated by UEFA, prosecuted by UEFA and judged by UEFA.’ Against this background it is thought likely that City will rely on human rights arguments in their appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (a somewhat ironic development in the view of some commentators given previous criticisms of the human rights records of the club’s backers).
This blog post will set out the requirements of independence and impartiality under article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in the context of sports disputes, particularly in light of the recent ruling in Ali Riza and Others v Turkey (no. 30226/10, ECHR 28 January 2020). See
12 November 2019
J.D. and A v the United Kingdom (nos. 32949/17 and 34614/17) – read judgment
Much may have changed in the political world since the Coalition Government introduced its controversial ‘bedroom tax’, but the legal fall-out from the policy continues. The European Court of Human Rights has delivered its verdict on the compatibility of the scheme with the prohibition on discrimination set out in Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Strasbourg Court has found that the policy discriminated unlawfully against women at risk of domestic violence.
Background
As is well known, in 2012 the United Kingdom government introduced new regulations with the effect that those in social housing with an ‘extra’ bedroom had their housing benefit reduced: the so-called ‘bedroom tax’. The purported aim of the policy was to save money and to incentivise those with an ‘extra’ bedroom to either move property or take in a lodger thereby resulting in a saving of public funds.
It is not difficult to imagine why someone might have an extra bedroom but have strong reasons (related to disability or gender) for not moving house. The Government sought to make provision for such cases through a discretionary scheme operated by local authorities but funded by central government.
This blog is run by 1 Crown Office Row barristers' chambers. Subscribe for free updates here. The blog's editorial team is:
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Jasper Gold
Assistant Editor:
Allyna Ng
Editors:
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Angus McCullough KC
David Hart KC
Martin Downs
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