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A private member’s bill to enshrine the rights of nature was introduced in the House of Lords on October 23, 2025. The bill is supported by former Green Party Leader Baroness Natalie Bennett, and drafting was led by the organization Nature’s Rights. The objective of the nature’s bill of rights is to change the legal status of nature to that of a recognized legal entity with inherent, enforceable rights. The bill would create a duty of care for the government to protect nature. The proposal includes a governance structure, monitoring, and the creation of a nature’s rights tribunal for enforcement and dispute resolution.
According to Nature’s Rights, the purpose of the bill is to establish a legal framework for a more regenerative and sustainable society while aligning with realities of climate change science. If the bill passes, the UK will join a number of other states which recognize some degree of rights for nature in their constitutions, laws or regulations, including Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, New Zealand, Uganda, Canada and the US.
In the courts
The Supreme Court heard arguments last week in relation to the 2014 decision known as Cheshire West. The 2014 ruling established the ‘acid test’ for determining whether an individual has been deprived of their liberty. According to the test, if a person (1) is subject to continuous supervision and control and (2) is not free to leave, then they are deprived of their liberty. The ruling had implications for persons with disabilities where it had been concluded that where a person with a disability cannot consent to their care arrangements that involve confinement, they are being deprived of their liberty. Where a person cannot consent to their care, an independent individual is required to determine that the confinement is justified, lawful and in the person’s best interests. The ruling has resulted in a significant increase in deprivation of liberty safeguards (“DoLS”) applications: for 2023-24, 332K applications were made (an increase of 300K over 10 years), with a backlog of 124K.
The Attorney-General of Northern Ireland (“AGNI”) is asking the seven-judge panel to reconsider Cheshire West in order to change the current DoLS established in response to the Cheshire judgement. The AGNI is seeking for consent for care arrangements to be obtained through an expression of a person’s feelings and wishes where they lack capacity to consent.
The Department of Health and Social Care (“DHSC”), an intervener, argued Cheshire West was “wrongly decided” and created an unsustainable system. DHSC argued that the focus of safeguards should be on identifying a person’s wishes and feelings and avoid intruding upon individuals’ lives. Three charities, Mencap, Mind and the National Autistic Society, intervened in the case. They jointly expressed a serious concerns about the arguments put before the Supreme Court and argued that the current test applies to “highly restrictive settings” and is there to ensure individuals have advocates in the care process; changes would jeopardize the safety, freedom and rights of disabled persons.
These appeals – Shvidler v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and Dalston Projects Ltd v Secretary of State for Transport – were a test case for the operation of the UK’s sanctions regime introduced in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Supreme Court confirmed that while the court’s task is to assess proportionality for itself, a wide margin of appreciation will be afforded to the executive in judging how best to respond to and restrain Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
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.
N3 & ZA v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] UKSC 6 concerned orders depriving two British people of their citizenship on national security grounds. The Defendant (initially) contended that to do so would not render them stateless, because they were dual British Bangladeshi nationals.
The use of deprivation orders in this context has been controversial, with critics across the political spectrum. Notably, writing in the Spectator, Jacob Rees-Mogg said of the Shamima Begum case:
“The ability to deprive people, who have a claim to another citizenship, of their British passport, creates two categories of Briton. Those with no right to another nationality are in the first-class carriage. Whatever they do, they cannot be made an exile or outlaw and expelled from the country. On the other hand, those who themselves came to the UK or whose parents did so are in the second-class carriage. They may be stripped of their citizenship even if they have never claimed another foreign nationality or even visited the country. This is a fundamentally racist policy as it denies the absolute Britishness of all those who are either recent immigrants themselves or their children.”
In the instant case, the deprivation orders were subsequently withdrawn. The Supreme Court has held that the effect of that withdrawal is that the Appellants are to be treated as having been British Citizens throughout.
In their co-authored judgment, Lord Sales and Dame Siobhan Keegan provide a rich analysis of how the courts should consider the welfare of children in an immigration context. In doing so, they clarify the meaning and effect of Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 (“Section 55”) and its interaction with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“Article 8”). The judgment provides a guide for how the appellate courts should assess decision-making by the Secretary of State, her officials, and the First-tier Tribunal.
The advent of the Human Rights Act 1998, and the incorporation into domestic law of the Article 2 right to life, has transformed coronial investigations and inquests over the last two decades. Lord Bingham’s magisterial creation of the ‘enhanced’ investigation and conclusion in R (Middleton) v West Somerset Coroner [2004] UKHL 10, [2004] 2 AC 182 (later adopted by Parliament) gave coroners greater responsibility to hold the state to account for deaths. That, in turn, has significantly improved the ways in which all inquests are conducted, not just those where Article 2 is found to be engaged. Inquests are no longer haphazard affairs. They are (ordinarily) carefully planned and structured processes; and their participants, the ‘interested persons’, are far more involved in assisting coroners with the task of identifying the proper scope of their investigations and the lawful ambit of their conclusions.
Article 2, then, has already conquered and occupied the terrain of the coroners’ courts and it is only at the frontiers of its application that legal skirmishes still occur. One such fight is the case of R (Maguire) v HM Senior Coroner for Blackpool & Fylde and another [2023] UKSC 20, which was argued before the Supreme Court on 22nd and 23rd November 2022, and in which judgment was given on 21st June 2023.
The central issue in the case was whether Article 2 required an enhanced inquest into the death of highly vulnerable woman, Jackie Maguire, who had become seriously unwell while in a private residential care home and had later died in hospital. The Supreme Court held unanimously that it did not. More importantly, in doing so, it took the opportunity to provide a detailed and authoritative account of how Article 2 applies to coronial investigations and inquests.
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”).
2023 has already been a landmark year for nuisance, with the Supreme Court handing down its controversial decision in Fearn v Tate Gallery (as discussed on this blog).
The good news for those with a particular interest in the bothersome behaviour of neighbours is that Fearn is only the start.
This post focuses on one of the many fascinating points raised by these cases – namely, the slippery concept at the heart of both Davies and Jalla: continuing nuisance.
In a headline-grabbing decision, the Supreme Court has decided that an observation platform at the Tate Modern Art Gallery (“the Tate”), which overlooks a number of nearby luxury apartments, gives rise to the tort of nuisance –read judgment
In 2017 a group of apartment owners from the Neo Bankside building issued proceedings complaining that visitors accessing the south side of the Tate’s observation platform could, and frequently did, look directly into the living areas of their homes (which have floor-to-ceiling windows). The judgments refer to visitors “peering in”, “looking”, in some instances waving to the flat occupants (friendly), and there was even a mention of someone looking in using binoculars (creepy). The evidence at trial also established that pictures taken from the platform, including views of the apartment interiors, had been posted on social media. The owners alleged that the Tate’s operation of the observation platform gave rise to the tort of nuisance, and they sought an injunction requiring it to prevent the intrusion they were experiencing (for example by blocking off that part of the platform), or damages in the alternative.
The landmark decision handed down on 6 July 2022 by a majority of 3 to 2 in the Supreme Court held that a serving diplomat does not enjoy immunity in an employment tribunal claim grounded in allegations of modern slavery.
The Appellant in R (on the application of Elan-Cane) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) [2021] UKSC 56 was assigned female at birth, however during and after puberty they felt revulsion at their body and underwent surgery in 1989 and 1990 to alleviate those feelings. The Appellant who identifies as non-gendered, is a campaigner for the legal and social recognition of this category. The provision of “X passports” are a focal point of the Appellant’s campaign.
The Court of Appeal dismissed a set of claims for psychiatric injury on the basis of prior binding authority, but indicated that the issue is suitable for consideration by the Supreme Court.
Background
The judgment concerns three linked appeals regarding the circumstances in which relative(s) of somebody injured or killed by alleged clinical negligence (the secondary victim(s)) can claim damages in respect of a psychiatric disorder caused by having witnessed the death or suffering of their loved one (the primary victim).
For a defendant to be liable for a secondary victim’s psychiatric illness, the claimant needs to show the necessary legal proximity between themselves and the defendant. In Alcock v Chief Constable of the South Yorkshire Police [1992] 1 AC 310, Lord Oliver identified five elements which form the essential requirements of such a relationship:
the secondary victim is in a marital/parental relationship with the primary victim;
the psychiatric illness for which damages are claimed arises from a sudden and unexpected shock to the secondary victim’s nervous system;
the secondary victim was personally present at the scene of the accident or was in more or less the immediate vicinity and witnessed the aftermath shortly afterwards;
the psychiatric illness arose from witnessing the death of, extreme danger to, or injury and discomfort suffered by the primary victim; and
there was not only an element of physical proximity to the event but a close temporal connection between the event and the secondary victim’s perception of it.
These elements were applied in Crystal Taylor v A. Novo (UK) Ltd [2013] EWCA Civ 194. The secondary victim claim of a daughter who witnessed her mother’s death three weeks after an accident at work in which negligently stacked racking boards fell on her failed despite her death having been caused by the accident. The Court of Appeal held that as she was not present at the accident, she lacked the necessary legal proximity.
In 2015, the Court of Appeal found that the fast-track procedure rules for appeals against the refusal of some types of asylum claim (the FTR) was “structurally unfair, unjust and ultra vires” (R (Detention Action) v First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) [2015] EWCA Civ 840; [2015] 1 WLR 5341, known as DA6). The Court of Appeal quashed the FTR because this structural unfairness “created a risk that the applicants would have inadequate time to obtain advice, marshall their evidence and properly present their cases”, which “created an unacceptable risk of unfairness in a significant number of cases”.
Six years later, the question in R (on the application of TN (Vietnam)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department[2021] UKSC 41 was straightforward: where a decision had been taken under the FTR, should it also be quashed, or must the person who was subject to the decision demonstrate that the decision itself was unfair, rather than merely issuing from an unfair system?
The High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court all answered unequivocally that structural unfairness was not enough to quash an individual decision. Unfairness on the facts had to be found, or the decision would stand.
Background and Decisions Below
TN had, as the court acknowledged, a complicated procedural history, involving a number of applications for asylum, all of which (of those which had been determined at the time of trial) had been rejected. In hearings in those applications, TN had been represented by counsel. However, successive decisionmakers found TN’s claim not to be credible, and on 22 August 2014, the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) rejected her appeal. It was this rejection, decided as it was by a tribunal following the procedural rules in the FTR, which TN sought to challenge in this case.
One reason TN’s evidence was not believed was that it was inconsistent, giving different dates at different times for her mother’s death, and changing the basis of her application for asylum without explaining fully the reasons for the changes. This raised a question plainly discussed, but in the end not legally consequential, of the approach taken to evidence of trafficking, given that trafficking victims frequently change their stories, partly because they will often not know (in terms) that this is what they are (see paragraphs [22]-[24]).
In a detailed judgment, Ouseley J rejected TN’s application, upholding the Tribunal’s decision. His judgment involved a detailed review of the history of TN’s case, after which he concluded that the Tribunal’s decision was not tainted by the structural unfairness of the FTR.
In the Court of Appeal, Singh LJ gave the leading judgment (with whom Sharp and Peter Jackson LLJ agreed), holding that the “fundamental reason” that the application had to fail was that there was “a conceptual distinction between holding that the procedural rules were ultra vires and the question whether the procedure in an individual appeal decision was unfair”.
The legal lens through which this fundamental conceptual distinction found expression was the principle of jurisdiction. Singh LJ considered two bases on which the FTT could fail to have jurisdiction, rejecting both. First, he held that the ultra vires nature of the FTR did not divest the FTT of jurisdiction in the “pure and narrow sense” of having “the legal authority to decide a question”. The Tribunal’s jurisdiction was not created by the FTR but rather by statute; the FTR was “merely a rule which regulates procedure and form”.
The second basis on which the Tribunal might have lost jurisdiction was in the “post-Anisminic understanding of jurisdiction … that a body has acted in a way which is unlawful, including (for this purpose) in a way which is procedurally unfair”. This too was rejected: the Tribunal had not acted in such a way; even though the FTR had created a structural risk that it might, that risk had not eventuated.
Singh LJ went on to set out four factors which the court should take into account when the fairness of an individual decision made under the FTR was challenged on the basis of unfairness. These were, paraphrasing: (1) a high degree of fairness is required in the context of asylum applications; (2) the FTR created an unacceptable risk of unfairness in a significant number of cases; (3) there is no presumption that the procedure in any one case was fair or unfair and what is necessary is a causal link between the risk of unfairness created by the FTR and what happened in a particular case; and (4) the finality of litigation is important, and as such delay is relevant, as are questions as to what steps were taken, and how quickly, to adduce evidence later relied on.
The claimants in the case were victims of human trafficking with unspent convictions in Lithuania. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (CICS) provides compensation to victims of crime, apart from where they have unspent criminal convictions (“the exclusionary rule”). The question for the Supreme Court was whether the exclusionary rule breached the claimants’ rights under Articles 4 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court found that the rule did not breach these rights.
Factual background
The CICS is a statutory scheme established by the Secretary of State for Justice which permits compensation to be given to a person “if they sustain a criminal injury which is directly attributable to their being a direct victim of a crime of violence”. But this is subject to the exclusionary rule for a person with an unspent conviction for an offence with a custodial sentence.
The appellants, A and B, were Lithuanian nationals and twin brothers. They were convicted of burglary and theft respectively in 2010 and 2011. They were then trafficked to the United Kingdom in 2013, where they were abused and subjected to labour exploitation. The traffickers were convicted for these criminal offences in January 2016.
On 16 June 2016, the appellants applied for compensation under the CICS. A’s conviction for burglary only became spent in June 2020, while B’s conviction for theft became spent on 11 November 2016. Because at the time of their application to the CICS they both had unspent convictions, they were disqualified from receiving compensation. They brought a claim for judicial review against the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) and the Secretary of State for Justice.
Legislatures in London and Cardiff have long ago established the most detailed safeguards and systems of registration to protect young people placed in children’s homes – most especially where that involves depriving them of their liberty. At the same time, the administrations in both capitals have presided over a situation whereby there is a significant shortage of such registered accommodation. This has tended to provoke expressions of outrage by the Judiciary.
One of these problem cases has reached the Supreme Court (T (A Child), Re [2021] UKSC 35). In his Judgment, Lord Stephens referred to the
enduring well-known scandal of the disgraceful and utterly shaming lack of proper provision for children who require approved secure accommodation. These unfortunate children, who have been traumatised in so many ways, are frequently a major risk to themselves and to others. Those risks are of the gravest kind, and include risks to life, risks of grievous injuries, or risks of very serious damage to property. This scandalous lack of provision leads to applications to the court under its inherent jurisdiction to authorise the deprivation of a child’s liberty in a children’s home which has not been registered, there being no other available or suitable accommodation.
The case of Re T itself is curious in that the Appellants (acting on behalf of the young person who was the subject of a High Court authorisation under the inherent jurisdiction) appear to have pursued an appeal on arguments that were not live at the relevant points below. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court was prepared to entertain argument as to whether it is a permissible exercise of the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction to authorise a local authority to deprive a child of his or her liberty despite the restrictions placed on such applications in the Children Act 1989 and the fact that that the Act created a detailed scheme for secure accommodation orders in Section 25.
How startling the problem is can be gleaned from the fact that the Supreme Court concluded that the inherent jurisdiction could be used to approve the placement of a young person in an unregistered children’s home – despite the fact that those who are running the home may be committing a criminal offence (contrary to section 11 of the Care Standards Act 2000). The Court concluded that this did not relieve the Court from taking the positive operational step of placing a child in such a placement in order to discharge its positive duties under Article 2 & 3 where “there is absolutely no alternative” (a quote that may lead to future difficulties of its own – as with the similarly telling phrase by Baroness Hale, “nothing else will do” in the field of non-consensual adoption).
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