The Government’s response to the delayed Ouseley report was finally published on 29 May 2024, the last day before the dissolution of Parliament.  In this piece a leading Special Advocate describes that response as underwhelming, especially after so long. Yesterday, in the ‘wash-up’ period before the General Election, the Government published its response to the Ouseley report.  This was a report that had been required by Parliament to “be completed as soon as reasonably practicable” from June 2018, the fifth anniversary of the relevant part of the Justice and Security Act 201 coming ..read more

Just a little over 2 months ago, Professor Colin Murray and I said on this Blog ‘The disapplication of any part of an Act of the UK Parliament is infrequent enough to be notable‘. Just a little over a week ago, the Northern Ireland High Court disapplied the second such Act within 6 months of the last one. But this is not an attempt at gloating – it is, as we have said elsewhere, as powerful a wake-up call as can be for Westminster and Whitehall. Let us turn to NIHRC and JR295’s applications for judicial review [2024] NIKB 35, in which the High Court disapplied sections of the Illegal Migrati ..read more

Following the Strasbourg Court’s dismissal of Kosher and Halal groups’ challenge to the ban on no-stun slaughter of food animals, Rosalind English talks to animal welfare campaigner Paula Sparks about the complex web of laws surrounding our treatment of farm animals in the abattoir. The welfare rules in the UK post Brexit require a level of “protection of animals at the time of killing” (known as PATOK), but there are many difficult areas where this protection is difficult and expensive to apply, such as the depopulation of intensively reared birds due to highly pathogenic avian flu, or the d ..read more

In UK news On 20 May, the Infected Blood Inquiry, chaired by Sir Brian Langstaff, published its final report. The inquiry was set up to investigate the circumstances in which people treated by the NHS were given infected blood and blood products, in particular since 1970. The inquiry found that more than 3,000 deaths of NHS patients are attributable to infected blood, blood products and tissue. The report details the many failures which lead to this situation, such as flaws in the licensing regime which allowed for the import of high risk blood products, failing to ensure sufficiently careful ..read more

In the News A bill in Georgia demanding that all foreign entities and NGOs which receive more than a fifth of their funding from international sources must be labelled as ‘bearing the interests of a foreign state’ passed its third and final reading in the Tbilisi Parliament. Such organisations would be subjected to increased scrutiny by the Georgian Justice Ministry and could be subjected to fines if they fail to disclose sensitive information that is requested of them. There are fears that the bill may be used to silence dissidents and will harm Georgia’s chances of joining the EU. The High ..read more

Personal data is intimately connected to privacy (art 8, ECHR) but is regulated by specific data protection regimes, such as the UK GDPR. Attention-grabbing legal issues arising out of Big Data dominate the public discourse around data protection: can generative AI use datasets without breaching intellectual property laws; how should the NHS use its mass of personal data; should we be compensated for the value of the data we provide to tech companies who go on to use it in advertising. But on the other end of the scale from big data claims sits what might be thought of as ‘small data’ – issu ..read more

By Rebekah Lee 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 ri ..read more

In international news This week Israel began military operations in Rafah, a town at the south of the Gaza strip where 1.4 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the military offence was necessary to secure the return of Israeli hostages and eliminate Hamas: “military pressure on Hamas is an essential condition for the return of our hostages”. The announcement was met with a mixed response from the US, a key Israeli ally. At the beginning of the week Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, stated that the Biden administration paused the supply ..read more

A substantial majority of Special Advocates has felt driven to decline to accept new appointments to the role.  This is a result of the Government’s continuing failure to provide proper support for the controversial system for secret evidence and closed proceedings, avoidably heightening the unfairness that is inherent in such cases.  Special Advocates are the security-cleared lawyers appointed to represent the interests of those excluded from closed proceedings and they are central to the functioning of the system. On 15 April 2024 a group of 25 practising Special Advocat ..read more

The following piece was first published on the UK Constitutional Law Blog on 25 April 2024 and is reproduced here with their permission, for which the editors are grateful Commentary on the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act (“RA”), which is shortly to receive Royal Assent, has concentrated principally on its deeming of Rwanda as a safe country whilst ousting the supervision of courts. This post considers a separate issue – section 4 of the Act as it applies to victims of slavery (“VOS”). Section 4 provides a carve out from the Act’s deeming provisions where the Home Secretary con ..read more