Law

Throughout the Insulate Britain protests there was a suspicion that the group was deliberately trying to get its members behind bars during the COP26 conference — a suspicion that was enhanced when a spokesperson for the group told the Guardian on 24 October:  It’s fair to say that there is absolute disbelief and surprise that the campaign has lasted this long. We assumed that we would not be allowed to carry on disrupting the motorway network to the extent we have been. We thought that people would basically be in prison… if our actions are as dangerous and as disruptive as is being claimed, then I think the question has to be: why are we being allowed to continue day after day?

The Judicial Review and Courts Bill has its second reading today. Writing for the Guardian yesterday, David Davis MP denounced the government’s plans as ‘an obvious attempt to avoid accountability [and] to consolidate power’ which is ‘profoundly un-conservative’. He could not be more wrong. The Bill is a welcome first step in restoring the balance of our constitution, a balance put in doubt by a decades-long expansion of judicial power. If anything, parliament should go further and amend the Bill to make it a more effective means to restore the traditional constitution.

‘You can’t libel the dead’ is burned into the consciousness of any serious journalist or writer. It provides much-needed comfort: however tactful you have to be about the living, once someone has died you can say what you like about them without getting sued. Or can you? Seven years ago the European Court of Human Rights dropped a worrying throwaway remark that this might be unacceptable because allowing untrammelled comment about a deceased person might infringe the human rights of his family. Last week, in a disconcerting decision that seems to have gone entirely unreported in the media (you can read the official report here), that same court built on its earlier suggestion and at a stroke gave publishers a whole new worry.

How do you solve a problem like Britain’s creaking criminal justice system? To the newly appointed Secretary of State, the answer involves ripping up the Human Rights Act, rolling out more electronic tags for convicts and pumping cash into preventative projects. At a Spectator event this morning, held at Tory Party Conference, Dominic Raab explained that rewriting the UK’s human rights laws was central to his reforming mission. He told editor Fraser Nelson: The Prime Minister was very clear when he appointed me deputy PM and Justice Secretary that he wanted this done… Overhauling the Human Rights Act is not just a good way of dealing with the foreign nationals that we can’t deport but also of ironing out our constitution.

In a statement which will doubtless surprise the scores of lawyers, democratic politicians and human rights activists who are currently in jail awaiting show trials under Hong Kong’s National Security Law, the UK Supreme Court today made an announcement which is the best piece of free PR that Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam has had in years. The President of the Supreme Court, Lord Reed, has issued a statement saying that UK judges will be staying on Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal and that ‘the judiciary in Hong Kong continues to act largely independently of government and their decisions continue to be consistent with the rule of law.

It’s not only in Northern Ireland that the EU has taken to acting like some imperial power. Last week, with international correspondents' eyes conveniently fixed on the G7, it quietly began a legal push to take over large areas of its remaining member states’ domestic affairs. On Tuesday, the Commission announced that it was suing no fewer than seven of them in the Court of Justice for breaking EU law. Czechia and Poland are accused of not allowing EU citizens generally to join national political parties, and Hungary of not accepting migrants according to Brussels’s plans. The Netherlands, Greece and Lithuania are charged with failing to have severe enough laws against hate speech and Holocaust denial.

Did anyone else catch the sordid humiliation porn screened on CNN Thursday? The nine-minute clip featured a MILF-cum-dominatrix who works under the name Alisyn Camerota and a promising new adult star called Jeffrey Toobin (onlyfans.com/jeffreytoobin). It was Toobin's first appearance on the AVN-award-winning network since his eight-month stint in a dungeon. The little-pig-boy, 61, was locked up after one of his cam-shows went awry at his other employer, a top-shelf skin mag called the New Yorker. 'It's been a while,' Camerota begins. 'It has been a while indeed,' Toobin replies with a wry smile. Camerota then 'recaps' where Toobin has been for the last few months, as the two giggle to themselves. https://twitter.com/alisyncamerota/status/1403071356925775872?

What have the Conservatives got against left-wing lawyers like me? Boris Johnson told the Commons recently that the government was 'protect[ing] veterans from vexatious litigation pursued by lefty lawyers'. It was far from the first time lawyers had been targeted.  The Home Office's most senior civil servant conceded last summer that officials should not have used the phrase 'activist lawyers' in a video blaming them for disrupting the asylum system. But it seemed that the Home Secretary didn't get the message.  A few weeks later, Priti Patel claimed that 'removals (of illegal migrants) continue to be frustrated by activist lawyers'.

Bailiff-enforced evictions have been banned during the pandemic. But landlords eager to give tenants the boot are finding ways around this rule. Since the start of lockdown, there has been an extraordinary increase in the number of tenants facing applications from landlords to control the terms under which people live in their homes.  Sometimes the playing of loud music is given as the reason. Other times it's because the TV is left on when neighbours are trying to sleep. Perhaps they have had visitors who slammed the front door of their block. But while the circumstances are often mundane, the effect on those who find themselves kicked out can be devastating.

The High Court has said the government acted unlawfully. It is important that is understood, because ‘unlawful’ is a word that can easily mislead. Above all, no one should accidentally think the Court has said that any of the PPE contracts are unlawful. They are not. What the Court has said is that because, on average, the contracts were published on a website after 47 days, the Department of Health and Social Care was unlawful because it promises to publish within 30 days. The government promised 30 days and 47 days is more than 30: that is unlawful. PPE was needed because of the pandemic and, due to the global shortages, the Department of Health and Social Care made contracts to get PPE.