Andrew Tettenborn

The largest mass trespass in a generation will take place in Devon today. Hundreds of protesters belonging to the pressure-group Right to Roam will descend on Vixen Tor, a slightly sinister-looking granite outcrop on Dartmoor a few miles from Tavistock. Since 2003, access has been banned. But given that much of Dartmoor is already open to the public, why the stress on this fairly small part, which is not? Those marching on Vixen Tor say the reason is simple: a small part of the high moor where hikers have the right to walk at will is inaccessible because it can only be reached across the Tor, which is privately owned and lacks any public rights of way across it.

‘UK’s Rwanda Bill incompatible with human rights obligations… damning report by MPs warns.’ So ran the headline yesterday morning, referring to the report released by the joint human rights select committee on the Safety of Rwanda Bill. As often happens, however, immediate appearances can deceive. Constitutionally, the UK is administered by a ministry with the confidence of the House of Commons, not by committees captured by the progressive establishment The striking feature of this report is that, even though it came from a select committee, it could have been penned by Amnesty International or another similar radical human rights pressure group. The ECHR and other human rights treaties, it insists, must be followed at all costs and to the letter.

Last week the shadow housing minister Matthew Pennycook tabled an opportunistic amendment to the government’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill. This would require the government to closely regulate all estate agents selling leasehold properties or properties carrying management or service charges (in essence flats, or houses on managed estates).  There is a lot that is wrong with this idea. It derives from a 2019 report by a committee chaired by the crossbench peer and social housing campaigner Lord Richard Best. Featuring among its demands were a proposed licensing regime of enormous complexity more appropriate to lawyers or doctors and a dedicated governmental regulator.

Do you remember when you couldn’t get your child to school on time because of a Just Stop Oil slow march? Or when you got gridlocked on the M25 because someone had draped themselves over one of the gantries? There’s a man from the United Nations who, it seems, rather likes the idea of us going back to those times. Michel Forst, a French UN functionary with the grand title of 'special rapporteur on environmental defenders (Aarhus convention)', published a two-page report this week following a brief visit to London. In it, he referred to 'extremely worrying information' about Britain’s 'increasingly severe crackdowns on environmental defenders', by which he meant Just Stop Oil and those like them.

Richard Tice of Reform may not be the most charismatic party leader, but he has impeccable timing. The ink was hardly dry on Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith's joint resignation letter following their support for Robert Jenrick's amendments to the Rwanda Bill, before he openly propositioned them to defect. Predictably Anderson told Christopher Hope straight away on GB News that he was not for turning. But things can change fast in politics. The idea that at least some of the New Conservatives should jump ship actually makes more sense than you might think, whether you look at things from the point of view of the people concerned, the Tory party or the country as a whole.

Cheers! You will soon once again be able to buy champagne and wine in pint bottles – Winston Churchill’s favourite measure. It will be possible for the first time since an overbearing Common Market (as it was then) effectively put an end to the practice in 1973. This is very good news, and I’m certainly looking forward to drinking my first pint of fizz – the ideal unit for one person – over dinner.  But look further, and any satisfaction may well vanish in much the same way the bubbles in your celebratory glass might if you put it down too long. How this whole affair of reintroducing imperial measurements has been handled is a horrible sign of a flailing Tory administration that has lost its way.

Who’d be a teacher these days? Until about 50 years ago, your outlook didn’t matter very much provided you were reasonably competent. Today the profession is coming close to saying that anyone who doesn’t profess progressive and morally relativistic views shouldn’t bother applying. Glawdys Leger, an experienced Catholic teacher in a Church of England state school, expressed her views on LGBT issues during a religious education lesson. Leger also raised objections to teaching LGBT material. She was sacked by Bishop Justus CofE School in Bromley, south London, in May 2022, but her troubles didn't end there.

Traditionalists in the Church of England and the Catholic church don't, of course, always see eye to eye. But on the issue of gay marriage and same-sex relations they may have found some common ground. In a landmark ceremony last week, the Church of England blessed a same-sex couple's relationship for the first time. Prayers for two women – Catherine Bond and Jane Pearce – were held at St John the Baptist Church, in Felixstowe, Suffolk. As if by chance, this week we also heard about the same issue from the papal Dicastery, the Vatican body tasked with maintaining sound doctrine. Five conservative cardinals had submitted a dubium (i.e. awkward question) about whether blessings of same-sex unions were reconcilable with either scripture or church teaching.

Threats to free speech can come from unexpected places these days. A law passed in Northern Ireland has troubling implications for what can be said or reported about serious sexual misconduct, not only in Belfast, but also in London. Victims of sexual offences are granted lifetime anonymity in the UK. The law bans publications from printing anything that could publicly identify them. But since September, the Northern Ireland Justice (Sexual Offences and Trafficking Victims) Act goes way further. It extends the gag to 25 years after the victim’s death unless a court decides otherwise, and allows any relative down to a great-grandchild to petition the court to prolong it if it thinks this in the public interest.

A couple of weeks ago, according to a story broken last Friday in Le Monde, the French government did the unthinkable. ‘MA’, as he has been dubbed by the French press, is an Uzbek exile and alleged radical Islamist who has long been a thorn in France’s side. Allegedly linked to the Islamist party Hizb-ut-Tahrir (which he denies), he had fled Uzbekistan after facing criminal proceedings in 2015, and was denied refugee status in Estonia. France, having found him to be someone ‘embedded in the jihadist movement’ with a desire to fight in Syria, followed suit and served him an expulsion order.

The Conservative party used to be the party of individual liberty. No longer, it seems – at least if the Criminal Justice Bill just introduced in the House of Commons is anything to go by. It’s not simply the worrying powers it promises that will interfere with people at home (for example, it contains police powers to enter homes without a warrant to search for items of stolen property, or to seize the knives you keep at home, potentially without compensation, on the mere suspicion that they might be used criminally). Discreetly lurking in the Bill (in schedule 6, since you ask) is something much more serious: something which comes very close to a power in the police to legislate permanently for what you and I are allowed to do in public.

We shouldn’t be surprised that Ian Fry, the United Nations’ rapporteur for climate change and human rights, has waded in on the jail terms handed to Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists. The UN has a growing habit of muscling in and trying to micromanage states' internal affairs, especially in cases where there’s a progressive point to be made. Fry said he was ‘particularly concerned’ about the sentences received by the two activists who scaled the M25 bridge over the Thames at Dartford last year. Marcus Decker and Morgan Trowland were convicted of causing a public nuisance, with Decker imprisoned for two years and seven months and Trowland for three years.

This morning, the Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal’s judgment on the Rwanda plan and declared that the scheme is unlawful. The Court of Appeal had said that the principle of sending asylum seekers to foreign countries was unexceptionable. But the courts had to decide if Rwanda was likely to be a safe country which would not mistreat asylum seekers, or send them on to third countries where they would face mistreatment. It determined that Rwanda was not safe. The Supreme Court’s decision was, broadly, that the Court of Appeal had been right to take that line, and that the justices agreed with it.  This decision is not particularly good news for believers in democracy, or those who believe elected authorities should have the right to police borders.

One problem clearly emerged after an Islamist fanatic blew himself up at a major pop concert in the Manchester Arena in 2017, killing 22 other people. This was that no one there had a clue about how to react to events of this sort. The government promised action. Action we now have, in the form of the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill announced in the King’s speech. Unfortunately, as with many well-intentioned 'something must be done' measures, this Bill, aimed at requiring a degree of terrorism preparedness at events like this, could well go too far the other way. If enacted as suggested, the cure could end up being worse than the disease.

What does Iran have to teach the world about human rights? The United Nations appears to think we have plenty to learn from a pariah state which backs Hamas, arrests and beats women for failing to wear a hijab, executes protesters and hangs gay people. In Geneva, the Social Forum of the UN Human Rights Council – essentially a human rights jamboree – opens today; its chair is Ali Bahreini, Iran’s UN ambassador, who will oversee a conference discussing the contribution of science, technology and innovation to the promotion of human rights. Iran, which has used facial recognition technology to identify dissidents, is likely to have some expertise here. It's beyond a joke, of course.