Human Rights Act: Are these cases trivial?

It may be worth while looking at a few recent cases under the UK Human Rights Act 1998 – now under threat from the Conservative Government. They aren’t leading cases but they raise the question of what counts as “trivial” in the mind of the Government (which wants to limit the use of Human Rights laws to the most serious cases and exclude “trivial” ones) and what principles the Government is seeking to abolish with the HRA. In particular why they wish to abolish the principle that:

“Everyone whose rights and freedoms as set forth in [The European Convention on Human Rights] are violated shall have an effective remedy before a national authority notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity.” (ECHR Art 13)

For that is what abolition of the HRA means: that individuals will receive only those human rights Parliament (in effect the Government) says they should receive; and legal barriers will be put in their way of those seeking human rights justice against the State and its offshoots. Section 6(1) of the Human Rights Act makes it illegal for a public authority, which includes a court, to act in a way which is incompatible with Convention rights. That will no longer necessarily be the case.

Gender Recognition Act and an issue of privacy

A transgender woman has failed in her claim that the Gender Recognition Act 2004 breaches the privacy of those who have had surgery or other medical procedures towards gender reassignment. Section 3(3) of the Act requires that individuals reveal details of such medical procedures to a Gender Recognition Panel to back up an application for a Gender Recognition Certificate. Yet the Panel is empowered to issue the certificates to people who have had no such procedures as long as they can provide evidence of gender dysphoria and show they intend to live according to their chosen gender for the rest of their life.

A UK High Court judge rejected the claim by Helen Carpenter, who has transitioned from male to female, that the extra burden on those who had had or were contemplating medical procedures was a breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights on privacy.

Section 3(3) of the GRA 2014 says that if the applicant for a certificate “has undergone or is undergoing treatment for the purpose of modifying sexual characteristics” or plans such treatment or has had it prescribed then it is required that a doctor’s report on her position “provides details of it”. Mrs Justice Thirlwall said: “Given that this information is necessary to the decision to be taken, that its dissemination beyond the Panel is prohibited, I am satisfied that the provision of the information required in paragraph 3(3) is necessary and proportionate to the legitimate aim. There is no incompatibility with Article 8.”

Repeal of the Human Rights Act – and a British Bill of Rights

Note: details of a potential “overhaul” of the Human Rights Act, clause by clause, appear below for those who prefer to get straight to the nitty gritty: “Conservative Rights and Obligations – point by point”

The 2022 Queen’s Speech has underlined the intention of the  Secretary of State for Justice, Dominic Raab, to “reform” the UK Human Rights Act with a new British “Bill of Rights” (consultation document here). 

It is likely that Raab will craft what he calls a distinctly British version of human rights that swings the legal regime subtly in favour of the executive and public bodies, albeit without seeking to withdraw from the broad obligations of the European Convention of Human Rights.

But whether the changes will be acceptable to the European Court of Human Rights is a moot point. If not, Raab will relish the fight, and will point outthat the court already accepts a “margin of appreciation” for the exercise of human rights in individual countries ie the idea that they might be affected by the history and constitutional outlooks of individual nations and hence are not homogenous across all signatories. 

Hoffmann, Laws and Sumption: they come to bury the ECHR, not to praise it

Three giants of law have entered the somewhat confected debate on the Britain’s relationship with the European Convention on Human Rights and the Strasbourg human rights court. Former House of Lords judge Lord Hoffmann, current UK Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption and Court of Appeal judge Lord Justice Laws have given significant intellectual underpinning to the simplistic arguments of the Conservative Party sceptics who claim to see a democratic deficit between government policies and Strasbourg judgments. The first out of the traps was Lord Hoffmann, giving the Alba seminar in October.

Lord Hoffmann
In his section of the seminar Hoffmann declared himself wholly happy with the majority view in Liversidge v Anderson AC 206 (1942).

No news there, one might think – retired judge backs even more ancient judges in 70-year-old court case. But history’s view has hitherto been different. The case hinged on an emergency wartime order used by Home Secretary Sir John Anderson to imprison Robert Liversidge (aka Jack Perlzweig) without trial and without apparent reason except to say he had “hostile associations”. Liversidge had sued for false imprisonment.

The order, Regulation 18(b) of the Defence Regulations 1939, said: “If the Secretary of State has reasonable cause to believe any person to be of hostile origin or associations … he may make an order against that person directing that he be detained.”

The issue therefore was what is meant by “reasonable cause” – and in particular, can the court decide on reasonableness or should it simply defer to the judgment of the Home Secretary – a man in place as a result of a constitutional democratic process and there to protect us all?

Four of the five Law Lords preferred judicial deference – if the Home Secretary said there were “reasonable grounds” then that should be accepted. This is Hoffmann’s position, but lawyers and scholars have generally been more interested in Lord Atkin’s minority view: that Parliament meant there to be plausible evidence for detention; if there was not, and such evidence was not presented to the court, then the judges should declare the detention unlawful. The majority decision was, on this view, unconstitutional because it substituted the judges’ view – and indeed the Government’s view – for the will of Parliament.

Hoffmann does not seem to understand this. He takes a purposive view of the legislation and so believes the judges were right to “correct” it. Since the purpose of the statute was to protect the country from Nazi spies and the like, then the powers should be whatever was required to do that. In particular, whatever the Government (not Parliament) thought was required. The “reasonable cause” qualification could be interpreted subjectively to mean “if the Home Secretary felt he had reasonable cause”. Defence of the realm trumped constitutional niceties regarding the supremacy of Parliament.

Edmondson et al: News International hacking judgment and GCHQ scandal

Note: Since publication of this post Privacy International has announced a legal challenge against the GCHQ programme based on European Court of Human Rights proportionality principles.

The first legal skirmish in the Rebekah Brooks/Andrew Coulson phone hacking saga has produced a Court of Appeal judgment with wider ramifications – which could spread into the burgeoning bugging scandal surrounding Britain’s “spy-station” GCHQ.

The phone hacking case need not detain us too long. Edmondson et al v Regina was brought by various top former News International personnel facing conspiracy charges regarding alleged phone hacking, among them Brooks and Coulson. Their contention was that the offence they are accused of, conspiring to intercept other people’s mobile phone voicemail messages, should be dismissed because the alleged hacking was not actually unlawful under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

This is why the case is relevant to GCHQ and the revelations by Edward Snowden of alleged trawling and storing of private communications: Section 1(1) of RIPA says: “It shall be an offence for a person intentionally and without lawful authority to intercept, at any place in the United Kingdom, any communication in the course of its transmission by means of – 
(a) a public postal service; or
 (b) a public telecommunication system.” (Emphasis added.)

The Edmondson defendants claimed no one could be alleged to have “intercepted” messages that had already arrived at the voicemail inbox and been opened for reading by the recipients since they were no longer “in transmission”. They cited S.2(7) of RIPA which says:

“For the purposes of this section the times while a communication is being transmitted by means of a telecommunication system shall be taken to include any time when the system by means of which the communication is being, or has been, transmitted is used for storing it in a manner that enables the intended recipient to collect it or otherwise to have access to it.”

The defendants argued that once it had been “accessed” (listened to in the case of a phone message or, presumably, opened if it is a text or email) it is no longer “in the course of its transmission”.

The judges, headed by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, rejected this argument. “Interception” included interception of messages saved on the voicemail facility. The judgment notes:

“In this regard it is significant that the intended recipient cannot gain access to the voicemail message without resort to the telecommunication system, but is totally dependent on the system. In these circumstances, there is no good reason why the first receipt of the communication should be considered as bringing the transmission to an end nor is there any support for this within the statutory language. We consider that it is readily apparent from the plain words that it was the intention of Parliament that section 2(7) should extend the course of transmission to include this situation.”

So the appeal was dismissed and the substantive case against the defendants proceeded. Ultimately Coulson was found guilty of conspiring to hack phones while Brooks was acquited (Guardian report).

Issues for GCHQ
The wider implications, however, are that the court has clarified that, no matter where in the process a phone message is captured, it will have been intercepted somewhere in the transmission system and hence potentially unlawfully.