Law

As James says, the prisoner votes row will return to parliament before lunch today. The government is expected to offer the Commons three choices: The retention of the blanket ban, in defiance of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) Enfranchising prisoners serving up to six months. Enfranchising those serving up to four years. Parliament is expected to vote for retention, as it has done so previously. Such an outcome would, obviously, set the UK government on a collision course with the ECtHR and leave it open to very costly compensation suits. Damages of around £1,000 per case have been awarded in other jurisdictions, and leaked documents published last year

Theresa May gave a defiant statement to the house on the Special Immigration Appeals Committee’s (SIAC)  decision to uphold Abu Qatada’s appeal against deportation to Jordan on grounds that he would not receive a fair trial. She vowed to fight on by ‘appealing the decision’, which prompts the question: how will she do that? It’s necessary to understand what the SIAC considered (here is its judgment and here is a précis). First, it examined whether or not evidence given by Qatada’s former co-defendants in an earlier trial (from which Qatada was absent), Abu Hawsher and Al-Hamasher, is admissible in Qatada’s retrial. This question is not initially concerned with whether the

How much longer must we put up with this kind of thing? A bus driver who was fired for being a member of the BNP has won a long legal battle claiming his dismissal was a breach of his human rights. Arthur Redfearn, 56, was sacked from his job in Bradford, West Yorkshire, where he drove mainly Asian adults and children with disabilities. Judges at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled today his employer Serco Ltd dismissed him only because of his membership of a political party. This breaks Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights – the Freedom of Assembly and Association, the chamber

Because our Parliament discusses little of significance anymore, most of the public tend to ignore it. The perception that the weekly silliness of Prime Minister’s Questions constitutes Parliamentary business is enough to put any normal person off.  And apart from that weekly bun-fight, even the media barely bothers to report on the work of either House any longer. Occasionally something still happens in the Commons or the Lords that is worthy of serious attention but because of its form elsewhere, such occasions fail to get the attention they deserve. Such is the Bill proposed by Baroness Cox, which had its second reading in the Lords on Friday. Beneath its title

Away from the drama of the reshuffle, the European Court of Human Rights is hearing the pleas of four British Christians, who are arguing that UK law inadequately protects their right to manifest their faith under articles 9 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The applicants’ cases are well known. Nadia Eweida, a British Airways employee, was asked to remove or conceal the crucifix that she wore around her neck in line with new uniform prescriptions. She did so on several occasions, but eventually refused and was sent home. She lost her workplace discrimination claims on grounds that she had breached her employer’s regulations without good cause.

Ministers were relieved today when the High Court ruled that the Work and Pensions Department’s back-to-work schemes are not ‘forced labour’ and do not breach human rights. The case had been brought by two people: Cait Reilly and Jamieson Wilson, who argued that the unpaid schemes they had been put on violated article four of the European Convention on Human Rights. Ms Reilly, 23, was given ‘unpaid menial work’ at Poundland, while Mr Wilson, 40, was told that he would be required to undertake 30 hours’ unpaid work each week cleaning furniture. Both had been subjected to sanctions for refusing to take part in the schemes, and were facing losing