“Computer says guilty” – an introduction to the evidential presumption that computers are operating correctly

This is first in a series of posts on the Post Office Horizon prosecutions scandal

The Post Office prosecutions scandal is the United Kingdom’s greatest mass miscarriage of justice of our times.

The scandal, however, is also difficult to write about.

Partly this is because many of the personal and systemic failures in the scandal are so maddening that any attempt at objective explanation and detached commentary can quickly become a rant.

And it is partly because the matter is so complex that very few will have mastery of all the legal and other documents and evidence. For example, the key 2019 judgment of Mr Justice Fraser – a judgment which also happens to be one of the greatest forensic exercises undertaken by any modern judge – is over a thousand paragraphs long, even without its appendices.

Nonetheless, there have been some outstanding accounts and analyses of this sorry situation. In particular, the journalist Nick Wallis has produced a book which should be read widely on the mess. There is also now a statutory inquiry which is seeking to get to the bottom of what happened, and why it happened, and how it should not happen again.

The focus of many of the accounts and much of the commentary has, rightly, been on the numerous personal and systemic failures – especially those of the Post Office management and their lawyers, and those of the software provider Fujitsu.

Those personal and systemic failures are central to what happened: none of the miscarriages of justice would have occurred without decisions by individuals (and groups of individuals) which could and should have been made differently.

And some of those decisions are such that the individuals involved should themselves be prosecuted.

But this post – and the posts which will follow this, as part of a series – is on another failure which was part of the mix.

This is the failure of the law itself and of the procedures of the courts.

And if anything, this failure of the law itself and of the procedures of the courts makes the individual decision-makers more culpable – for they knew (or should have known) how harsh the applicable law and procedure would be on the defendants, but the defendants would be prosecuted anyway.

Nothing in an account and explanation of the applicable law and procedure should be taken to limit the culpability of the Post Office management and their lawyers, and of those at the software provider Fujitsu.

In this first post let us start with what lawyers called a “presumption”.

The classic statement of this presumption is as follows:

“In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the courts will presume that mechanical instruments were in order at the material time”.

Here “mechanical instruments” include computers.

So, in other words, computers are presumed to be operating correctly, unless there is evidence to the contrary.

As a “presumption” this does not mean that the court will take this view each and every time, regardless of circumstance.

It is instead a starting-point which can be rebutted.

It is what the court will take to be the state of affairs, unless it is satisfied by evidence that it is not the state of affairs.

There is nothing inherently wrong about a court using presumptions: indeed, without presumptions, the courts could not properly operate.

Presumptions keep almost all legal cases manageable. For example, a contract will be presumed not to be a fraudulent instrument, unless it is shown to be a fake; or a defendant may be presumed not to be insane, unless shown to be insane; and so on.

Presumptions tell us what will be taken to be the state of affairs – and which party has the onus of showing whether that state of affairs is not correct.

The problems with any presumption are in what it presumes, and in what is needed to rebut it.

If the presumption is unrealistic in and of itself, or if rebuttal is unrealistic, then the presumption converts from being something that assists the course of justice to something that causes miscarriages of justice.

The presumption that computers are presumed to be operating correctly, unless there is evidence to the contrary is what lawyers call “a presumption of evidence”.

This means that a court can be satisfied that a relevant fact can be established just by computer records, unless there is evidence that the computer is not working properly.

And so when the computer record shows, for instance, a financial shortfall by postmaster or postmistress, the court will accept that as evidence of an actual shortfall – unless the defendant can show that the computer was not operating correctly.

In short, when the computer record is the essence of a prosecution case: computer says guilty.

This evidential presumption has not always been part of English law.

In 1984 a law was passed which pointed this presumption in the opposite direction.

Section 69 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 provided:

This provision pointed the presumption in the other direction: it was for the prosecution to show that the computer was operating correctly, and not for the defendant to show that computer was not operating correctly.

This section 69 replaced the old common law position where, as stated above, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the courts will presume that mechanical instruments were in order at the material time.

Had section 69 still been part of the law when the Post Office brought its prosecutions of post-masters and post-mistresses then the course of those cases may well have been different.

Section 69, however, was repealed in 1999:

The effect of this repeal was that the old common law presumption returned, meaning that is was again for the defendant to show that a computer was not operating correctly, rather than for the prosecutor to show that the computer was operating correctly.

How this repeal came about, and whether the reasons for that repeal were sound, will be the subject of the next post in this series.

Sources

Considerable assistance for this series of posts has come from the following articles:

The Law Commission presumption concerning the dependability of computer evidence (2020)

Recommendations for the probity of computer evidence (2021)

The legal rule that computers are presumed to be operating correctly – unforeseen and unjust consequences (2022)

Performative justice and coercion: thinking about coercing convicted defendants to hear their sentences

(Source)

The court system is inherently about performance: about justice being seen to be done.

And the legal system, more generally, is inherently about coercion: about people being forced to do things they otherwise would not do.

So taking these two things together, performative justice and coercion, both of which are deeply fixed in our culture, it is difficult for many to understand why a convicted defendant cannot simply be coerced to attend a courtroom to hear the sentencing remarks of the judge.

The many have a point: it does seem an odd gap in the practice of criminal law, a lacuna in the world of courts and coercive force.

But.

There are genuine practical problems about having this particular form of coercion.

What happens if the defendant refuses to perform their allotted role and disrupts the court? Ordering back to their cells rather defeats the point of obliging them to be present.

And how do you meaningfully punish someone for non-compliance when they already face a life sentence?

There are also important points about placing at risk those court workers who would be expected to enforce the requirement against an unwilling defendant.

Like many things in criminal justice, and in the law generally, there are not easy answers to what seem easy questions: no deft solution to those who clamour that something must be done.

There is, however, perhaps another way of thinking about this.

And this is to focus on the sentence of the court being the actual punishment.

That sentence may include incarceration and other things.

But the sentence is the thing.

It is the sentence which provides (or is supposed to provide) the output of justice – the sanction which the court holds to be the proportionate and, well, just response to the offence that has been found to have been committed.

Anything in addition to the sentence, even things which seem must be done, is separate from the sentence.

We should be wary about adding performative elements in addition to the sentence handed down by the court – especially elements intended to show further retribution.

Of course, part of a criminal sentence often serves the purpose of retribution.

But even in the most extreme cases, the purpose of retribution has to be balanced by other elements by a court.

The further we go from the sentence being the punishment, because of a clamour for there to be even more dramatic performative elements, the less the sentence itself can be regarded as the product of the justice system.

Perhaps attendance orders for certain convicted defendants can be built into the court process, or even be made part formally of the sentence.

After all, as said above, there is already plenty of performative and coercive elements in criminal justice system. One more will not make that much difference.

But until such orders are properly integrated into the process, the concern should be that such elements are not made substitutes and supplements for the actual sentence.

The sentence is the thing, and it should always be the thing.

And even when the scales of justice are lopsided with the weight of the most awful of crimes, they nonetheless remain scales.

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A note of caution for those clapping and cheering at the latest indictment of Donald Trump

8th August 2023

(Picture credit.)

The former president of the United States is facing serious legal trouble, with a serious criminal indictment which takes seriously his role in the 6 January insurrection, and – what is more – he also faces a serious judge taking her job seriously.

No matter how many times one types “serious” it is hard to overemphasise how serious this is for Trump and, by extension, for the United States generally and for the liberal constitutionalist notion that nobody, not even Donald Trump, is above the law.

But.

Taking this seriously also should also mean that those looking on should not give way to elation and celebration.

And this is because, as with all contested litigation, there is the possibility that this case can be lost as well as won.

It is too early to be clapping and cheering.

Imagine the following scenario: the prosecution throw everything they can at Trump. Each charge is evidenced and each witness comes up to proof.

Imagine that the case against Trump could not be framed better and could not be put before the court better.

Imagine a dream prosecution, one where everything goes right.

Imagine all that and then imagine, for this is litigation and all contested litigation is ultimately uncertain, that Trump is found not guilty.

This is not actually a fanciful point: the laws being relied upon by the prosecution are not commonly prosecuted and there is doubt as to the reach of those laws.

And Trump will be fighting for his political life – and whichever lawyers he manages to employ the duration of the trial will also be seeking the best possible presentation of the defense.

There is a non-trivial possibility that Trump may be found not guilty.

What this would mean – or at least what Trump and his supporters will take it to mean – is not that Trump has escaped condemnation and conviction.

It would instead be taken to mean complete and absolute vindication of Trump both in respect of the incidents of 6 January and of his framing of the prosecution as a “witch trial”.

The consequences of such a vindication will be profound and lasting.

Of course, this possibility does not mean that the prosecution should not go ahead.

Nothing in this post should be taken to mean that the prosecution should be aborted.

The point of this post is not about prosecution practice and discretion: indeed, as far as one can tell, the prosecution is doing a good, impressive job.

The point of this post is to counter the jubilation at the indictment.

This is high-stakes litigation, in a case which may (as they say) make law.

Perhaps the prosecution wins and, after exhausting all and any appeals, Trump is held to be criminally liable for his role. If so, those opposed to Trump can then clap and cheer.

But we are not yet near that outcome, and the implications of the prosecution not succeeding need to be taken seriously too.

A great deal rides on this case, and the outcome is not certain.

Brace, brace.

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Understanding the significance of today’s Court of Appeal decision on the Rwanda removals policy

29th June 2023

Today the Court of Appeal ruled that the United Kingdom government’s controversial Rwanda removals policy was unlawful.

The judgment is here and there is a court-prepared summary here.

By saying the policy was itself unlawful, this means that each and every possible removal of any asylum seeker to Rwanda for their asylum application to be processed is currently unlawful. There are no current circumstances where a removal would be lawful.

The reason for the unlawfulness is that Rwanda is not a safe place for the processing of asylum claims:

This goes beyond the decision of the High Court that each particular removal happened to unlawful, on a case-by-case basis, because an appropriate process had not been followed. The High Court had said that the general policy was lawful, but each application of it so far had been unlawful.

The Court of Appeal now says that even the policy was unlawful. No removal, even with elaborate procedural compliance, would be allowed.

So both in practice and in the round the Rwanda removals policy has been held unlawful.

Opponents of the policy can celebrate – to an extent.

Here are some further thoughts about what this decision signifies and does not signify.

First, and from a practical perspective, the government’s far bigger problem was the initial High Court judgment. It does not really matter if a policy is (theoretically) lawful if the procedural protections required for each individual case are such that, in practice, removals are onerous and extraordinarily expensive.

I blogged about these practical problems when the High Court handed down its judgment:

Today’s ruling that the policy itself is unlawful makes no real difference to the government’s practical predicament with the policy in individual cases.

And the government appears not to have appealed the adverse parts of the High Court judgment.

The Home Secretary, and her media and political supporters, can pile into judges and lawyers because of today’s appeal judgment. But their more serious problems come from the last judgment, and not this one.

The Home Office is simply not capable or sufficiently resourced to remove many, if any, asylum seekers to Rwanda even if the policy was lawful.

Second, the Court of Appeal decision today is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

And, from an initial skim read of the relevant parts of the judgment, one would not be surprised if the Supreme Court reverses this Court of of Appeal decision.

Today’s Court of Appeal decision is not unanimous – the Lord Chief Justice was in the minority on the key question of whether Rwanda was a safe country for processing asylum claims.

The Supreme Court is (currently) sceptical of “policy” type legal challenges, and is likely thereby to defer to the Home Secretary’s view that Rwanda was a safe country for processing asylum claims – a view also shared by the two judges at the High Court and the Lord Chief Justice.

If the Home Office appeals to the Supreme Court then one suspects it is likely to win.

(Though it must be tempting to the Home Secretary to now abandon this – flawed – policy, and blame the judges.)

Third, any appeal to the Supreme Court will take time. As it has taken until June 2023 for an appeal decision for a December 2022 High Court decision, it may be another six months before there is a Supreme Court hearing and decision.

And in that time, and unless a competent court decides otherwise, all removals will be unlawful as a matter of policy.

If the government wins at the Supreme Court then there would presumably be further delays while individual challenge-proof removal decisions are made.

In other words, the period for any actual removals before a general election next year will be short.

Even with a Supreme Court win, it will be that few if any asylum seekers are removed to Rwanda before a likely change of government.

(Though it cannot be readily assumed that an incoming government will change the policy.)

Fourth, it should not be overlooked by opponents of the Rwanda removals policy that the appeal lost today unanimously and comprehensively on every other ground:

These defeats are not any cause for opponents of the policy to celebrate.

Finally, there is a possibility of a work-around, which the government could adopt.

In the Abu Qatada case it was held by the courts that a deportation to Jordan for a trial was unlawful because of the use of evidence extracted by torture in the Jordanian legal system.

And so the United Kingdom government did a deal that the Jordanian legal system changed its ways so that the deportation could take place.

Abu Qatada was then, lawfully, deported.

(And then acquitted by the Jordanian court in the absence of such evidence.)

This deportation was presented by the United Kingdom government as a win against pesky human rights lawyers – when in fact the government had in reality complied with the judgment.

Similarly, the United Kingdom government may work with the Rwanda government to improve the asylum system, and correct the evidenced defects, so that concerns of the majority of the Court of Appeal are addressed.

No doubt the government would then similarly present any Rwanda removals on this basis as a win against pesky human rights lawyers – but again it would be the government complying with what the court would have approved.

The judgment released today is long – and nobody commenting on the judgment today – politician or pundit – can have read it and properly digested it.

This post is thereby based only on initial thoughts and impressions.

That said, there is reason today for opponents of the Rwanda removals policy to celebrate.

But perhaps not too much.

This has been cross-posted from The Empty City Substack.

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Understanding the government’s judicial review of the Covid Inquiry

2nd June 2023

The government of the United Kingdom has commenced a legal challenge to the recently established Covid Inquiry – an inquiry that this government had itself established.

In the words of the Covid Inquiry spokesperson yesterday:

“At 16:00 today the Chair of the UK Covid-19 Public Inquiry was served a copy of a claim form by the Cabinet Office seeking to commence judicial review proceedings against the Chair’s Ruling of 22 May 2023.”

This is an unusual judicial review.

Usually judicial reviews are brought against the government, and not by the government.

This is because judicial reviews are the normal legal means by which the High Court can be asked to assess whether a public body is acting within its legal powers.

Here, however, it is the government asking the High Court whether the Covid Inquiry – in effect, another public body – is acting within its legal powers.

Unusual, yes, but not absolutely unprecedented, as Dinah Rose KC – one of the greatest judicial review barristers – has pointed out on Twitter:

This is not the first time the Govt has judicially reviewed its own inquiry. The MoD twice JRed Lord Saville as Chair of the Bloody Sunday inquiry over the protection to be afforded to military witnesses. A High Court judge & Court of Appeal ruled on the decision of a Law Lord.

— Dinah Rose (@DinahGLRoseKC) June 2, 2023

But that said, this judicial review is still unusual.

What is this judicial review about?

From a legal perspective, it is about one word: jurisdiction.

To understand this we need to dig into some of the legal background.

First, the Inquiry was created under the Inquiries Act 2005 – and this makes the Inquiry, in the lovely phrases, “a creature of statute” or “a statutory creature”.

What this in turn means is that any inquiry created under the Act – the Covid Inquiry and otherwise – does not have universal or inherent legal powers.

An inquiry created under the Act only has legal powers within the scope of the Act – what lawyers call the “vires” of the Act.

An inquiry created under the Act thereby cannot do something “ultra vires” the Inquiries Act.

And if an inquiry does a thing ultra vires the Inquiries Act then that thing can be quashed or declared unlawful by the High Court.

Here the government maintains that the Covid Inquiry has done something ultra vires the 2005 Act.

Now we go to the section 21 Notice issued by the Covid Inquiry on 28 April 2023, in which the Inquiry demands various documents from the Cabinet Office.

This Notice is the main target of this judicial review.

This Notice is what the government is primarily asking the High Court to quash.

This judicial review is not the first attempt of the government to dislodge the Notice.

The first attempt was an Application dated 15 May 2023.

This Application was made under a provision of the Inquiries Act which provides:

“A claim by a person that— (a) he is unable to comply with a notice under this section, or (b) it is not reasonable in all the circumstances to require him to comply with such a notice, is to be determined by the chairman of the inquiry, who may revoke or vary the notice on that ground.”

But.

This Application was problematic.

You see, the Application was not actually asking the Inquiry to revoke or vary the Notice – both of which presuppose the Notice was valid in the first place.

No, the Application was telling the Inquiry that the Notice was outside the powers of the Inquiry.

As the Application stated:

“The Inquiry has no jurisdiction to request under rule 9, still less to compel under s.21, the provision to it of unambiguously irrelevant material.”

And the chair of the Inquiry picks this very point up in her ruling (emphasis added and the paragraph broken up for flow):

“I observe at the outset that I am far from persuaded that a wholesale challenge to the legality or vires of a section 21 notice is one that properly falls within the scope of section 21(4) of the 2005 Act.

“Although the application does not make this clear, I infer that it is made under subsection 21(4)(b) of the 2005 Act, which entitles the recipient of a section 21 notice to invite the Chair to vary or revoke the notice on the ground that “it is not reasonable in all the circumstances to require him to comply with [it]”.

“I understand that provision to apply to cases where the recipient of a notice accepts the notice’s validity, but wishes to engage with the Chair as to the reasonableness of complying with it. It does not obviously apply to a situation such as the present, where the recipient of the notice contends that the notice itself is unlawful.”

“The better procedure for raising arguments of that nature is, plainly, an application for judicial review.“

The chair was right – and this response indicates that she and her advisers may understand the scope of the Inquiries Act very well.

The government may have spent substantial public money on instructing the government senior external lawyer to put together a ten-page application, but ultimately the Application was the wrong horse on the wrong course.

A challenge to the jurisdiction of the Inquiry to issue the Notice should be done by judicial review – that is a formal action at the High Court.

Perhaps the government used the Application as a tactic just to get the Inquiry to change its mind, or at least state its legal position expressly – a previous post on this blog described the Application as, in effect, a letter before action.

And the Application did get the Inquiry to set out its legal position explicitly.

But the challenge the government does want to make to the Notice – and also to the Inquiry’s ruling – should be done by means of a judicial review.

Now it is.

And here is the government’s statement of facts and grounds.

What are the merits of the judicial review – that is, will the government win?

To the extent that that the government seeks to rely on the Human Rights Act and privacy rights under Article 8 of the European Convention, the government warrants all the mockery it is getting.

This is the very government that is seeking to repeal the Human Rights Act and make it harder for claimants to rely on Article 8 privacy rights.

But.

There is more to the government’s legal case than that – and there is perhaps a route to the government succeeding at the High Court – or on appeal.

Here we need to go back to the Inquiry being a creature of statute.

This means that it is not open to the Inquiry to do just what it wants and to ask for whatever it wants.

The Inquiry can only do things and ask for things within the corners of the Inquiries Act – as augmented here by the Terms of Reference of the Inquiry.

The government is unlikely to win the judicial review with wide-ranging claims about general principles of “unambiguous relevancy” or otherwise.

If the government does succeed then it will be because that, in this particular case, the correct construction of the Inquiries Act, taken in tandem with the Terms of Reference, mean that, on this one occasion, the Inquiry has done something outside of its legal powers.

If the government can show this, then the Covid Inquiry loses – and the Notice falls away.

But.

The Covid Inquiry will also have been aware of this potential legal challenge when putting the Notice together, and it would seem that the measured content of the Notice and the precision of its requests place the Notice within the scope of the Inquiries Act when read with the Terms of Reference.

In other words, the legal(istic) “prep” of the Covid Inquiry for this potential challenge was started long ago, and – unlike the impression given by the Cabinet Office – not in a rush over the last couple of weeks.

Finally, let us consider the greased piglet.

The former Prime Minister Boris Johnson is currently making more mischief than a dozen lords-of-misrule.

He appears to want to single-handedly sabotage the government’s legal case:

NEW: Boris Johnson says he is sending his unredacted WhatsApps (from May 2021 onwards) to the Covid inquiry direct.

He says he wants to pass the WhatsApps from his old phone to them too pic.twitter.com/bV0DcBrh2v

— Henry Zeffman (@hzeffman) June 2, 2023

On this, let us be careful.

There is industrial-scale misdirection afoot.

Let us wait to see what is actually disclosed – and how the Inquiry assesses that disclosure.

And note in Johnson’s letter, at the seventh paragraph, the deft and camouflaged “relevant” – and also note who he is proposing to conduct this all-important search.

We should not get too excited at such claims.

But that said, the sudden rampaging entry of Johnson into this otherwise delicate judicial review is extraordinary.

This is such an unusual judicial review – and in more than one way.

Disclosure: I am a former central government lawyer.

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The commercialisation of private prosecutions

19th May 2023

In the Financial Times magazine this weekend – and on their website (though behind a paywall) – is a fascinating and detailed article on the commercialisation of private prosecutions – especially in respect of shoplifting and online counterfeiting.

By way of background: usually one way of explaining the difference between criminal law and civil law is that in the former a person is prosecuted by the state, while in the latter a person is sued by another person.

But with private prosecutions, a person can bring criminal prosecutions against another person.

It is an example of the private enforcement of public power.

Of course, the hope (if not expectation) is that any abuse of these prosecutions would be dealt with by an impartial and independent court looking out for the public interest.

But such prosecutions are outside of the processes the police have of dealing with incidents, and also outside of the processes of the Crown Prosecution Service have in determining whether a prosecution should be brought.

Yes, it is possible for the Crown Prosecution Service to step in and terminate a private prosecution, but that is exceptional.

So what we have are defendants – whose cases would have been dealt with differently had the police or the Crown Prosecution Service – facing harsher sanctions at the criminal courts.

And this is done as a business, as the Financial Times spells out, for those bringing these prosecutions only get paid if they can apply for public funds at the end of a successful prosecution.

It seems the various shops and businesses which are affected by the criminality in question do not contribute to the costs of the prosecution.

The article points to both a justice gap and to a failure to properly fill that gap.

Many of the shops and businesses nod-along with the private prosecutions because they have no confidence in the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, who in turn are not properly resourced.

And as several of those caught up in the private prosecutions have drugs problems, it can even be contended that some of the prosecutions make no real overall difference to the crime levels, just diverting crime elsewhere from the protected shops and businesses.

The Financial Times piece is an interesting sideways snapshot of the criminal justice system.

And if you cannot afford to buy the Financial Times tomorrow, and so decide to read it inside the newsagents instead, please do remember not to walk out without paying for the newspaper.

The article will tell you why.

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Somebody should copyright “flawed music copyright cases” so as to avoid future abuses

4th May 2023

Another flawed musical copyright case.

The news from the Manhattan court is that Ed Sheeran has won the latest case.

These cases are not about piracy and bootleg copies being made for sale.

These case are also not even about samples being lifted.

They are about mere chord progressions.

As Sheeran’s lawyer avers: “the letters of the alphabet of music”.

These are the cases that bring discredit on media and copyright law – and also perhaps show a misunderstanding of how music is composed and how music develops.

We should just wish that the very notion of bringing such flawed cases could themselves be subjected to the law of intellectual property.

And then potential plaintiffs could just be sent a “cease and desist” letter – and so be stopped immediately in their, ahem, tracks.

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“Frankenchickens” and the law

3rd May 2023

Scrolling though Instagram while trying to think of a legal angle on the coronation worth writing about I came across this:

As it happens I have a lot of time for the broadcasting of Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin, and for my fellow Brummie Benjamin Zephaniah, and so I thought this may be an interesting case to write about for a blogpost.

What is being described as a “Frankenchicken”?

According to Zephaniah: “Decades of selective breeding have turned [chickens] into monstrous frankenchickens who can barely carry their own weight, and who lie in crowded barns, being burned by their waste. We should not be treating animals like this.”

The applicant – The Humane League – was kind enough to share their legal arguments with me.

At the heart of this legal case is a paragraph.

It is paragraph 29 in a schedule, in a schedule to some regulations, which are in turn regulations made under an Act of Parliament.

And this paragraph 29 provides:

“29. Animals may only be kept for farming purposes if it can reasonably be expected, on the basis of their genotype or phenotype, that they can be kept without any detrimental effect on their health or welfare.”

(My emphasis added, for a reason which will become obvious.)

The schedule containing this paragraph has effect by reason of regulation 4 of the relevant regulations, and this provides:And these regulations were made under section 12 of the Animal Welfare Act:

It is in this elaborate way that many things are regulated: provisions within provisions within provisions – a legislative pass-the-parcel.

The applicant in this case is contending the government misunderstands paragraph 29.

The applicant says paragraph 29 prohibits the keeping of animals for farming purposes unless it can reasonably be expected that, on the basis of their genotype or phenotype, that they can be kept without any detriment effect on their health or welfare.

The applicant says the government is in turn contending that paragraph 29 does not establish any such prohibition “and, moreover, [the government] disputes that the word “kept” refers to keeping at all”.

(I do not have access to the government’s legal argument.)

The applicant then contends that because the government misunderstands paragraph 29 the government thereby makes two further legal errors.

First, the misunderstanding means that the government has adopted and maintains policies and practices, including a Code of Practice and a system of monitoring and enforcement, founded on legal error – including a policy of non-enforcement.

And second, as the policies and practices do not discriminate against those who in breach of the paragraph, there is a consequential lack of equal treatment between producers.

The applicant’s press release sent to me states:

“The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the defendant in the case, argues that it has no policy which condones or permits the use of Frankenchickens, despite fast-growing breeds being standard in the chicken industry.

“The case also challenges the ‘trigger system,’ Defra’s monitoring system aimed at detecting welfare issues associated with conventional chicken breeds, of which the overwhelming majority will be fast-growing.

“The trigger system requires slaughterhouse vets to report problems, but only if they occur above a given threshold – which The Humane League argues is far too high.

“A final ground of the case argues that the system in place is creating unequal treatment between chicken producers that comply with the law and those who do not.”

This, of course, is not an animal welfare blog – but from a law and policy perspective what is fascinating – and clever – about this case is that the applicant is seeking declaratory relief.

This means the court is being invited to declare the meaning of a legal instrument, in this case paragraph 29.

And this is a perfectly proper thing for a court to be asked to do.

The court is not being asked to directly quash any policy, but to say what a legal provision means.

And a paragraph deep in a schedule to regulations made under a statute is as much a statutory provision as section 1 of any Act of Parliament you can think of.

It also seems that there are differing views on what paragraph 29 means – and the view contended for by the applicant in this case has survived a permission hearing and so can be taken as at least arguable.

This is therefore not a simple try-on, but something the high court thinks is a serious legal question to be heard.

The framing of the case, however, means that if the applicant prevails then it will also pull away the basis of various policies and practices based on that paragraph.

That is an ambitious case to make, but again it is a legitimate and arguable one.

If the government has based policies and practices on a misunderstanding of the law then those policies and practices can fall too.

According to ITV, Defra argues that fast-growing chicken breeds are not inherently condemned to suffer health problems and that there is no scientific consensus saying so.

A spokesperson is quoted as saying:

“We are proud to have some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world. All farm animals are protected by robust animal health and welfare legislation. This sets out detailed requirements on how farmed livestock, including meat chickens, must be kept.

The hearing is today and tomorrow.

I have no idea which side will win – though I am on the side of the chickens – but this is an example of litigation done well by a pressure group – and it is thereby an example of how such public interest litigation should be brought.

You can read more on the Humane League’s campaign here.

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Hurrah for this latest move towards transparency of the UK Supreme Court

27th April 2023

The test for whether an appeal reaches the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is that it raises “a point of law of general public importance”.

This means that, by defintion, the appeals are of wider interest than to the parties themselves.

It also means that it does not matter how interesting the facts of a particular case may be to judges or to the public, it will not get to the Supreme Court unless the outcome matters to others.

As such, all cases before the Supreme Court should be as transparent as possible.

But.

There is nominal transparency, and there is real transparency.

Being able to watch streamed proceedings, for example, is of little use if it is difficult – even impossible – to follow the submissions and lines of argument.

You may as well walk into the court from Parliament Square and try to work out what is going on at a hearing.

Real transparency comes from having access to the documents before the court – the skeleton arguments (setting out the legal argument), the statements of case (setting out the basis of the parties’ positions), and even the witness statements.

Only then do you have real transparency.

And so the latest news, as reported by Legal Futures, is welcome.

The Supreme Court is moving to putting documents online – subject to the usual (and usually understandable) exceptions for confidentiality in particular cases.

This would be a huge boon for the public understanding of law, and it will enable viewers to fully and constructively engage with what is going on.

A student – or a lay person – could sit with two screens – one watching the hearing, and the other toggling between documents, joyfully clicking onto hyperlinks to case reports and legislation.

There are few better ways than to grasp the nature of practical law and to understand how cases work.

There can be no argument in principle against this: for after all, these are cases which raise “a point of law of general public importance” – and these are documents referred to in open court.

There will be grumbles from some lawyers, who may not be willing to have their well crafted documents effectively become texts freely available in the public domain.

But that would be the cost of having a case before the Supreme Court – if you are litigating on “a point of law of general public importance” then it has to be on an open book basis.

And the general availability of such texts – which would otherwise often be stored in the exclusive precedent files of a small group of law firms and chambers – will promote best practice generally.

Lawyers at such law firms and chambers will be giving something back to the wider profession in a helpful and meaningful way.

Of course: pretty soon many people would get bored by the novelty of such access.

But in the longer term it generally would have a positive effect on legal study and professional development, as well as on the public understanding of law.

And, it must be admitted, it would be pretty great for legal bloggers too – and the readers of such blogs.

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How Prince Harry’s legal case shows how the phone hacking story has returned to the start of a circle

26th April 2023

The news about the royals and hacking, well summarised and analysed by Joshua Rozenberg at his Substack, brings us back to the start of a circle.

For the phone hacking story only came about because of the royals.

The story came about because the Fleet Street press of the time – with their well-connected links with the Metropolitan police and the private investigation mini-industry, and unchecked by fearful politicians – sought access to information from the voicemails of the royal household.

Because the royal household became involved, the matter was passed to different police officers at the Metropolitan Police, who then raided and took compelling evidence from private investigators.

And in Scotland Yard that evidence was stored, and it became relevant to civil claims some years later, and then suddenly the scope and extent of tabloid phone hacking became apparent.

But without the royal household connection, the crucial evidence would not ever have been seized and stored, and without that evidence being available for later litigation, the hacking story may never have emerged.

What happened shows the practical importance of the monarchy to our politics, regardless of constitutional theory and conventional wisdom.

It seems only the monarchy has any autonomous power when the police and the media and the politicians collude.

Such crude phone hacking now seems from another age – technologically, culturally, politically, legally.

After the current crop of cases it may well be that the phone hacking litigation comes to an end.

Prince Harry’s various cases will then perhaps be the other bookend to that provided by the original hacking of the royal household telephones.

But as the parties attend hearings at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, the sophisticated surveillance and data retention by the state and technology companies continues at an unimaginable scale, again unchecked by either politicians or the media.

The phone hacking of a media generation ago seems like a garden shed affair compared with a huge urban conurbation of the exercise of “investigatory powers”.

Any abuses and misuses (or even uses) of the current technology will, in turn, probably never come to light so as to horrify.

Unless, of course, the abuses and misuses (and uses) affect the royal household.

And only then, maybe, will we ever get to hear about it.

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