Category: Legislation and Law-Making

The coded criticisms of the Attorney-General from both the Lord Chief Justice and the Court of Appeal

17th December 2020

The office of Attorney-General is at the very crossroads of law and politics.

As a lawyer, the Attorney-General is the government’s chief legal adviser and, by convention, is the head of the Bar of England and Wales.

They superintend the Crown Prosecution Service, and they can (and do) initiate contempt of court proceedings against the media.

A further role is that they can act in proceedings where they represent the public interest and/or the government.

They also can decide to refer cases to the court of appeal where it appears a criminal court has been ‘unduly lenient’ in sentencing.

These are all important – crucial -tasks and so it follows that these roles must be taken seriously.

The Attorney-General is, however, also a politician – usually a member of parliament but sometimes a peer – and one who attends the cabinet.

It is a job therefore where the holder has to wear two hats – or horsehair wigs.

And it is not an easy task even for senior politicians and experienced lawyers.

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The current Attorney-General is neither a senior politician nor an experienced lawyer.

This, of course, is not their fault – although some in this position if they were offered the office would not take it.

The current holder of the office, however, is going out of their way to politicise and thereby to discredit the legal side of the office.

This blog has previously set out how the current Attorney-General should have resigned when they unapologetically tweeted in respect of a case of a political ally who was then subject to a live police investigation.

That really was not what the superintendent of the Crown Prosecution Service should be doing.

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There is now a further example of how the current Attorney-General is undermining their office.

Here there are three texts that are of interest.

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First, here is a Daily Express article from 7th November 2020: Attorney General to appear at Andrew Harper’s killers appeal hearing next week.

In the body of that article, under the byline of a political editor, was the following:

‘A friend of Ms Braverman’s told the Sunday Express:

‘“She was met with strong opposition from civil servants to pursue this case but she held firm and has done the right thing.

‘“She made it clear she wants to be there to underline how important this issue is to the ‘government and how seriously it takes this case.

“If the judges uphold the original sentences then she will have still done the right thing and it will be another example of wet, liberal judges being soft on criminals.”’

As is widely known, ‘friend’ is a code in political journalism for either the politician themselves or someone speaking on their behalf, such as a special adviser.

As far as I am aware, this quote has not been disavowed by the Attorney-General.

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Second, here is a speech on sentencing by the Lord Chief Justice made on 9th December 2020.

Here are two paragraphs from this informative and accessible speech (asterisk and emphasis added):

‘Were the mythical alien to arrive on earth and, I grant you yet more improbably, take an interest in sentencing in England and Wales by reading the newspapers and dipping into the more noisy parts of on-line media, it would soon gain the impression that sentencing had got softer in recent years. It would read about “wet, liberal judges being soft on criminals” (*) and wonder why criminals convicted of serious offences were getting more lenient sentences than they used to. Then our alien visitor might seek some other sources of information, and if possessed of a brow it might become furrowed.

‘There is a difficulty with this narrative. It is a myth.’

The Lord Chief Justice then proceeds in his speech to demonstrate how sentencing has certainly not got softer.

But who was the judge quoting about “wet, liberal judges being soft on criminals” ?

The quotation is footnoted (where I have inserted the asterisk), and the footnote reads:

‘Sunday Express 8 November 2020, quoting a source.’

The Lord Chief Justice is here publicly dismissing – perhaps even deriding – the ‘friend’ of the Attorney-General who in turn is describing the Attorney-General’s motivation for intervening in a criminal sentencing case.

For the head of the judiciary to be doing this openly to the government’s chief legal adviser and holder of the ancient office of Attorney-General is an extraordinary public intervention.

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And now we turn to the Court of Appeal judgment in respect of the sentencing of those who killed the police constable Andrew Harper.

The facts of the case are horrific.

Three were convicted of manslaughter, though a jury acquitted them of murder.

And so the three were sentences in accordance with the guidelines for manslaughter.

The Attorney-General, as the Daily Express article describes, exercised one of their powers and referred the sentences to the court of appeal on the basis of the sentences being ‘unduly lenient’.

The Attorney-General then – oddly for a barrister with no substantial criminal law background – appeared personally at the hearing.

There are three paragraphs of the judgment of interest in respect of the contribution and role of the Attorney-General.

Paragraph 57:

‘In her initial remarks, the Attorney General rehearsed some of the facts and said that the sentences have caused widespread public concern. She outlined four points, about which Mr Little QC then made submissions.’

Here the court are not even deigning to describe the Attorney-General’s contribution as submissions – a ‘submission’ is something one submits to the court for consideration – but merely as remarks.

(The Supreme Court adopted a similar remarks/submission distinction when a former Attorney-General appeared (out of his depth) at the first Miller case: ‘Following opening remarks made by HM Attorney General, Mr Eadie QC in his submissions on behalf of the Secretary of State, did not challenge much if any of the factual basis of these assertions…’ – paragraph 57 here.)

We now turn to the submission that were made, if not personally by the Attorney-General, but by another barrister on their behalf.

Paragraph 83 (emphasis added):

As to the length of the custodial terms, we note a striking feature of the submissions. When applications are made by the Attorney General for leave to refer to this court sentences which are said to be unduly lenient, it is frequently on the basis that the judge fell into error by failing to follow a relevant guideline. In this case, however, the argument advanced by the Attorney is that the sentence of Long, and therefore the sentences on Bowers and Cole, were unduly lenient because the judge erred in failing to depart from the relevant guideline.

Just as political journalists have their codes, so too do judges.

And to describe as position as ‘striking’ is to say that it is barking – and the rest of the paragraph explains why.

In essence: unduly lenient sentences are those which depart from the guidelines and not those made in accordance with them.

This is then followed by paragraph 84 (again emphasis added):

‘That is, to say the least, an unusual submission. It involves the proposition that in the circumstances of this case, a sentence within the guideline offence range was not within the range properly open to the judge, who was instead required to pass a sentence outside that range. We think it regrettable that, in advancing that submission, the structure and ambit of the guideline were not addressed. Nor was any sufficient explanation given why it is contended that the judge was not merely entitled to depart from the guideline but positively required to do so.’

Here ‘unusual’ means, in effect, beyond barking – and again the rest of the paragraph sets out why.

These are obvious points and would have been plain to government lawyers.

But as ‘friend’ of the Attorney General said, ‘[s]he was met with strong opposition from civil servants to pursue this case’.

And paragraphs 83 and 84 set out why.

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Taking these three texts together we can see that the judiciary are alert to the motivations of the Attorney-General and are resistant to the attempts to politicise the office, and that the judiciary will be unafraid to reject ‘striking’ and ‘unusual’ submissions made on behalf of the Attorney-General.

The judges are not stupid or unworldly – they know exactly the import of coded criticisms in public speeches and judgments.

The Attorney-General may be sending signals, but so are the judges.

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But this Attorney-General will not care.

The political job is done – and one can imagine the claps and cheers of the ‘friend’ quoted in the Daily Express article. 

She took on the ‘wet, liberal judges being soft on criminals’.

But this political job has been done at a cost.

Although a politician, the Attorney-General is entrusted with highly important decisions in respect of not only referring ‘unduly lenient’ sentences, but also in respect of many other legal matters, from contempt of court to the operation of the crown prosecution service.

But the conduct of the current Attorney-General is such that their credibility as a decision-maker capable of making such decisions on the appropriate basis is open to doubt.

This quick win for a political ambitious Attorney General is at the cost of the standing of their office.

The Attorney-General is weaponising her legal responsibilities for political purposes.

This is a remarkable, striking and unusual predicament.

And given that the Attorney-General is not only doing this recklessly but with apparent enthusiasm means that there is no reason for anyone watching it happen in real time to be unduly lenient.

*****

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Section 007 – how the government authorises criminal activity by its agents, and a telling recent disclosure

16th December 2020

One theme in recent law and policy has been for the government of the United Kingdom to increasingly place itself and its agents above or beyond the law.

There is, of course, a certain hypocrisy in this given how loudly ministers shout about ‘Law and Order!’.

Sometimes this is done subtly, with limits on the scope judicial review, the law of human rights, and the entitlement to legal aid when one is challenging public bodies.

But sometimes it is done quite openly – indeed brazenly.

One example is the current attempt – which I explain in this video for the Financial Times – to make it effectively impossible to prosecute members of the armed forces for war crimes and torture.

 

Another attempt – though it has just been dropped – was to enable ministers to issue regulations that would break the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

And another attempt is the current Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill before parliament.

The long title of the Bill expressly states that it is to:

‘Make provision for, and in connection with, the authorisation of criminal conduct in the course of, or otherwise in connection with, the conduct of covert human intelligence sources.’

The Bill provides for ‘criminal conduct authorisations’ which are defined as ‘authorisation[s] for criminal conduct in the course of, or otherwise in connection with, the conduct of a covert human intelligence source.’

On the face of the Bill there are no exempt criminal offences – and so, in theory, they would include murder, war crimes and torture.

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At this point one can imagine senior security officials with kindly faces and reassuring manners telling us that, of course, no such offences would ever be committed.

But.

It is a matter of public record that the United Kingdom state was complicit in the murder of civil rights lawyer Patrick Finucane in 1989.

The United Kingdom state has also been complicit in the torture of civilians, in Northern Ireland, Kenya and Iraq.

The sheer volume of accumulated historical evidence is that, yes, we really should be worrying our little heads about what the United Kingdom state and its agents are capable of when they think it can get away with it.

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And there is now a more up-to-date reason to be concerned about the lack of effective controls and accountability.

Here the relevant provision is the wonderfully numbered section 007 of the Intelligence Services Act 1994.

(Ok, it is section 7 – but it amuses me.)

This provides for ministerial authorisations for people to break the law outside the British and Irish isles and then not have any criminal or civil liability for those acts in the United Kingdom.

It is a remarkable and little-known provision, and is worth a good look.

This is the so-called ‘licence to kill’.

And, of course, senior security officials with kindly faces and reassuring manners will tell us that the power would never be abused, and that those granting the authorisations will only do so on the basis of full information.

But as set out in yesterday’s Guardian, there has been a problem.

This was spotted by the fine organisation Reprieve, hidden away on page 59 of a dense 168 page report, in two paragraphs 9.39 and 9.40 (emphasis added):

‘9.39 We reviewed a section 7 submission relating to a high-risk SIS [Secret Intelligence Service] agent case overseas. SIS identified a risk that the agent may be involved in serious criminality overseas. SIS did not encourage, condone or approve any such criminality on the part of their agent. In their submission, SIS set out that they had secured the agent’s cooperation on terms of full transparency about the activities in which the agent was involved. It included some clear ‘red lines’, setting out conduct that was not authorised and would result in the termination of SIS’s relationship with the agent.

‘9.40 On renewal, six months after the original submission, SIS set out a number of indicators that the agent may have been involved in, or have contemplated, the serious criminality referenced above. We concluded that, on the basis of this new information, SIS’s ‘red lines’ had most likely been breached, but the renewal submission failed to make this clear. Whilst the submission referred to SIS’s ‘red lines’ provided information about criminality that may have occurred and noted an increased risk in the case, it did not make expressly clear that SIS’s ‘red lines’ had probably been crossed. We concluded that the renewal did not provide a comprehensive overview of available information which we believe would have provided the Secretary of State with a fuller and more balanced picture. SIS immediately responded to these concerns by updating the FCO.’

Or, as the Guardian rightly put it:

‘MI6 failed to make clear to the foreign secretary that a “high risk agent” operating overseas had probably engaged in “serious criminality” until it was pointed out by an independent regulator last year.’

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This means that there is very recent evidence that the United Kingdom security services do not provide appropriate information to those making authorisations in respect of criminal activity.

If this is happening with section 7 authorisations for foreign law-breaking, there is no reason to believe this will not also happen under the current bill providing for authorisations for domestic law-breaking.

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The United Kingdom government has recently put forward legislative proposals for limiting torture and war crimes prosecutions, authorising criminal conduct for agents of the security forces, and even for powers to break the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

There has never been a government that has put so much legislative effort into making it possible to break laws rather than into making laws.

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Remembering David Cornwell – John le Carré – who would not be surprised at any of this.

*****

This law and policy blog provides a daily post commenting on and contextualising a topical law and policy matter – each post is published at about 9.30am UK time.

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The shoddy legal direction of Gavin Williamson to Greenwich Council

15th December 2020

Amidst the flurry of government regulations closing down various things during the current pandemic comes this very different legal instrument from Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Education.

Instead of ordering a thing to close, the Secretary of State is ordering things to stay open.

It is an extraordinary letter, and it is worth examining carefully.

(As a preliminary point, however, please note I am not an education law specialist and so there may be sector-specific legal aspects of this of which I am unaware – the examination in this post is on general legal principles and based on my experience as a former government lawyer and as a public lawyer generally.)

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First, let us look at the power on which the Secretary of State relies upon.

It would seem there is no general legal power for the Secretary of State to order that any school remain open (or close), and so the letter relies on a specific provision in the Coronavirus Act 2020.

(If there were such a general legal power to issue such a direction, then presumably the Secretary of State would rely upon that power instead of the Coronavirus Act 2020.)

The relevant section of the Act is section 38.

The relevant part of that section is section 38(1)(a) which provides for a power to enable the Secretary of State to give directions requiring the ‘provision, or continuing provision, of education, training and childcare’.

That provision in turn refers to a paragraph in a schedule to the Act.

(This is not a ‘paragraph’ as such – it is a wordy provision which goes on for three pages, like something from a W. G. Sebald book.)

The paragraph sets out in detail the requirements for a ‘temporary continuity direction’ under section 38 – like a checklist.

For example, the Secretary of State must have regard to medical advice (paragraph 1(3)(a) and the direction must be necessary and proportionate (paragraph 1(3)(b).

The direction can require the recipient to take ‘reasonable steps in general terms’ (paragraph 1(4)(a)) and require a relevant institution to stay open or to re-open (paragraph 1(4)(b).

There is also a catch-all power that the Secretary of State may make any other connected provisions which he or she ‘considers appropriate’ (paragraph 1(4)(i)).

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What is the duty of the recipient of such a direction?

The Act provides that it is ‘the duty of a responsible body or relevant institution to which a temporary continuity direction…to comply with the direction’.

How is this duty to be enforced?

If the recipient does not comply with a direction, the government can make an application to the courts for an injunction.

(Both the above are in paragraph 1(6) of the schedule.)

This would, of course, be an unusual injunction – most injunctions prohibit a person from doing a thing, while this will be a rarer ‘mandatory’ injunction requiring a person to do a thing.

A failure to comply with an injunction is, at law, a serious matter and can be a contempt of court, with (presumably) sanctions such as imprisonment and unlimited fines.

A breach of a mandatory injunction may also result in a court directing that the required act be completed by another person at the expense of the disobedient party (CPR 70.2A).

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This looks like a wide and arbitrary power for the Secretary of State to give directions, with serious sanctions for a breach of a direction.

But if you look carefully there are explicit statutory requirements for the Secretary of State to be reasonable and to use this power only where necessary and proportionate.

These requirements are also imposed by the general law.

These will be quite high hurdles for the Secretary of State to jump.

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Going back to the letter, you will see that in paragraph 2 of the letter the Secretary of State asserts that he ‘considers [the direction] to be reasonable’ – but there is almost no reasoning other than a general reference to a general interest (‘of securing that schools…allow pupils to attend school full time’ ) and a general reference to the Secretary of State’s guidance (but with no specific guidance quoted).

There is also no local data.

Any court would expect to see far more reasoning than this before enforcing such a direction with a mandatory order.

For example, can the education of the pupils not be done remotely?

Has proper regard been made to local conditions?

Is it proportionate and necessary to mandate a school to remain open with only days left in the school term?

Is it fair and equitable (a test of most injunctions) to insist a state school remain open when many private schools remain closed?

These are not ‘gotcha’ questions, but points which one knows a court will ask before granting an injunction – and so should be anticipated and covered in a letter threatening an injunction.

But there is nothing in this letter to meet these obvious and foreseeable questions that would need to be answered in court.

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This direction then, even if it is the right thing for the Secretary of State to order, is not a well-drafted piece of legal work.

If i were still a government lawyer I would have been embarrassed to have prepared this for a minister.

It is not enough to assert that a thing is reasonable, necessary or proportionate – these statutory requirements for a direction also need to be shown.

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The recipient of this letter – Greenwich Council – has already published an initial response.

Their initial response is as detailed as the Secretary of State’s letter is not.

“Yesterday we asked all schools in the Royal Borough of Greenwich to move to online learning for most pupils, but keep premises open for the children of key workers, vulnerable children and those with special educational needs. 

‘Other boroughs have asked schools to take similar measures, and the Mayor of London has also called for all secondary schools to close, with an extra week off in January to enable testing.  

‘Our request was based on information from Public Health England and supported by the Council’s Public Health team. In the Royal Borough of Greenwich, we currently have the highest rates of COVID-19 since March, with numbers doubling every four days. Our seven-day infection rate for the borough is now 59% higher than at the same point last week. 

‘Infection rates are particularly high amongst young people, with 817 children of school age testing positive for COVID-19. 4,262 children and 362 staff are self-isolating – that’s an increase of 640 people since Friday. In many cases, other members of the child’s household have also tested positive, impacting entire families. 

‘Schools across the borough have now organised online learning from tomorrow, whilst others are opening their premises to all pupils. This evening we received a legal direction from the Government to withdraw our request to schools. We are in the process of seeking legal advice and will respond to the Government in the morning.  

‘We have alerted schools, and will speak to them tomorrow. But given we received this notification just before 5pm, it was impossible to ask schools to change any of the arrangements they have in place for Tuesday.’

The person(s) who drafted that response have done a good job: they are showing how the closure is reasonable, necessary and proportionate.

The response is based on local data and shows that reasonable alternative arrangements have been made.

The response also shows the council is in a better position to asses the situation than the Secretary of State.

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On the basis of information in the Greenwich Council response, the government would be hard-pressed to obtain an injunction in support of their direction.

None of the above is to say that the government’s ultimate position is weak – a better prepared direction, based on local data, and with proper and detailed reasoning, may have been – or still be – possible.

But such a direction letter was not sent, and this shoddy one was sent instead.

The Secretary of State may issue a better direction – or government lawyers may turn up to court with a better application for an injunction.

The government is even threatening to go to court ‘without notice’ so that the council may be subjected to an injunction without any say in court, which would be inappropriate given the council have set out already that it believes it is acting reasonably.

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Ministerial directions are powerful legal instruments, but they should always be used with care.

When I was young I often had reports sent from school averring that I could do better.

But here we have what purports to be a formal government direction sent to keep schools open where one could say of the Secretary of State that they could do better.

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POSTSCRIPT

Sadly – at least for the legal commentary (at least) the council has decided not to contest the direction in court.

The council, of course, is entitled to take such a decision.

But its decision to comply with the direction does not take away anything from the critique above.

*****

This law and policy blog provides a daily post commenting on and contextualising a topical law and policy matter – each post is published at about 9.30am UK time.

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European Union law and the United Kingdom – an obituary

14th December 2020

Over at Prospect magazine my column for the Christmas/New Year special edition was an obituary – for European Union law in the United Kingdom.

Please go over there to have a read – and I just want to develop and add some points here.

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European Union law is radically different from the common law of England and Wales (I am not qualified to speak of the laws of Scotland and Northern Ireland, though similar points may be valid).

By ‘radical’ I mean (literally) that it went to the root of things.

The effect of European Union law was not only to benefit particular policy areas (for example, employment and the environment and so on) – though there is no doubt that whole ranges of policy are better off for the influence of European Union law.

The impact of European Union was also to how one thought about law – and about policy and politics.

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First, the law of the European Union is often ‘purposive’ – in which to understand any legal instrument (a directive or a regulation or a legally binding decision) one often has to go through pages of recitals, other materials, and even back to the ultimate bases of the the provision in the European Union treaties.

This, of course, can be an interesting – sometimes exciting – intellectual exercise but it really does not serve the purpose of legal certainty.

And often it was difficult to say with confidence what the ultimate tribunals of European Union law (the court of first instance and the court of justice) would say the law would be in any given situation.

And unlike courts in common law jurisdictions, the judgments of European Union law judges are often not reasoned but are instead declarative, even assertive.

As a general rule of thumb: a European Union legal instrument is as helpful and detailed as European Union court judgment is not.

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Second, the public law of the European Union has a conceptual unity that the public law of England and Wales does not – or at least did not before the United Kingdom’s membership of the union and its predecessor European communities.

(Public law is the term for the law that regulates public bodies and those exercising public functions and provides for what rights can be enforced against them.)

In England and Wales we, in many respects, did not even have anything one could even call ‘public law’ until the 1960s.

There was instead a mix of actions and proceedings one could take against the crown, against statutory corporations, against courts, and against those holding various public offices.

European Union public law instead provided for a general approach to emanations of the state – and of the rights one could enforce against them.

The European Union legal concept of ‘proportionality’ (that is that a public body should only interfere with the rights of others to the extent necessary to serve a legitimate purpose) was also a welcome change to the brutal and permissive approach of our administrative law – which can be fairly described as allowing public bodies to get away with what they can, unless it is irrational.

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Third, the European Union and its predecessor organisations are creatures of law as much as of policy and politics.

And although one should never underestimate the push and shove of policy and politics, when dealing with the European Union one always should have regard to law.

This was a recurring mistake for United Kingdom politicians.

For example, before the 2016 referendum there was an attempt by then prime minister David Cameron to force through a ‘deal’.

But as this blog has previously explained, the Cameron team wrongly thought it would just be a matter of bombast and confrontation – that the United Kingdom just needed to want something and to demand it loudly.

There were, however, real limits to what the European Union could agree to, at least without treaty changes.

And the same problem happened again and again during the exit negotiations and now the negotiations for the future relationship.

The European Union takes process and legal texts seriously, and the United Kingdom under Theresa May and Boris Johnson did not.

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You will note that this post – and the Prospect column – are not unmixed celebrations of European Union law.

Instead, I have attempted a critical appraisal (though one set out simply and I hope accessibly).

And this is partly because my own ultimate view on Brexit is ambivalent.

In the early 1990s I believed that it would have been better for the United Kingdom to have left the European Union at the time of Maastricht treaty.

It seemed to me then that the trajectory of the European Union towards wider competencies (foreign policy and justice and home affairs) and currency union would not end well in respect of the United Kingdom.

(And it did not.)

But by around 2000 I thought any extraction of the United Kingdom from the European Union would not be worth the time and effort to deal with decades of entwined law and policy.

(And it has not been.)

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The break of the law of the jurisdictions of the United Kingdom from the law of the European Union is going to be messy.

It is not going to be a neat clean break.

And the laws of the United Kingdom are not – thankfully – going to revert back to 1973.

The direct effect and application of European Union law in the United Kingdom may be over – and that is why an obituary is appropriate.

 Its influence, however, will continue for decades.

The United Kingdom may have ‘taken back control’ of its laws – but Brexit will certainly not free domestic law from the impact of the law of the European Union.

*****

This law and policy blog provides a daily post commenting on and contextualising a topical law and policy matter – each post is published at about 9.30am UK time.

Each post takes time, effort, and opportunity cost.

If you value the free-to-read and independent legal and policy commentary both at this blog and at my Twitter account please do support through the Paypal box above.

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Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated.

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Sovereignty and ‘Sovereignty!’

11th December 2020

One feature of contemporary politics in both the United Kingdom and United States is the way descriptive words and phrases have become slogans with a very different meaning.

This blog has already described the unhappy juxtaposition between ‘Law and Order!’ and law and order – and we now have a populist president in the United States using his power to pardon so as to place people above and beyond the law, while the populist government of the United Kingdom sought recently to expressly legislate that it could break the law.

And a similar distinction can be made about sovereignty and ‘Sovereignty!’.

In the United Kingdom it would seem that one explanation of the ongoing failure for a trade agreement to be finalised with the European Union is because of this ‘s’ word.

Here, as examples, are some recent tweets from the United Kingdom’s head negotiator.

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So what does this ‘s’ word mean?

From a legal perspective, sovereignty is really about two things.

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First, sovereignty is about the ultimate source of political power in any given polity.

In the United Kingdom, as its name suggests, the ultimate source of political power is the crown.

Some would say is not correct to even speak of the ‘sovereignty of parliament’ – the power of parliament to make or unmake any law always depends on a bill receiving royal assent.

Only with the crown’s approval does a law then have super-duper magical power.

Resolutions and motions of either or both houses of parliament may bind parliament but they do not have the same effect outside as legislation.

That is why I and others tend to write of ‘supremacy’ of parliament, not sovereignty.

The crown also is the source of political power elsewhere in the United Kingdom constitution.

It is the source of power – somewhat obviously – in respect of the so-called ‘royal prerogative’ – where the executive gets to do things which have legal effect without any legislative basis.

It is the source of power with ‘royal charters’, instruments which can have legal effects similar to legislation.

And the crown is the ultimate source of power for the judiciary, at least for the high court of England and Wales.

(This means that in constitutional terms, the two Miller cases on prime ministerial power can be characterised as being about the crown in the courts adjudicating on the powers of the crown as exercised by ministers so as to circumvent the crown in parliament.)

This form of sovereignty is quite unaffected by anything Boris Johnson and David Frost may or may not agree to with the European Union.

Just as parliament was always able to repeal the European Communities Act 1972, parliament will be able to make or unmake any law which flows from the post-Brexit relationship agreement, and that will be respected by the courts.

So this cannot be the meaning of sovereignty that Johnson and Frost have in mind.

Nothing in any post-Brexit trade agreement is relevant to this meaning of sovereignty at all.

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The second legal meaning of sovereignty is not so much about the source of power but about legal capacity.

A sovereign thing can do and not do as it wishes.

And one thing a sovereign thing can do is to enter agreements with other sovereign things.

This is where Johnson and Frost appear to misunderstand the ‘s’ word.

For them, ‘Sovereignty!’ means that the United Kingdom cannot and should not enter into and be bound by any international agreements.

But one test of sovereignty is that a thing is capable of entering into international agreements – the cart is not before the horse.

In general terms, being able to accept obligations is the very point of sovereignty: that a nation state can enter into a treaty means that it is a sovereign state.

(For more on the fascinating history of sovereignty and treaties, see here.)

This is why, for example, Canada, Australia and New Zealand insisted on being separate signatories to the surrender instrument of Japan, and to not allow the United Kingdom to sign on behalf of the then empire.

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Sovereignty thereby does not mean that the United Kingdom cannot and should not enter into international agreements.

Sovereignty means that the United Kingdom can do so.

And any international agreement means accepting obligations that restrict autonomy, for that is the nature of an obligation.

Under the North Atlantic treaty, for example, the United Kingdom has an obligation to go to war even if it not attacked itself. 

Article 5 of that treaty provides:

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

Some would say that Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty is a greater interference with the ‘s’ word of the United Kingdom than anything which has come from the European Union.

And it is difficult to reconcile many statements of government-supporting politicians on sovereignty in respect of the European Union with their continued support for the United Kingdom being part of NATO.

Similar points can also be made for the United Kingdom’s obligations under the United Nations charter and indeed under any other international treaties.

Trade-offs on autonomy are a feature and not a bug of being a sovereign state.

An analogy is with being able to marry: when a person reaches their majority they can enter into a marriage contract should they so wish, but being in their majority does not compel them to either marry or not marry, and if they marry they can always divorce.

The Johnson-Frost approach to the ‘s’ word is confused.

They seem to think sovereignty means that the United Kingdom cannot and should not enter into international agreements, whereas sovereignty actually means that the United Kingdom can do so should it want to do so.

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An indication of the United Kingdom government’s incorrect understanding of sovereignty was set out in a white paper earlier in the Brexit process:

“The sovereignty of Parliament is a fundamental principle of the UK constitution. Whilst Parliament has remained sovereign throughout our membership of the EU, it has not always felt like that.”

This is about “feelings” – not law or policy.

Brexit as therapy – so as to make the United Kingdom “feel” it is a sovereign state.

And this is the fundamental misconception of those who assert ‘Sovereignty!’ just to make themselves feel better.

Sovereignty exists anyway.

Sovereignty does not care about your feelings.

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The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 has been a failure – but the decision for an early general election should not be in the hands of the prime minister

7th December 2020

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 is an odd and unloved piece of legislation.

And it has not been a successful piece of legislation – in that the parliament elected in 2015, which should have lasted until 2020, did not run its full course, and neither did the parliament after that.

Indeed, instead of no general elections between 2015 and 2020, we had two – in 2017 and 2019 – instead.

No general election held since the Act was passed has resulted (so far) in a parliament of a fixed term.

In this key sense, the Act has been a failure.

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But.

Is it an entirely useless piece of legislation?

No, as there is one important thing the statute gets right.

Before 2011 the decision for a parliament to dissolve and for there to a fresh general election was, in effect, in the hands of the prime minister – subject to a statutory long-stop of five years.

Nominally the source of this power was the the royal prerogative, for the crown had the ability to dissolve one parliament and to then issue a proclamation for a general election.

But in practice, it was ‘on the advice of’ the prime minister, and it was a powerful political weapon.

The 2011 Act took this power out of the hands of the prime minister.

Now, again subject to a five year long-stop, there cannot be an ‘early’ general election just at the whim of a prime minister.

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So far, so welcome.

But.

Where the statute goes wrong is in respect of how there can still be an ‘early’ general election.

On the face of the Act there are two ways, both of which are problematic.

The first is that there is a ‘super majority’ of MPs – and this is how the then prime minister Theresa May got her general election in 2017.

The second is if an elaborate scheme of two successive ‘confidence’ motions – one of ‘no confidence’ and, if there is not then a ‘confidence’ motion soon after passed by MPs, there is a general election.

This second route has not been used, not least as it is not clear what should happen in the period between the two confidence motions.

And in any case, it does not really matter what the Act provides on the face of it, for parliament can just pass a ‘notwithstanding’ statute for there to be an early general election anyway.

This does not need a ‘super majority’ or elaborate succession of confidence motions.

It just needs a bare majority in the house of commons and a lack of opposition in the house of lords (and the house of lords will tend not to deny the commons its way on questions of appeals to the electorate).

And this is how the current prime minister got his general election a year ago.

The Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019 was passed in a matter of days.

It was as if the early election provisions in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 made almost no real difference at all.

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There is now a review of the 2011 Act.

The government has published a draft bill repealing the Act and seeking to revive the royal prerogative of dissolution.

Clever constitutional lawyers will argue about (a) whether the prerogative was abolished with the 2011 Act and (b) whether it can be revived.

(My own view only goes so far as (a) the 2011 Act did not expressly abolish the prerogative power and (b) a new statute can purport to say that the 2011 Act had no effect on that prerogative power – but I do not know which way a court would go if the point was ever litigated.)

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Repealing the Act outright would, in my opinion, be a mistake.

Instead, the two mechanisms for an early general election should be replaced by the need for a majority of MPs (including vacant seats) to pass a motion for an early general election.

Given that, as in 2019, the early election mechanisms in the 2011 Act can be side-stepped anyway, this would be an affirmation of what the real practical position.

A prime minister unable to command a majority in the Commons should not be able to use the threat of an early general election against opponents and their own party.

It should be a matter for the elected representatives themselves to make that significant decision.

The 2011 Act may be odd and unloved and, in practice, not that successful.

But it did get one thing right.

Early general elections should be possible, but the decision should not be in the hands of the prime minister of the day.

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The myths of ‘arrogant judicial power’ and ‘human rights gone mad’ and the Dolan judgment

5th December 2020

A ‘myth’ is often a word we use to describe a thing we disagree with.

But sometimes the word has its uses.

Some things are believed in as true without evidence or despite the evidence.

Take the example the prevalence in modern politics of two views about the relationship between the courts and politics.

The first view is that there is an over-reaching judiciary: that judges are often deciding matters of policy and other political questions against the government and parliament.

The second view is that the law of human rights has ‘gone too far’ and beyond the limits of common sense.

And now take the Dolan case on the legality of the coronavirus lockdown regulations, which this blog considered yesterday.

This was a case where the government had, in effect, legislated by decree – without any prior parliamentary scrutiny and approval – so as to remove fundamental rights of movement, of assembly, of public worship, of being able to trade lawfully and so on.

These widest possible blanket prohibitions one could imagine, all done with no real consideration of the proportionality of each measure and with no accountability.

Law and policy as sledgehammer.

If there was ever a case where there should be anxious scrutiny of the use of delegated legislation this was it.

The courts would surely surely step in, where the legislature had been sidelined.

After all, we have an over-reaching judiciary and human rights law is powerful.

Of course not.

Both the court of appeal and the court of first instance could not have sided more with the executive if they had wanted to do so.

Each fundamental right was a mere tick box for the court to approve the interference by the state.

The reasons for this outcome are familiar to anyone with a detailed interest in public law.

Our courts are invariably deferent to the executive on matters of policy.

The few cases where the government is defeated often turn on their own extraordinary facts.

And human rights law in the United Kingdom is weak and usually impossible to rely on in any practical case.

Almost all the rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, for example, are ‘qualified rights’, which mean that it is not difficult for an executive to interfere with those rights when it says it is in the public interest to do so.

And so the most illiberal legal measures in peacetime could be imposed by the government without prior parliamentary scrutiny and approval, and the courts could not nod any harder at the government doing this.

(My own view, as I set out yesterday, is that even if the individual measures were warranted at a time of a public health emergency, the measures should have been done via Civil Contingencies Act, which provides for detailed legislative and judicial oversight, and not through the Public Health Act which meant no real legislative and judicial oversight at all.)

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There is a famous statement by a judge in a case during the second world war – a statement which every law student knows.

This is Lord Atkin in Liversidge v Anderson:

‘In this country, amid the clash of arms, the laws are not silent. They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace. It has always been one of the pillars of freedom, one of the principles of liberty for which on recent authority we are now fighting, that the judges are no respecters of persons and stand between the subject and any attempted encroachments on his liberty by the executive, alert to see that any coercive action is justified in law.’

But what most law students also forget is that this was said in a dissenting judgment: Lord Atkin was in a minority.

The depressing fact is that in England there is often almost little to nothing the courts can or will do against executive action, even when there is no prior parliamentary approval for the measures imposed.

Courts and judges are far better at finding reasons not to intervene than to do so.

If the Human Rights Act, for example, had a quarter of the power which its populist detractors accuse it of having, the Dolan case would not have been so one-sided.

Yes: it was a public health case, but that should make a court more anxious in its scrutiny of emergency legislation, not less.

To paraphrase Lord Atkin: amid a pandemic, the laws should not be silent.

Those who promote the views that there is an over-reaching judiciary and that the law of human rights has ‘gone too far’ do not care about this, of course.

For these cherished views are their myths, and so they will stick with them.

But these views are, in fact, fantasies.

We do not have an over-reaching judiciary and the law of human rights has not ‘gone too far’ – and the Dolan case shows this.

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Freedoms vs Permissions – a liberal look at the Court of Appeal judgment on the coronavirus regulations

4th December 2020

A few days ago the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in the Dolan case.

This was an application for judicial review of the regulations restricting freedom of movement and other fundamental rights which were introduced in England earlier this year at the beginning of the pandemic.

The challenge was ultimately not successful, as the leading legal blogger Matthew Scott explains in this thread.

There are a couple of things in the judgment that are interesting from a liberal perspective.

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First, it was the approach of the court to the exercise of a freedom.

The classic model of freedom in a common law jurisdiction (such as England) is, of course, that one is free to do what one wishes – unless there is a specific prohibition.

This is the sort of liberty emphasised by those who trumpet freedom under the common law.

The court, however, seemed quite relaxed at this position being inverted under the regulations – that the starting point is that everyone is prohibited from doing what they want in respect of freedom of movement and assembly, unless there was a permission.

For the court there was nothing wrong with a general bans as long as there were exceptions where a person can satisfy the police and the courts that you had a ‘reasonable excuse’.

Here is the court’s reasoning on freedom of movement.

And then on freedom of assembly.

To make this observation is not necessarily to criticise the position of the court but instead to draw attention at how easily the court accepted the reversal of the classic model of freedom in the common law system.

The phrase ‘reasonable excuse’ has a nice nod-along quality that will make many people think ‘what could possibly be wrong with that?’.

Nonetheless it hands the decision on whether what you are doing is permissible to an official (or the court), and it will be they and not the individual who is the arbitrator of whether an excuse is reasonable or not.

And to take the position to an extreme: imagine a system where everything was prohibited unless an official (or the court) was satisfied you had a reasonable excuse.

That a person was never free to do anything, only to have the reasonable permissions of the authority.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

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In contrast with the ease with which the court accepted restrictions on the autonomy of the individual, the judges saw no need to exercise judicial control on the government’s own freedom of choice.

Back in March 2020 the government had a choice on how to regulate so as to restrict the fundamental freedoms of individuals.

On one hand, it could use the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 – a dedicated statute for dealing with emergencies with an exacting scheme providing for legislative and judicial supervision.

Or it could blow off the dust of the Public Health Act 1984, where it could impose wide prohibitions without real legislative control, where criminal sanctions and restrictions can be casually made and revoked without there being any prior votes in parliament and only the academic prospect of judicial review.

The government, of course, chose the latter.

And the court of appeal, that held that individuals should be banned for things unless they have reasonable excuses, afforded the government a complete free choice of which statute to use.

At paragraph 77 of the judgment:

“[The applicant] pointed to various differences in the procedure and timetable for the laying of regulations under the two different Acts: see, for example, section 27 of the 2004 Act, which deals with Parliamentary scrutiny of emergency regulations made under that Act. We do not consider that this detracts from the fundamental point that the Secretary of State may well have had a choice of options and could have acted under the 2004 Act. It does not follow that he was required to do so; nor that he is somehow prevented from using the powers which Parliament has conferred upon him in the 1984 Act, as amended.”

The government thereby gets the benefit of a ‘fundamental’ right to choose, even if citizens do not.

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None of the above means that the individuals should not comply with the coronavirus regulations – and it is emphatically correct that in a public health emergency of a pandemic, there should be be restrictions on the rights of individuals.

This post draws attention to how the court of appeal has gone about dealing with this challenge to the regulations.

Instead of anxious scrutiny of whether the broad prohibitions went further than necessary, the court of appeal seemed too ready to accept that the government can side-step at will a scheme designed to ensure proper legislative and judicial scrutiny of highly restrictive legislation.

A better decision of the court of appeal would have been to say that there was a presumption that in an emergency the government uses the legislation that provides more legislative and judicial scrutiny – unless it has (ahem) a reasonable excuse not to do so.

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Brexit makes no legal difference to the United Kingdom being able to authorise the new coronavirus vaccine

3rd December 2020

For the launch of any vaccine, credibility is essential.

And so senior government ministers and other politicians should not be lying about the regulatory aspects of the new vaccine so to score points for Brexit.

This is the Leader of the House of Commons, the cabinet minister responsible for the government’s legislative programme.

https://twitter.com/Jacob_Rees_Mogg/status/1334068994345754625

This is a health minister.

And this is a government-supporting backbencher.

You will see these statements are not about Brexit allowing the United Kingdom to authorise the new vaccine more quickly as a matter of policy.

Each statement directly and expressly attributes the speed of the authorisation to a change in the law made possible by Brexit.

This, however, is false.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency confirmed yesterday it was acting under EU law when it it made the authorisation.

Even the Prime Minister did not endorse the claim that Brexit made any legal difference.

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The fact is that Brexit made no legal difference to the authorisation of the new vaccine.

Such an authorisation was (and is) possible under European Union law.

The relevant provision is Article 5(2) of the Directive 2001/83/EC.

Here is the proof in back and white.

European Union Directives do not necessarily need to be implemented to have legal effect, but for completeness the implementing domestic legislation for Article 5(2) is Regulation 174 of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012.

Until 31 December 2020 under the Brexit transition arrangements, Article 5(2) has legal effect in the United Kingdom – and even after 1 January 2020 Regulation 174 would still be part of domestic law.

Brexit therefore made no legal difference.

So what is the recent amendment mentioned by the politicians?

That appears to be a reference to the The Human Medicines (Coronavirus and Influenza) (Amendment) Regulations 2020.

But those regulations do not amend or directly affect Regulation 174 – you will see they skip straight over it and add supplementary provisions.

The recent amendment is thereby irrelevant to the legal ability of the United Kingdom to authorise the vaccine.

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The cabinet minister responsible for the government’s legislative programme and health ministers would know that Brexit made no legal difference to the United Kingdom’s ability to authorise the new vaccine.

They would know the correct legal basis for authorisation of the new vaccine: that is their job and they would have been briefed.

But they chose to knowingly promote a falsehood instead, just to score a point for Brexit.

This was dangerously irresponsible, given that any false statements about the new vaccine may be exploited by anti-vaxxers.

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Why the phrase ‘to enshrine in law’ is a fraudulent device

25th November 2020

Every so often the demand is made by a politician or someone in the media that a thing be ‘enshrined in law’.

The impression that they wish to promote is of absolute seriousness – that the thing will somehow be set out in law in a way that will ensure its preservation and enduring respect.

A super-duper way of using law.

But this is an untrue and misleading impression.

In the constitution of the United Kingdom, by reason of the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy, there is not a thing that can be ‘enshrined’ in law.

A thing set out in an Act of Parliament can be repealed and amended by another Act of Parliament.

Or a way can be found of frustrating or circumventing the statutory provision.

And often there is not even a need to repeal or amend, or to frustrate or circumvent, because there is no real enforcement mechanism for the enshrined thing.

The notion that a thing can be ‘enshrined in law’ is a fraud.

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To take a topical example, the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015 provides for a statutory target of 0.7% of gross national income is sent on overseas aid.

Section 1(1) provides:

“It is the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that the target for official development assistance (referred to in this Act as “ODA”) to amount to 0.7% of gross national income (in this Act referred to as “the 0.7% target”) is met by the United Kingdom in the year 2015 and each subsequent calendar year.”

Looks impressive.

But.

But what section 1 provides is weak even on the face of the Act, as section 2(3) provides wide exceptions:

“(a) economic circumstances and, in particular, any substantial change in gross national income;

(b) fiscal circumstances and, in particular, the likely impact of meeting the target on taxation, public spending and public borrowing;

(c) circumstances arising outside the United Kingdom.”

And if an exception is invoked, the consequence of not meeting the target is that the government must try to meet the target next year, and so on.

Yet even these exceptions do not matter…

…as section 3 explicitly robs the entire duty of any legal usefulness whatsoever:

“(1) The only means of securing accountability in relation to the duty in section 1 is that established by the provision in section 2 for the laying of a statement before Parliament.

(2) Accordingly, the fact that the duty in section 1 has not been, or will or may not be, complied with does not affect the lawfulness of anything done, or omitted to be done, by any person.”

The duty supposedly ‘enshrined in law’ expressly has no legal effect.

‘Enshrined not in law’ would be more accurate. 

Yet politician after politician, and activist after activist, will parrot the line that the 0.7% spending commitment is ‘enshrined in law’ as if that actually means something in any legal sense.

(A similar thing happened with the various attempts to ‘enshrine’ in law the date of the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union.)

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A possible defence of the term ‘enshrine in law’ may be that it is a mere turn-of-phrase – verbal filler for those in politics and the media.

But this defence does not wash.

The term is invariably used to raise false expectations as to whether a thing will have enhanced legal protection – and as such it is a fraudulent device, as it will not.

And it leads to statutes being enacted, such as the the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015 that are nothing other than glorified press releases – and this is a misuse, even an abuse, of law.

‘To enshrine in law’ is a phrase which usually means the law is to be used for a non-legal purpose so as to mislead voters and readers (or listeners or viewers, depending on the medium).

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By reason of the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy, it is impossible to ‘enshrine’ anything in law in any meaningful way.

Entrenchment is not available.

And by reason of parliamentary drafting, it will often be that the supposedly enshrined thing has no legal consequence.

There should therefore be a general prohibition on politicians and those in the media misleading others with the fraudulent device of saying a thing can be ‘enshrined’ in law…

…if there was only some way of entrenching such a ban.

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