Month: May 2019

Controlling bank misconduct: how to improve consumer protection?  

Posted on by lee.mcconnell

By Dr Holly Powley, Lecturer in Law and Prof Keith Stanton, Emeritus Professor of Law (University of Bristol Law School).

Background

In April the Financial Conduct Authority issued a Feedback Statement (FS19/2) on its Discussion Paper (DP18 /5) ‘A duty of care and potential alternative approaches’ affecting the financial services industry. The Feedback Statement reports on the outcomes of the consultation and summarises the views of those who responded to the consultation. This is a topic that has been on the regulatory agenda for several years, originally initiated by the Financial Services Consumer Panel (FSCP), but also considered by the Law Commission and the House of Lords Select Committee on Financial Exclusion, with varying degrees of support. The authors have assessed these reform proposals in an earlier blog post. Whilst it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions from this round of discussions as to the FCA’s future policy in this area, it does indicate how the FCA’s work on this topic is developing. (more…)

Some thoughts on the frustrations of carrying out Brexit-related research (in the UK)

Posted on by lee.mcconnell

By Dr Pedro Telles, Senior Lecturer in Law (Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Swansea University) and Dr Albert Sanchez-Graells, Reader in Economic Law (University of Bristol Law School).

“Britain in the Crazed Brexit Vortex“

Brexit, its research and its teaching are increasingly becoming a field of study on their own—see eg the illuminating contributions to the special issue edited by C Wallace & T Hervey on ‘Brexit and the Law School’ (2019) 53(2) Law Teacher 133-229, some of which build on the earlier series of SLS ‘Brexit and the Law School’ Seminars, one of which Albert had the pleasure to host at the University of Bristol Law School in July 2017. This seems rather natural, as it is hard to overstate the impact that Brexit is having on the work of academics active in all areas, but particularly for public and EU law scholars. In this post, we offer some personal reflections on the frustrations of carrying out Brexit-related research, some of which are related to Brexit and its unforeseeability, while others are derived from more general constraints on the ways legal research is published and assessed.

Researching a moving target …

The first issue that concerns us is the need to try to foresee what is likely to happen along the Brexit process (itself unknown and highly volatile), which puts legal scholars in a difficult bind because this is clearly a politics-driven phenomenon that curbs almost every imaginable rule or precedent remotely applicable to a comparable situation. We are not sure that legal scholars are in the best position to offer policy forecasts but producing research that is of any use to policy-makers requires such an effort. (more…)

The Cost of ‘Justice’: Sexual Offence Complainants and Access to Personal Data

Posted on by lee.mcconnell

By Dr Yvette Russell, Senior Lecturer in Law and Feminist Theory (University of Bristol Law School)

Photo Credit: Flickr

Monday last week saw the announcement of a new national policy requiring criminal complainants to sign consent forms authorising detectives to access data in their mobile phones. Conveyed in a joint briefing by Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Nick Ephgrave and director of public prosecutions (DPP) Max Hill QC, the new policy is designed to ‘ensure all relevant lines of enquiry are followed’ and that any material that undermines the case for the prosecution or assists the case for the accused is detected and disclosed to the defence.  While the forms are not to be used solely for sexual offence complainants the use of the forms in these cases was a major focus of Monday’s briefing.  While the CPS noted that not all sexual offence complainants will be asked to divulge digital data it is likely, given that most sex crimes occur between parties who are known to each other, that a high proportion of those complaining will be asked to sign a consent form and hand over their phones and the data therein.

Following the robust objections of many rape survivors’ advocacy groups to the new policy, the CPS and police late last week invited victims’ groups to discuss their concerns about the new consent form.  Over the weekend, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners took the unusual step of publicly objecting to the introduction of the consent form, labelling it a risk to public confidence in the criminal justice system. (more…)