University of Bristol Law School Blog
A window into the legal research carried out at the Law School
by Marilyn Howard, Honorary Research Associate with the University of Bristol Law School
This week the House of Commons considers amendments from the House of Lords to the Domestic Abuse Bill 2019-2021. One amendment which was debated in the Lords, but not accepted, would have required the new Domestic Abuse Commissioner to publish a report which investigates the impact of the Universal Credit single household payment on domestic abuse survivors, and to propose alternatives. (more…)
by Antonia Layard, Professor of Law, University of Bristol Law School
In Scotland, children and young people will have free bus travel in 2021. They join children and young people in London who also have free travel, seeing off an attempt to take the concession away through a feisty #don’tzapthezip campaign last year. Since 2008, older and disabled people have even greater concessions, able to catch a bus anywhere in England after 9.30am on weekdays as well as all day at weekends and on bank holidays, receiving subsidised travel as part of the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS).
By Ben Kassten, Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, Law School.
Against a backdrop of disproportionate morbidity and mortality from COVID-19, the need to prioritise and protect ethnic and religious minorities as part of the UK’s new vaccine programme has been the focus of recent media, public health and government attention. My question is who is considered a ‘priority’ and how can public health bodies engage productively and sensitively with ethnic and religious minorities. (more…)
by Devyani Prabhat, Professor, Law School, University of Bristol
The Supreme Court has refused permission for Shamima Begum, who left the UK as a 15-year-old British schoolgirl for Syria in 2015, to come back to the UK so that she can effectively challenge the removal of her citizenship (decision dated 26th February 2021; [2021] UKSC 7). Begum was found in a camp in Syria two years back. The Home Secretary removed her British citizenship soon thereafter, arguing that she has eligibility for Bangladeshi citizenship, and would not be left stateless without British citizenship. (more…)
Prof. Xinyu Wang (China University of Political Science and Law) and He Xiao (a law PhD student at the University of Bristol)
Since October 2020, a “Stop Period Shaming” campaign has been quietly taking place within universities in China. It all started in early 2020, during China’s fight against the COVID-19, with various socially sponsored donations of medical supplies and an extreme shortage of feminine period products. The female doctors and nurses, who made up more than half of the medical team that went to Wuhan, overcame their cycles’ fragility and fought like the male doctors. (more…)
Joanna McCunn, Lecturer, Law School, University of Bristol
Have you heard that it’s illegal to die in Parliament? Or to eat mince pies on Christmas Day? Are you a Welshman who’s been nervously avoiding Chester, and do you fret about committing treason by posting a letter with an upside-down stamp? Perhaps you look back with horror on those childhood crime sprees of ringing doorbells and running away…
by Sandra Duffy, Law School, University of Bristol
On December 1st, the High Court handed down its decision in the case of Bell and A v Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. This ruling concerned a judicial review of the practice of the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service in prescribing puberty-blocking hormonal treatments to children under 16 years of age. (more…)
by Oliver Quick, Co-Director, Centre for Health, Law and Society, University of Bristol Law School
Healthcare harm is a global public health problem. The World Health Organisation estimates that adverse events account for more deaths than either lung cancer, diabetes or road injuries, and that around 80% are avoidable. In low- and middle- income countries, poor quality healthcare accounts for 10-15% of deaths annually. Such statistics are striking if slightly simplistic in that unsafe care combines with pre-existing health conditions and diseases, and avoidability assessments are likely based on ideal, rather than real world, conditions. However, in England alone, the additional annual financial cost of providing further care to harmed patients would equate to employing over 2,000 salaried GPs and 3,500 hospital nurses, much needed given the high number of vacant positions in the NHS workforce. The annual cost of compensating and managing maternity negligence cases (£2.1 billion) now exceeds the amount spent on delivering babies (£1.9 billion.) Remarkably, there remains no coherent cross-government strategy and policy to address these spiralling costs.
(more…)
By the ‘Fair Shares’ Project Team: Emma Hitchings, Caroline Bryson, and Gillian Douglas
In more ‘normal times’, the start of each new year marks the arrival of media coverage of the ‘divorce season’. Newspapers publish feature articles reporting that the stresses of Christmas prompt many couples to decide that enough is enough, and to make a new year’s resolution to get out of their marriage. Family solicitors duly issue press releases to advertise their services to assist them, both with getting the divorce itself and with sorting out the financial, property and child arrangements that will need to be made to deal with life going forward. In reality, this New Year ‘spike’ in divorce applications may not be much more than an urban myth. The divorce statistics show that in the years from 2011 up to and including 2019, there have only been three years when the first quarter of the year – January to March – has recorded the highest number of petitions (applications for a divorce) filed across the year. Rather, there tends to be a consistent flow of petitions across the year.
By Prof Antonia Layard, Professor of Law (University of Bristol Law School)
[This article is a follow-up to an earlier one by the same author]
Seven months after the removal of Bristol’s statue of Edward Colston in June 2020, the Secretary of State for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is concerned. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph on January 18th, Robert Jenrick argued that “We will save Britain’s statues from the woke militants who want to censor our past”, claiming that “Latterly there has been an attempt to impose a single, often negative narrative which not so much recalls our national story, as seeks to erase part of it. This has been done at the hand of the flash mob, or by the decree of a ‘cultural committee’ of town hall militants and woke worthies”. (more…)