Shamima Begum case shows how little power courts have to check government national security decisions

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by Professor Devyani Prabhat, University of Bristol Law School

The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), a court that specialises in national security cases, has upheld the home secretary’s decision to cancel Shamima Begum’s citizenship. The 23-year-old was deprived of her citizenship in 2019, four years after leaving the UK aged 15 to join Islamic State in Syria. The court found “credible suspicion” that Begum had been trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation, as her lawyers had argued. It also found that there were “arguable breaches of duty” by state authorities in having allowed her to make the journey to Syria. (more…)

Is Royal Mail Delivering the Wrong Messages on Industrial Relations?

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by Professor Charlotte Villiers and Yefan Xu

The recent hearings of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Parliamentary Committee, taking oral evidence relating to Royal Mail on 17 January 2023, provide a case study of confrontational industrial relations brought about by corporate governance failure. A breakdown in trust between the boardroom and the company’s workforce is highlighted in the protracted and bitter industrial dispute involving strikes and stalemate in the negotiations around proposals to transform the business away from a universal service obligation of six days per week parcels and letters delivery and into ‘a more efficient parcels-focused operation’. Infrastructural changes have included increased automation and the introduction of ‘superhubs’ for parcels processing. The boardroom also seeks detrimental changes to the workers’ terms and conditions and working practices (redundancies, more flexible working, later shift times, some Sunday working) on the grounds that such changes will enable the company to compete in a ‘hyper-competitive market’ (Panel 1 Oral Evidence Transcript, and Panel 2 Oral Evidence Transcript). (more…)

Reforming Banking Culture: So near or so far?

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on the by Dr Eleanore Hickman, University of Bristol Law School

The Senior Manager and Certification Regime (SMCR) is considered to be a response to the excessive risk taking and poor corporate culture from which the financial crisis and the LIBOR scandal emerged. At that time, accountability was in short supply and the SMCR sought to address this. In my recent paper I consider whether the SMCR is fit for this purpose and conclude that, although it is in principle, in practice it is falling short. The Government have pledged to begin to review its reform in the first quarter of 2023. (more…)

What if the CCRC had unlimited funding? A submission to the Law Commission’s review of the appeals system

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by Michael Naughton, Reader in Sociology and Law, University of Bristol Law School and School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS)

Introduction

A UK Government and Parliament Petition emerged recently calling for the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to be given more funding. The case made by the petitioners was as follows:

‘We want the Government to increase funding for the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), so they have more resources, funding and manpower to review all possible miscarriages of justice in the criminal courts. We believe that the CCRC is under resourced, and that the Government should increase its funding to ensure it is able to identify any miscarriages of justice in the criminal courts. By increasing its funding, the Government can help ensure that people who have been a victim of a miscarriage of justice receive the support, and justice, they deserve.’

The Petition, which echoes regular and longstanding calls for the CCRC to have more funding (see here, here, and here), comes at an important moment in the struggle for justice for alleged innocent victims of wrongful convictions. (more…)

The Mental Health (Wales) Measure 2010: Is it a good legislative model for protecting positive rights to mental health?

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By Afiya France, PhD Student, The Law School, University of Bristol

The UK government is forging through on its declared commitment to modernise the 1983  Mental Health Act (MHA) for the 21st century. This key piece of legislation sets out a legal framework for the detention and compulsory treatment of people with a mental health disorder.  The Draft Mental Health Bill 2022  was published in June 2022, and pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Select Committee is ongoing. This Draft Bill follows the government’s white paper, Reforming the Mental Health Act which incorporated the majority of the recommendations of an Independent Review . (more…)

Litigants In Person and Financial Remedies on Divorce

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by the ‘Fair Shares’ Project Team: Emma Hitchings, Caroline Bryson, Gillian Douglas, Susan Purdon and Jenny Birchall

We know that a relatively small proportion (only around one-third) of divorcing couples goes to court to get any kind of order dealing with their financial arrangements, and of those, most will arrive with an agreed settlement that they want turned into a binding ‘consent order’ rather than have the judge decide for them. Even consent orders are subject to scrutiny by the court to ensure that their terms are fair and not contrary to public policy, but while this scrutiny should be more than a rubber stamp, the court is not ‘some kind of forensic ferret’, as Waite LJ put it in Pounds v Pounds ([1994] 1 FLR 775), burrowing into the minutiae of what the parties have agreed and querying every detail. Of course, where the couple haven’t reached a settlement and the judge has to decide the outcome of their case, he or she will have to look in depth at the parties’ circumstances and reach a decision based on the law set out in the relevant legislation and case law. (more…)

What are the main governance opportunities and challenges for procurement digitalisation?

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by Professor Albert Sanchez-Graells, University of Bristol Law School.

Approximately a third of public sector spending goes to procure third-party goods, services, and works. Procurement rules and policies seek to ensure that contract awards are free from corruption, conflicts of interest or anticompetitive practices, and that these vast sums of public funds generate value for money and support social, environmental, and innovative practices. There is always room for improvement, though. The adoption of digital technologies is seen as a strategic catalyst for procurement reform, to increase the effectiveness of procurement regulation. Digitalisation could reduce the administrative burden through automation, generate data insights to inform policies and boost efficiency in public spending, and serve as a living lab for GovTech experimentation.

However, the transformative potential presumed in digital technologies generates hype and excessive expectations on the true size and nature of the achievable improvements. It also tends to overshadow the required groundwork and preparatory investment. New digital governance risks and requirements are not always recognised or understood. The growing public sector digital capability gap raises further obstacles. Heightened expectations and a minimisation of the challenges can get on the way of successful reform. In ongoing research funded by the British Academy, I apply an innovative technology-centred methodology to assess the governance opportunities and challenges for procurement digitalisation. This blog post provides a summary of the main findings so far. I will also be discussing them with a stellar panel on 15 December 2022 (details and registration). (more…)

Is the Retained EU Law Bill a Journey Into the Sunset for Company Law in the UK?

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by Professor Charlotte Villiers, University of Bristol Law School

Brussels, Belgium, 2011

The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (“the Bill”) is likely to have the reverse effect to what it aims to achieve: economic growth and business certainty (Explanatory Notes to the Bill) through clarification/simplification of UK law post-Brexit. There is lack of clarity, requiring lawyers and business advisers to search through layers of material to establish which “retained laws” are being targeted, the Retained EU Law Dashboard is not easy to navigate and nor does its list of relevant legislative instruments correspond to other official publications such as that of the House of Commons Library Briefing Paper, Legislating for Brexit: Statutory Instruments Implementing EU Law.  Moreover, the sunsetting deadlines for the targeted retained laws are likely to force the relevant departments to experience the dilemma of causing laws to expire without consulting the public fully, applying full Parliamentary scrutiny, or restating retained laws with inadequate resources to make such restatements sufficiently effective (Travers Smith: The Retained EU Law Bill: another Brexit cliff edge looms? October 2022). The resulting uncertainty that businesses will endure from this Bill and the regulatory gaps, at least in the short term, leave one wondering as to the value of the rush to legislate in this way. This blog focuses on the company law impacts as an example of the complexities and problems likely to arise, not just in the company law arena but in other important areas the development of which has been influenced significantly by European legislation, such as environment law. (more…)

Manston Holding Facility: Does the UK’s treatment of asylum seekers violate the law?

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by Professor Devyani Prabhat, The Law School, University of Bristol

A woman held at the Manston holding facility in Kent is taking legal action against Home Secretary Suella Braverman. The asylum seeker claims that she was held unlawfully in “egregiously defective conditions” at the centre. Her case is supported by the organisation Detention Action, and another case is being put forward by the charity Bail for Immigration Detainees. Braverman has denied ignoring legal advice about conditions at the centre, which is meant for a maximum of 1,600 people but was holding more than 4,000 and has had outbreaks of norovirus, scabies and diphtheria. Braverman has been accused of not making alternative arrangements, such as hotel bookings, to accommodate the additional people. The Manston facility has become a flashpoint for criticism of the government’s current and past policies, and treatment of asylum seekers. But the situation at Manston is not just dismal, it is a violation of legal requirements in international law, domestic law and the government’s own policies. (more…)

Mapping Recent Trends in Environmental Law: Is it time to worry?

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by Professor Margherita Pieraccini, University of Bristol Law School

Following the Brexit referendum, most[1] environmental law scholars became preoccupied that domestic environmental standards may decrease, both substantively and procedurally. After all, the majority of domestic environmental law derives from EU law and the EU institutions have played a seminal role in enforcing environmental law.

Years later, the preoccupation has not faded away.

There have been numerous developments in the field. I do not intend to provide a comprehensive review here but to focus on one area of environmental law that is attracting much attention lately. No, it is not climate change. It is nature. (more…)