This week’s roundup of legal news and commentary includes legislation, regulation, immigration and memorialisation. Plus: the ICLR pupillage award.
Coronavirus
Legislation
The Coronavirus Act 2020 is up for its second six-monthly review and renewal vote in the House of Commons in the coming weeks. Some of the powers it has conferred, the way they have been enforced, the changes to life, work and education, and their effect on different parts of the population have been heavily criticised.
The civil liberties campaign group Liberty has come up with a proposed replacement, the Protect Everyone Bill, which they say:
removes the dangerous powers in the Government’s Coronavirus Act and replaces them with clear and proportionate measures focused on public health, human rights and…
This week’s roundup of legal news and commentary includes captive cuisine, broken rules, lack of transparency, and unregulated lawtech. Plus marmalade.
Prisons
Kitchen training to help cut reoffending
The Clink Kitchens training programme, which has been effective in cutting reoffending by over 30%, is to be extended to up to 70 prisons, the government has announced:
Over the next 3 years, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) and The Clink charity have agreed to extend their training programme, currently already operating in HMPs High Down, Cardiff, Brixton and Styal, to offenders working in an additional 70 prison kitchens.
Following successful pilots, training will continue at HMPs Bristol and Styal and from the end of April they will be first joined by Eastwood Park, Send and Downview with…
This week’s roundup of legal news and commentary includes a victory for Trump in America, suppression of scrutiny in China and Saudi Arabia, and a grudging acceptance of settled Europeans in Britain.
Immigration
EU Resettlement Scheme
Over five million applications have now been made to the EU Settlement Scheme, according to the latest Home Office figures. The scheme only remains open for another four and a bit months, till 30 June 2021, so anyone who has not yet applied should act soon. The scheme requires any EU, EEA or Swiss citizen — even if they have lived in the UK for many years or have a permanent residence document — to apply for settled status (or citizenship) before 30 June 2021 if they wish to be allowed to continue to live and work in the UK.
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This week’s roundup of legal news and commentary includes courts, cat filters and court reporting, among other matters, such as the legal profession and the rule of law.
Court reporting
Should ban on photography remain?
The BBC was recently fined £28,000 after it admitted unlawfully broadcasting a short clip from a High Court hearing on a regional news programme: see R (Finch) v Surrey County Council [2021] EWHC 170 (QB). As Joshua Rozenberg explained on A Lawyer Writes,
“The clip was broadcast twice last November on one of the BBC’s regional news programmes, South East Today. It was included in a report of a hearing at which Sarah Finch, from Redhill, was challenging a decision by Surrey County Council to allow “fracking” operations six miles from her home.”
The hearing was conducted online and a…
This week’s roundup of legal news and comment includes vaccination, protest, judicial review, terrorism and financial services, inter alia.
Public procurement
Coronavirus vaccination
The mass vaccination rollout seems to have been the only major success story in the UK government’s tackling of the coronavirus pandemic. If the Prime Minister is to take any credit for that, it must be on the basis that he chose the right people to do the job— something not necessarily demonstrated in relation to other projects in dealing with the pandemic — and in particular for his choice of Kate Bingham as chair of the UK vaccine taskforce. This…
This week’s roundup of legal news and commentary includes a departmental audit for the MOJ, coronavirus cases from other European jurisdictions, anti-genocidal trading policy, domestic abuse in the Court of Appeal, and help for legally unaided litigants.
Ministry of Justice
Departmental overview by NAO
Earlier this month the National Audit Office published its Departmental Overview 2019–20 for the Ministry of Justice. The overview summarises the work of the department including what it does, how much it costs, recent and planned changes and what to look out for across its main business areas and services.
The survey covers the department’s main areas of activity: courts and tribunals, legal aid, prisons, parole and probation. It assesses what the MOJ itself aims to achieve, its departmental goals; and flags up some particular issues for the immediate future. These include:
- Spending on Brexit — between June 2016 and…
This week’s roundup of legal news and commentary includes Hong Kong Bench and Bar ethics, covid court safety, police data loss, monumental folly from the Ministry of Housing, and human rights under review.
Legal Professions
Hong Kong: ethical considerations for Bench and Bar
The propriety of an English barrister, David Perry QC, participating in the prosecution, in Hong Kong, of those involved in recent pro-democracy protests in the territory, has given rise to criticism from other lawyers and politicians.
Although theoretically Hong Kong is a separate jurisdiction from mainland China, no one looking at the matter objectively could seriously believe that the authorities in Hong Kong are acting independently, given the recent conduct of the mainland People’s Republic of China (PRC) government — notably in imposing a new National Security Law in Hong Kong, which was adopted without any meaningful prior consultation of…
Welcome back to a new legal term and a roundup of what’s been going on over the vacation period, including a Brexit deal, alleged election steal, a virus out of control, a look back at the legal year and some recent legal publications.
Brexit
A deal was done
After months of negotiations, on Christmas Eve the UK Government and European Union finally reached an agreement over the terms of a Trade and Cooperation Agreement. The government published a summary explainer and the European Commission published a table showing the main consequences and benefits. See also this even simpler guide tweeted by Robert Peston:
They also concluded an Agreement on Nuclear Cooperation (NCA) and an Agreement on Security Procedures for Exchanging and Protecting Classified Information.
The following week, the European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020, enabling the UK Government to implement and ratify those agreements, was debated and…
By Paul Magrath
A bookplate, or printed “ex libris” label, was for a long time the widely recognised way of not only marking the volumes in a library, but also announcing to the world that a book’s owner was a person of some substance — sufficient, at any rate, to own a library.
Their earliest use can be dated back to 15th century Germany, with the dawn of printing providing a mechanism both for the manufacture of books in substantial print runs, and also for the printing of labels to put in them. …
This week’s roundup of legal news and commentary includes vaccination, legislation, regulation, litigation, explanation and, hopefully, the prospect of some ultimate relaxation.
Coronavirus
Vaccine approved
The approval and the commencement of a programme to administer a Covid vaccine will have implications for all aspects of life, including the restrictions on social and commercial life which various iterations of the legally-enforced lockdown have imposed. While the current restrictions seem likely to continue, there is the prospect of future relaxation, which currently give more grounds for optimism than the stalled and stumbling Brexit negotiations.
The ICLR
The ICLR publishes The Law Reports, The Weekly Law Reports and other specialist titles. Set up by members of the judiciary and legal profession in 1865.
