Court : UK Supreme Court
LADY HALE (with whom Lord Neuberger, Lord Clarke, Lord Carnwath and Lord Hughes agree) 1. This is the first case under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 to come before this Court. That Act provides for decisions to be made on behalf of people who are unable to make decisions for themselves. Everyone who makes a decision under the Act must do so in the best interests of the person concerned. The decision in this case could not be more important: the hospital where a gravely ill man was being treated asked for a declaration that it would be in his best interests to withhold certain life-sustaining treatments from him. When can it be in the best interests of a living patient to withhold from him treatment which will keep him alive? On the other hand, when can it be in his best interests to inflict severely invasive treatment upon him which will bring him next to no positive benefit? The facts 2. The patient, David James, was admitted to hospital in May 2012 aged around 68 because of a problem ...
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LORD NEUBERGER AND LORD TOULSON (with whom Lord Mance, Lord Clarke and Lord Sumption agree) 1. This is a judgment on (i) an appeal brought by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, against the Court of Appeal's decision in favour of Ms Caitlin Reilly and Mr Jamieson Wilson, that the Jobseeker's Allowance (Employment, Skills and Enterprise Scheme) Regulations (SI 2011/917) ("the 2011 Regulations"), purportedly made under section 17A of the Jobseeker's Act 1995 ("the 1995 Act"), do not comply with the requirements of that section, and (ii) a cross-appeal brought by Miss Reilly and Mr Wilson against the Court of Appeal's rejection of two other attacks they made on the way in which the Secretary of State had caused the Employment, Skills and Enterprise Scheme ("the Scheme") to be operated. 2. The Secretary of State's appeal is complicated by the fact that, since the Court of Appeal's judgment was handed down, (i) the 2011 Regulations have been repealed and replaced by the Jobseeker'...
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LORD NEUBERGER AND LORD JUDGE (with whom Lady Hale, Lord Hope, Lord Mance, Lord Kerr and Lord Reed agree) 1. This is an appeal brought by Mohammed Gul against a decision of the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) dismissing an appeal against his conviction for dissemination of terrorist publications contrary to section 2 of the Terrorism Act 2006 ("the 2006 Act"), for which he was sentenced to a term of five years' imprisonment (a sentence against which he also unsuccessfully appealed). The appeal raises the issue of the meaning of "terrorism" in section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 ("the 2000 Act"). The factual and procedural background 2. The appellant was born in Libya in February 1988, but he has lived much of his life in this country and he is a British citizen. In February 2009, as a result of executing a search warrant at his house, police officers found videos on his computer uploaded onto various websites, including the YouTube website. These videos included ones that showed (i...
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LORD NEUBERGER Introductory 1. This appeal raises an issue as to the applicability of the equitable doctrine of marshalling. Lord Hoffmann explained the doctrine in characteristically pithy terms in In re Bank of Credit and Commerce International SA (No 8) [1998] AC 214, 230-231 as: "[A] principle for doing equity between two or more creditors, each of whom are owed debts by the same debtor, but one of whom can enforce his claim against more than one security or fund and the other can resort to only one. It gives the latter an equity to require that the first creditor satisfy himself (or be treated as having satisfied himself) so far as possible out of the security or fund to which the latter has no claim". 2. It is perhaps also worth setting out how Rose LJ explained the doctrine in the same case in the Court of Appeal [1996] Ch 245, 271: "The doctrine of marshalling applies where there are two creditors of the same debtor, each owed a different debt, one creditor (A) having two or mo...
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LORD SUMPTION (with whom Lord Clarke, Lord Wilson and Lord Toulson agree) 1. This appeal arises from a tragic incident on 5 July 2000 at Gloucester Park swimming pool in Basildon, Essex. The Appellant, then aged ten, was a pupil at Whitmore Junior School, for which the Respondent education authority was responsible. The national curriculum, in its then form, included physical training of a number of alternative kinds, one of which was swimming, and pupils at the school had swimming lessons in normal school hours. What appears to have happened was that the Appellant and other members of her class went to the pool, accompanied by a class teacher, Mrs Holt. At the pool, the children were divided into groups. The group to which the Appellant was assigned was taught by a swimming teacher, Ms. Burlinson, with a lifeguard, Ms Maxwell, in attendance. At some point, the Appellant got into difficulties, and was found (in the judge's words) "hanging vertically in the water." She was resuscitated,...
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LORD MANCE (with whom Lord Hope, Lord Hughes and Lord Kerr agree) Summary 1. Two appeals are before the Court by prisoners who were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. In the case of the appellant Peter Chester, the tariff period fixed by the sentencing judge expired on 29 October 1997, but he has not yet satisfied the Parole Board that it is no longer necessary for the protection of the public that he should be confined. In the case of the appellant George McGeoch, the sentencing judge fixed a punishment part of 13 years which expired on 7 October 2011, but he has committed various intervening offences including violently escaping from lawful custody in 2008 for which he received a seven and a half year consecutive sentence. The result is that the earliest date on which McGeoch could be considered for parole is July 2015. 2. Both the appellants claim that their rights have been and are being infringed by reason of their disenfranchisement from voting. Chester's cla...
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LORD REED (with whom Lord Neuberger, Lady Hale, Lord Kerr and Lord Clarke agree) 1. These three appeals raise questions as to the circumstances in which the Parole Board ("the board") is required to hold an oral hearing. One of the appeals (that of the appellant Osborn) concerns a determinate sentence prisoner who was released on licence but then recalled to custody. The other appeals (those of the appellants Booth and Reilly) concern indeterminate sentence prisoners who have served their minimum terms. 2. It may be helpful to summarise at the outset the conclusions which I have reached. i) In order to comply with common law standards of procedural fairness, the board should hold an oral hearing before determining an application for release, or for a transfer to open conditions, whenever fairness to the prisoner requires such a hearing in the light of the facts of the case and the importance of what is at stake. By doing so the board will also fulfil its duty under section 6(1) of the ...
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LORD WILSON (with whom Lord Neuberger, Lady Hale, Lord Mance and Lord Carnwath agree) A: INTRODUCTION 1. The Secretary of State for the Home Department cannot make an order which deprives a person of his British citizenship on the ground that it is conducive to the public good if she is satisfied that the order would make him stateless. This appeal seeks to raise the question: if at the date of the Secretary of State's order it were open to the person to apply for citizenship of another state and if that application would necessarily be granted, is it her order which would make him stateless or is it his failure to make the application which would do so? 2. The Secretary of State appeals against an order of the Court of Appeal (Richards, Stanley Burnton and Gross LJJ) dated 29 March 2012, by which it quashed her order dated 14 December 2007 which purported to deprive Mr Al-Jedda ("the respondent") of his British citizenship. 3. The Secretary of State made her order pursuant to section ...
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Lady Hale (with whom Lord Wilson, Lord Reed and Lord Toulson agree) 1. The issue in this case is whether the High Court of England and Wales has jurisdiction to order the "return" to this country of a small child who has never lived or even been here, on the basis either that he is habitually resident here or that he has British nationality. The facts 2. The child, whom I shall call Haroon, was born on 20 October 2010 in Pakistan. His father (born in 1973) is one of five siblings, who were all born in England to parents who came here to live from Pakistan in the 1960s. His mother (born in 1978) is the father's first cousin. She was born and brought up in Pakistan and entered into an arranged marriage with the father in Pakistan in 1999. She joined the father here the following year and they lived together in a property shared with other members of the father's family. The mother and father have three children together who were born here: a daughter born in 2001, who is now 12, a second...
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Lord Hughes and Lord Toulson: 1. This case concerns the true ambit of the new offence created by section 3ZB of the Road Traffic Act 1988 ("the 1988 Act"). This new section was added by section 21(1) of the Road Safety Act 2006 ("the 2006 Act"). It provides: "3ZB Causing death by driving: unlicensed, disqualified or uninsured drivers. A person is guilty of an offence under this section if he causes the death of another person by driving a motor vehicle on a road and, at the time when he is driving, the circumstances are such that he is committing an offence under- (a) Section 87(1) of this Act (driving otherwise than in accordance with a licence); (b) Section 103(1)(b) of this Act (driving while disqualified), or (c) Section 143 of this Act (using a motor vehicle while uninsured or unsecured against third party risks)." On conviction on indictment, this offence carries imprisonment for up to two years. 2. On a late Sunday afternoon in October 2009 the defendant Mr Hughes was driving hi...
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