Source: https://dbfamilylaw.wordpress.com/2014/09/
Timestamp: 2017-06-29 08:51:59
Document Index: 178152079

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 1', 'art 1', 'Art 6', 'Art 14', 'Art 10', 'UKHL ', 'UKSC ', 'Art 8', 'Art 6', 'UKSC ', 'EWCA ', 'art 1', 'Art 6', 'UKHL ', 'Application No 37965', 'Art 14', 'Art 6', 'Art 6', 'EWCA ', 'Application no 24197', 'Art 6', 'EWCA ', 'art 25', 'art 35', 'EWCA ', 'EWCA ', 'EWCA ', 'EWCA ']

September | 2014 | dbfamilylaw
Monthly Archives: September 2014	30Sep2014	CIVIL LEGAL AID: EXCEPTIONAL CASE DETERMINATION	Posted in Uncategorized	by dbfamilylaw	Exceptional case determination
Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 s 10 represents the only way that a person can obtain legal aid for civil legal services (civil legal aid), outside the narrow spectrum of cases – domestic ‘violence’, forced marriage etc – covered by Part 1 Sch 1 of the Act.
Legal aid may be available as an ‘exceptional case’ (LASPOA 2012 s 10(1)) where funding is not otherwise available under the relatively narrow range of representation under the main civil legal aid provisions of LASPOA 2012 Part 1 Sch 1 (available civil legal services).
LASPOA 2012 s 10(2) provides:
(and has not withdrawn either determination). LASPOA 2012 s 10(3) defines what is an ‘exceptional case’ (as further explained by Black LJ in JG (below)):
It is important to stress here that ‘exceptional’ is not a general term – as eg rare, highly unusual etc – but refers solely to the fact that grant is required to comply with UK responsibilities under Human Rights Act 1998. If legal aid is required for that purpose it is, by definition, ‘exceptional’ and s 10 is satisfied. European Convention
The main rights under the Convention in play in most cases will be Art 6(1) and 8:
Freedom from discrimination (Art 14) and freedom of expressions (Art 10) will also be significant, in appropriate contexts.
Children and Convention rights
The significance of children in any Convention assessment must be recalled always: nothing may be given ‘greater weight’ than their interests says the Supreme Court (see Lord Kerr below). If a balance is required to be struck between their, and other, Convention rights (Convention ‘proportionality’), this must be conducted by measuring ‘the nature of any impact on the child’ (per Lord Steyn in Re S (Identification: Restrictions on Publication) [2004] UKHL 47, [2005] 1 FLR 591 (at para [17]).
The interests of the child are as much a primary consideration for the LAA decision-maker as for any other agency (eg local authority of government department) (ZH (Tanzania) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] UKSC 4 at para [33]). The balance must be drawn between respect for the child’s private life (Art 8) and (say) the right of the parent for a fair trial (Art 6). In H(H) v Deputy Prosecutor of the Italian Republic, Genoa (Official Solicitor intervening) [2012] UKSC 25 Lord Kerr explained the primacy of a child’s interest:
Convention rights: exceptional cases
In JG v Lord Chancellor and ors [2014] EWCA Civ 656 Black LJ and the Court of Appeal considered s 10 in the context of legal aid and payment for an expert’s fees in civil proceedings. The meaning of ‘exceptional’ in s 10(3) was explained by Black LJ at para [110]. She stressed that, as a matter of ordinary statutory construction, all that s 10(3) does is to produce a ‘description … not a test or additional hurdle’ for the applicant (and see Coulson J in M v Director of Legal Aid Casework & Ors [2014] EWHC 1354 (Admin) at para [58]).
Both judges stress the ordinary meaning of the words in s 10: that ‘exceptional’ there means only that the application is outside Part 1 of Sch 1, not the facts of the application are in some way ‘highly unusual’ or out of the ordinary.
The QB Divisional Court (Moses LJ, Collins and Jay JJ) has gone further. In R (ota The Public Law Project) v The Secretary of State for Justice, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner (intervener) [2014] EWHC 2365 (Admin) (at para [13]) Moses LJ defined s 10 as catering for applications for funding as two-fold: mandatory (where a ‘substantial interference’ with an Art 6 right might occur) and discretionary (where there is ‘a risk of such breach’).
I understand that the PLP case and Gudaviciene below may be under appeal to the Court of Appeal; but for the present they represent the law.
LASPOA 2012 s 4(3) includes amongst the duties of LAA decision-makers, that they must ‘(b) have regard to guidance given by the Lord Chancellor about the carrying out of those functions’. Guidance must be in accordance with the law. In particular, it is a basic principle of administrative law that a public body may not ‘fetter’ a discretion entrusted to it by statute, since Parliament confers discretion to ‘promote the policies and object of [an] Act’ (Padfield v Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food [1968] AC 997).
Guidance may not impose inflexibility where its empowering statutory provision does not provide for it, nor limit the scope of a decision-maker’s discretion beyond that which is anticipated by the statute (R v Secretary of State for Department for the Home Dept exp Venables [1998] AC 407, [1997] UKHL 25 at 496-7).
Lord Chancellor’s exceptional funding guidance (non-inquests) (undated) (‘the Guidance’) represents guidance under s 4(3). Its legality was considered by Collins J in Gudanaviciene v Director of Legal Aid Casework and the Lord Chancellor [2014] EWHC 1840 (Admin). This was a series of immigration cases; but the principles applicable to guidance to decision-makers apply in all grants of civil legal aid.
Collins J describes the Guidance thus:
[9] … [It] lays down some principles which the Director is to apply and some of those are said by the claimants to be unlawful. Paragraph 6 notes that s10(3)(b) does not provide a general power to fund cases which fall outside the scope of legal aid. It is, it is said, ‘to be used for rare cases’ where the risk of the breach of material rights ‘is such that it is appropriate to fund [para 7 which is cited in full including]:
(7) … Rather, section 10(3)(b) should be used in those rare cases where it cannot be said with certainty whether the failure to fund would amount to a breach of the rights set out at section 10(3)(a) but the risk of breach is so substantial that it is nevertheless appropriate to fund in all the circumstances of the case. This may be so, for example, where the case law is uncertain (owing, for example, to conflicting judgments).
He points out that the Guidance bases its approach to grant of legal aid by reference to Airey v Ireland (1979) 2 EHHR 533 and X v UK (1984) 6 EHRR 136. From the latter case the Guidance derives its ‘practical impossibility or obvious unfairness’ test (para [15]). But is this the correct test? Collins J says it is not:
[19] The ‘overarching question’ posed in the Guidance is ‘whether the withholding of legal aid would make the assertion of the claim practically impossible or lead to an obvious unfairness in proceedings.’ This is said to be a very high threshold. As I have said, it is based on X v UK. In setting out this test, the Commission referred to Airey v Ireland.
After full consideration of relevant case law Collins J deals with the ‘threshold’ question at para [28].
•	There must be ‘effective access to a court’: for example a litigant must be able to present all relevant evidence and ‘engage with the process’ (AK & L v Croatia (Application No 37965/11: final on 8 April 2013));
He held that the X v UK ‘practically impossible’ test (used by LAA decision-makers) sets the bar ‘too high’ (para [28]) for s 10; and that to this extent the Guidance is unlawful (para [128]).
Overriding of fundamental rights
Further it is necessary here to bear in mind two further basic principles of administrative law: first, the ‘fetter on discretion’ point made in Gudaviciene (above); and, secondly, that fundamental rights of an applicant for legal aid can only be overridden by specific statutory provision. This point was made by Moses LJ in R (ota PLP) (above). The case concerned delegated legislation proposed by the Lord Chancellor to limit legal aid to those with a close connection to the United Kingdom (what he terms ‘our people’). PLP said the Lord Chancellor had no power to do this.
The minister accepted his statutory instrument as discriminatory, but was such discrimination lawful? Reading Art 14 (discrimination) with Art 6(1) the Court of Appeal said the delegated legislation was unlawful. Thus of the right to legal aid for representation in court proceedings Moses LJ said:
[53] The obligation of a state to provide legal assistance in some circumstances was not in dispute. The principle is now well established both in domestic and Strasbourg jurisprudence. The right to legal aid can be invoked by virtue of Art 6(1) of the Convention (Pine v Law Society (No 1) [2001] EWCA Civ 1574). The duty to provide legal aid in some cases is no more than an aspect of the principle that the state is under an obligation not to impede access to court. Section 10 of LASPO is the provision adopted to meet the United Kingdom’s obligation to provide legal assistance in those cases where a failure to do so would risk a breach of Convention or EU rights.
A person speaking only a foreign language in English courts, might be in more need of representation that someone who can at least read the language (a point which recurs in Q v Q [2014] EWFC 7 and recurs in the later version of that case). The same would apply to a person confronted with difficult legal principles or of procedure.
Grant of legal aid: ‘rights that are practical and effective’
In JG black LJ cites Muscat v Malta (2012) Application no 24197/10 [2012] ECHR 1601. This she says is the modern authority for the proposition that there is no absolute obligation under European Convention 1950 to make legal aid available for all civil disputes. That is not the only criterion (as Collins J also demonstrates). Thus Muscat says that the Convention is concerned that mere lip-service to rights is not paid by legislators; but the Convention:
[45] … is intended to guarantee not rights that are theoretical or illusory but rights that are practical and effective. The right of access to court includes not only the right to institute proceedings but also the right to obtain a “determination” of the dispute by a court. It would be illusory if a Contracting State’s domestic legal system allowed an individual to bring a civil action before a court without ensuring that the case was determined by a final decision in the judicial proceedings.
Access to the court must include the ability to see the case through to a ‘determination’; and Muscat (para [46]) breaks down entitlement to legal aid as follows:
Exceptional case determination: application
If the language of s 10 is construed within the terms of the policy behind the section – to ensure United Kingdom complies with its convention obligations under Art 6 – then it can be seen that ‘exceptional’, as Black LJ explains in JG (at [110]) describes only a category of grant.
As the law stands the Lord Chancellor’s Guidance is unlawful to the extent that it seeks to fetter a decision-maker’s discretion in grant of legal aid. Any applicant for family proceedings legal aid where, for example, his/her access to the courts is for practical purposes impeded and the fairness of a trial made impossible, can – subject to financial eligibility – rely on s 10(3) to seek a grant of legal aid. The threshold for determination of coming within s 10(3) is, as Collins J explains in Gudaviciene, that a litigant can properly and fairly engage with the court process (paras [28] and [51]).
civil legal services, exceptional case determination, fetter of discretion, freedom of expression, human rights, human rights balance, legal aid, Legal Aid Agency, primacy of welfare of children, right to a fair trial, right to family life	Leave a comment
29Sep2014	A SUMMER SPELL	Posted in Uncategorized	by dbfamilylaw	I
of something I’d never dreamed –
a summer in warm countryside
nights slept in your attic room
and vehemence in your feelings.
Together we wove a spell through that summer:
of walking by streams and the canal
of drinking and eating together
of green and heather covered Yorkshire hillsides;
and of Burgundy, with hot fine buildings and medieval streets,
of that cool dark crypt
and honey and chalk coloured churches,
and of that evening valley
and dusty village
and gentle evening light
And the spell we wove
stays on in the mind –
and will always stay –
long after the feelings woven through it
the spell is there –
a memory, a truth,
a dream which was reality,
no fiction to unravel –
Yes, it was truth,
truth of that Burgundian evening valley
and the attic room
And I remember a cold glad evening
when we stood by the swirling water
the river’s grey water churning in spate over the weir;
The black bare branches of wintered beech overhung the water,
their supplicant twigs holding out to another summer.
But in the cold, we held to one another
and in another way the spell ran on.
28Sep2014	#CSAINQUIRY: COMPLAINT ON Mrs WOOLF TO SOLICITORS’ REGULATION AUTHORITY	Posted in Uncategorized	by dbfamilylaw	Email to Solicitors Regulation Authority: Mrs Fiona Woolf
27Sep2014	RIGHTS, FREEDOMS AND THE COMMON LAW	Posted in Uncategorized	by dbfamilylaw	Rights and freedoms guaranteed by common law
26Sep2014	LAW, PRACTICE DIRECTIONS AND GUIDANCE	Posted in Uncategorized	by dbfamilylaw	Practice Directions and the President of the Family Division
In her http://www.pinktape.co.uk/rants/who-to-follow-the-precedent-or-the-president/ @familoo reflects on precedent law: ‘Who to follow: the precedent or the President?’. In it she asserts:
Whilst the President has the power to issue Guidance or Practice Directions, what status do his Views hold, styled in title if not in form as the idle musings of a be-windowed leader? The answer is of course they warn us what the Court of Appeal might say in the event we fail to take heed and find our foolish disobedience immortalised in a new actual (and excruciatingly embarrassing) binding precedent.
This breaks down into three areas of ‘law-making’ (the inverted commas will be explained): Practice Directions, Practice Guidance and the habit of Sir James Munby P of musing at his chambers window (which are indeed but his thoughts: no more, though from a voice significant in the family law system; and that is the last to be said on fenestral musings here).
Sir James, the current President of the Family Division, is a dogmatic figure; and sometimes fails to distinguish between his position as a judge, and as an administrator. In the latter role he must be amenable to judicial review. Rightly, he stresses that family law is part of the civil law system. It is not some segregated lawless Alsatia (see eg Richardson v Richardson [2011] EWCA Civ 79). At the same time he does much precisely to drive family proceedings into their own ghetto, Alsatia even. For example the new rules and statute law on expert evidence is technically the creation of statutory bodies; but bears his firm imprint. It creates three regimes for expert evidence: children proceedings (mostly in Children and Families Act 2014 s 13); all other family proceedings (FPR 2010 Part 25); and other civil proceedings (CPR 1998 Part 35). Over all of these arches Civil Evidence Act 1972 s 3.
The question of practice guidance divides this area of delegated legislation into Practice Directions, Practice Guidance and ‘gap’ rules (together here called ‘practice rules’). The topic is considered fully in my Practice of Family Law: evidence and procedure (Jordans, 2012) at Chapter 2 (paras 2.12-2.36). Rules are made by Family Procedure Rules Committee under powers in Courts Act 2003 ss 75-76 (outside the scope of this note). Practice Directions are made under powers in Constitutional Reform Act 2005 by the Lord Chancellor who can delegate his authority to eg the Lord Chief Justice (family proceedings Practice Directions are endorsed as being approved by the LCJ).
Limits on the issue of guidance was explained in Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government v Bovale Ltd and anor [2009] EWCA Civ 171 (‘Bovale’). In that case the Court of Appeal analysed the making of practice directions. The court allowed an appeal where Collins J had not followed a practice direction in a planning case. In doing so they considered the background, first, to the making of directions; and then what were a judge’s powers to make directions if there appeared to be no rule to cover the procedural or practice point in question.
Neither a procedural rule (see per Buxton LJ in in Jaffray & Ors v The Society of Lloyds [2007] EWCA Civ 586 at para [7]-[9]) nor a practice direction can change the law. Practice directions are limited to their function which is to regulate court proceedings alongside or as a supplement to procedural rules (Re C (Legal Aid: Preparation of Bill of Costs) [2001] 1 FLR 602, CA). This was explained by Brooke LJ in KU (A Child) v LC [2005] EWCA Civ 475 at para [48] for practice directions:
If a judge perceives a gap in practice rules s/he is entitled to fill that gap (Bovale paras [37]-[39]). Unless a gap is perceived it is not open to a judge – even at High Court level – to declare of his own initiative what practice should be. One of the more remarkable recent breaches of this principle – though largely unremarked at the time, and since – was that of Mostyn J in UL v BK (Freezing Orders: Safeguards: Standard Examples) [2013] UKHC 1735 (Fam). In that case the judge gratuitously issued professional guidance to solicitors (though it affects the bar also) in the case of Imerman documents (Imerman v Tchenguiz and ors [2010] EWCA Civ 908: private documents taken by one spouse unknown to the other).
The ‘guidance’ was no part of the ratio of Mostyn J’s decision. (It is generally known that Sir James approves this ‘guidance’.) It was issued without the court hearing argument on the subject from any practising lawyers (or eg from the law Society or the Bar Council). The ‘guidance’ fills no Bovale gap necessary to enable the court to resolve a disputed issue. Short of judicial review – Mostyn J was not acting as a judge, in the sense that a judge adjudicates between opposing points of view, so must have been amenable to review – there is no way the decision can be challenged. The ‘guidance’ is foreign to all democratic principles on which the rule of law is based. Plainly Mostyn J’s ‘guidance’ is a charter for cheats (as explained in https://dbfamilylaw.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/mostyn-j-condones-non-disclosure-imerman-documents-and-ul-v-bk/ ); but until the professional negligence claims start coming in from spouses who were advised to part with crucial evidence of material non-disclosure, the Mostyn J ‘guidance’ on the subject will be followed by impressionable family lawyers.
Status of practice directions and guidance
As can be seen: practice directions and guidance are not law. They guide practice. They cannot – or should not – be given by judges on the hoof; and if, as ‘gap’ rules, they are to be made, courtesy (ignored by Mostyn J) suggests that the judge enables practitioners in a case to comment on the proposed ‘gap’ filling guidance. An excellent example of this practice by a judge can be seen operated by Keehan J in A Local Authority v DG & Ors [2014] EWHC 63 (Fam).
administrator, gap rules, judicial review, practice direction, practice guidance, precedent	Leave a comment
23Sep2014	CLARITY IN LAW: PRECEDENT LAW	Posted in Uncategorized	by dbfamilylaw	Citation in family cases
22Sep2014	#CSAINQUIRY: PROFESSIONAL STANDING OF FIONA WOOLF	Posted in Uncategorized	by dbfamilylaw	Solicitors Regulation Authority Code of Practice