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Category: UK news

  • Charity staff shouldn’t face this abhorrent abuse | Letter

    Mark Simms says the Charity Commission will support trustees in efforts to keep themselves, their staff and volunteers safe from harm

    Charities’ struggles to protect their staff and deliver their work in the face of unwarranted attacks and hatred are profoundly worrying (UK charities say toxic immigration rhetoric leading to threats against staff, 13 October). Charities have championed the welfare of those who are vulnerable and ostracised, for centuries. That endeavour is vital not just to our civil society, but to our self-respect as a civilised nation.

    The Charity Commission will defend and protect the right – and indeed the responsibility – of charities to deliver on their lawful purposes. Over recent weeks, I have met with a wide range of charities, including a group of charities working with refugees and migrants, to hear about the challenges they are facing.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Trans people at risk of exclusion from many UK public spaces, rights expert says

    Council of Europe commissioner voices concerns after April’s supreme court ruling on legal definition of a woman

    Transgender people risk being excluded from many public spaces as a result of the recent UK supreme court judgment and must be protected from discrimination, a human rights expert has said.

    Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, said he had concerns about the climate for transgender people in the UK after April’s supreme court ruling that the legal definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Right to protest under ‘sustained attack’ across the west, report finds

    Counter-terror laws being ‘weaponised’ against pro-Palestine groups in UK, US, France and Germany, says FIDH

    The right to protest has come under “sustained attack” across the west , according to a report highlighting the growing criminalisation of pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

    The study by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) pays particular attention to the UK, the US, France and Germany, where it says governments have “weaponised” counter-terrorism legislation as well as the fight against antisemitism to suppress dissent and support for Palestinian rights in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘Your basis to live is checked at each and every step’: India’s ID system divides opinion

    Keir Starmer is considering Aadhaar as model for UK, but detractors warn of ‘digital coercion’ and security breaches

    It is often difficult for people in India to remember life before Aadhaar. The digital biometric ID, allegedly available for every Indian citizen, was only introduced 15 years ago but its presence in daily life is ubiquitous.

    Indians now need an Aadhaar number to buy a house, get a job, open a bank account, pay their tax, receive benefits, buy a car, get a sim card, book priority train tickets and admit children into school. Babies can be given Aadhaar numbers almost immediately after they are born. While it is not mandatory, not having Aadhaar de facto means the state does not recognise you exist, digital rights activists say.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘I deserve to heal’: freed British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah on his prison ordeal and next steps

    The campaigner, who spent more than a decade in an Egyptian ‘vortex of incarceration’, wants to join his son in the UK while he reflects on the fight for freedom

    The British-Egyptian human rights activist and writer, released from more than a decade in continuous detention in Cairo, has said he wants to come to the UK to be with his autistic 14-year-old son.

    Alaa Abd el-Fattah said he feared his mother might have died on hunger strike during the 12 years he spent in what he described as a “vortex of incarceration”.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Tory plan to abolish stamp duty ‘will benefit London and the wealthiest the most’ – as it happened

    This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

    Voting in the Labour deputy leadership election opens today. Lucy Powell, the former Commons leader, is seen as the favourite and, as Jessica Elgot reports, Powell told supporters yesterday that, if she is elected, she will use the post to argue for changes in the way the government is operating. “We can’t sugarcoat the fact that things aren’t going well,” she said.

    Powell is no longer a government minister and, if she is elected deputy leader, she will do the job from the backbenches. In an interview on Newsnight last night, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary standing against Powell, said a Powell victory would be “destabilising” for the party. She said:

    [Electing Powell] risks destabilising the party … we best achieve what we need to do together when we have those fierce conversations, including disagreements, behind closed doors.

    Members need to understand that there’s a potential challenge around all of that – that if you’re not inside when the big decisions are being made, you’re not at that table, you’re not in those conversations.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Nearly two thirds of Tory members want pact with Reform, poll suggests, with close to half supporting full merger – as it happened

    Half of Tory members also want Kemi Badenoch to be replaced as Conservative leader. This live blog is closed

    Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, was doing an interview round for the Conservatives this morning, and Miatta Fahnbulleh, the faith and communities minister, was on the air on behalf of the government. They were both asked about the latest development in the flag phenomenon – the former footballer turned property developer Gary Neville saying that he took down a union flag flying at one of his building sites because he felt it was being used in a “negative fashion”.

    Asked if Neville (a Labour supporter) had a point, Fahnbulleh told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:

    I think he’s really right, that there are people who are trying to divide us at the moment …

    I spent a lot of time going around our communities, talking to people. People are ground down. We’ve had a decade-and-a-half in which living standards haven’t budged and people have seen their communities held down. And you will get people trying to stoke division, trying to blame others, trying to stoke tension.

    I think people that put up flags, the vast majority of people that do, do so for perfectly reasonable patriotic reasons. And I think reclaiming our flag as a flag of unity and decency and tolerance, which is the way most people see our flag, is a very positive thing.

    So I’m afraid I really cannot agree with the comments that he’s made.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Badenoch says Tories open to quitting more treaties to increase deportations

    Party leader uses conference speech to outline proposal for UK to exit ECHR as part of wider bonfire of protections

    A future Tory government would be open to dismantling more treaties as a means to deport people from the UK, Kemi Badenoch has said at the start of a Conservative party conference focused almost exclusively on immigration policy.

    Making the first of two addresses to the gathering in Manchester, the Tory leader formally set out her proposal for the UK to quit the European convention on human rights (ECHR) as part of a wider bonfire of protections including an end to legal aid in immigration and asylum cases and the right to take migration decisions to tribunals or judicial review.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Pro-Palestine marches have become ‘carnivals of hatred’, Badenoch tells Tory conference – UK politics live

    Party leader says Britain has allowed extremism to go unchecked

    The polling firm Opinium has released some research this morning suggesting that some Conservative party policies are popular with voters – but that, if people are explicitly told that they are Kemi Badenoch policies, their popularity goes down.

    There is some evidence that Keir Starmer’s unpopularity has the same effect – and that, once a policy is associated with him, voters are less inclined to back it.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Conservatives would take UK out of ECHR, Badenoch confirms

    Leader says move is is necessary ‘to protect our borders, our veterans and our citizens’

    Kemi Badenoch has announced that a Conservative government under her leadership would pull the UK out of the European convention on human rights.

    The move marks a lurch to the right for the Tories, who are attempting to stem a loss of support to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Farage has long been a critic of the ECHR and has pledged to leave it if he becomes prime minister.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • If you liked Brexit, you’re going to love what the Conservatives want next | Polly Toynbee

    Leaving the ECHR could mean higher food prices and an even bigger blow to trade. The Tories’ new proposals will end the party for good

    Brexit is never over and it’s about to get a bit worse. As the moribund Tories assemble this Sunday, it’s still their only tune, as if they haven’t noticed how the public mood has changed. Brexit is the root cause of all their woes, with almost all the 61% of those people who call it a failure blaming the Conservatives the most.

    But instead of recanting, rethinking, questioning their recent history, they double down, with Kemi Badenoch now following Robert Jenrick deeper into the Farage darkness with a pledge to leave the European convention on human rights (ECHR). That double dose of Brexit will sink not save them.

    Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UK politics: Jenrick’s ideas mostly ‘my thoughts repackaged’, says Badenoch – as it happened

    Tory leader also claims the party was close to bankruptcy when she took over last year

    Voters trust the Green party most … on green issues, is the rather unsurprising finding of a poll by YouGov looking at how voters view the party, which starts its autumn conference tomorrow. The Greens are least trusted on the economy and on defence.

    But there is something remarkable about this. In his write-up for YouGov, Dylan Difford says:

    Unsurprisingly, Britons have a particular degree of confidence in the Greens when it comes to the environment. What’s notable, though, is that a majority of Britons (54%) say they have at least a fair amount of trust in the party on the issue. Out of the 18 areas polled, which have been asked about all five major parties, this is the only issue for any of the parties for where most people express confidence in a given party.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Kemi Badenoch expected to announce plan to leave ECHR

    Move to come if Conservatives win next election and is calculated to head off growing support for Reform UK

    Kemi Badenoch is expected to announce a plan this weekend to leave the European convention on human rights (ECHR) if the Conservatives win the next election, as the party attempts to halt a loss of support to Reform UK.

    The move will be seized on by political opponents as evidence the Tories have lurched to the right – Russia and Belarus are the only two other European countries that have opted out of the ECHR – while it could lose the party support from the political centre.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Starmer to rethink human rights law to tackle ‘Farage boats’

    Starmer blames Brexit for surge in numbers of small boat crossings but defends UK’s membership of ECHR

    Keir Starmer has said he will look at how international law is being interpreted by British courts in an effort to tackle small boats, which he branded “Farage boats” because of their increase in number since Brexit.

    Speaking after the Labour party conference, the prime minister signalled his unhappiness with how the European convention of human rights was being interpreted by judges making decisions about deportations.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UK accused of ‘stark injustice’ as woman from Montserrat refused free NHS care

    Cherry Brown, 69, a British overseas territory citizen, was left sleeping rough after being sent to England for treatment

    The UK has been accused of a “stark injustice” for failing to provide health services and humanitarian support to citizens of British overseas territories after a woman from the Caribbean island of Montserrat was refused free NHS care and left homeless.

    Council officials found Cherry Brown, 69, sleeping rough in a park in Swanley, Kent, in April. Brown had been funded by the Montserratian government – whose budget is largely subsidised by the UK – to travel to England to receive treatment from the NHS that was not available at home.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘She didn’t realise how dangerous it was’: London-bound student held in China over Tibet support

    Zhang Yadi was due to begin a degree in the UK but the activist vanished on holiday amid tensions over Dalai Lama

    As Zhang Yadi toured remote villages in the Chinese province of Sichuan last year, she updated her friends with messages and photos of lush forest landscapes, colourful streets and locals wearing traditional Tibetan clothing.

    The largely Tibetan parts of the province have become a popular tourist destination for holidaymakers. But the 22-year-old, on a break from her studies in Europe, told friends she was saddened by what she saw.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Labour plans to consult on use of live facial recognition before wider roll-out

    Policing minister says government will ‘put some parameters’ around its deployment in England

    Labour plans to consult on the use of live facial recognition (LFR) technology before expanding it across England, the new policing minister has told the party’s annual conference.

    Sarah Jones, a Home Office minister, said the government would “put some parameters” over when and where it could be used in future.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Populist threat to rule of law a danger to UK working class, says attorney general

    Richard Hermer aims criticism at Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick at Labour conference event

    Rightwing populists threaten working-class people’s protections under the rule of law, the attorney general has said in his most political intervention yet.

    In a criticism directed squarely at Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick, Richard Hermer said populist politicians posed a threat to the everyday protectionsafforded to people who used the legal system and the courts to right significant wrongs.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Scottish Prison Service admits human rights law breach over death in custody

    Police Scotland and Crown Office also make admissions in court relating to death of Allan Marshall in 2015

    The Scottish Prison Service has admitted breaching human rights law by causing the death of a man who was restrained by 17 officers and has apologised to his family. Police Scotland also apologised to the family.

    In a series of unprecedented admissions, Police Scotland and the Crown Office accepted they similarly breached Allan Marshall’s right to life under article 2 of the European convention on human rights when they failed to carry out an adequate investigation into his death in custody.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Tory candidates must pledge support for leaving ECHR or stand down, says Jenrick

    Shadow justice secretary demands prospective MPs sign contract saying they stand for ‘Conservative values’

    Robert Jenrick has demanded that prospective Conservative candidates should either promise to support leaving the European convention on human rights or stand down.

    As the party continues to debate whether to pledge to withdraw from the international agreement, the shadow justice secretary said he would get candidates “to sign a contract to say they actually stand for Conservative values”.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The consensus is clear: it’s genocide. Now will international law die in Gaza too? | Raji Sourani

    There is a UN convention for exactly this kind of horror: the convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. When will the world act on it?

    • Raji Sourani is the coordinator of the Palestinian legal team at the international criminal court (ICC)

    Israel has committed and continues to commit genocide in Gaza. That is the conclusion of a UN commission report. Since the release of the report last week, Palestine has finally been recognised as an independent state by the UK and a number of other countries. In his announcement at the weekend, Keir Starmer called the death and destruction in Gaza “utterly intolerable”. This recognition comes too late and is still conditional, but has the UK government indeed now stopped tolerating Israel’s devastation of Gaza? Has anything changed for the people there who are being starved and bombed? Far from it.

    Even as the UN publishes the findings of its independent commission, and a flag is raised outside the Palestinian mission in London, mass displacement and killing continues to take place in Gaza City as Israel attacks. As a lawyer who has spent my life believing in the rule of law, this makes me wonder: will Gaza’s destruction also bring with it the death of international law?

    Raji Sourani is the director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, the coordinator of the Palestinian legal team at the international criminal court (ICC) and a member of South Africa’s legal team in the genocide case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ).

    Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah reunited with family after release from prison – video

    The Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah was released from jail on Tuesday, a day after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi pardoned him and five other prisoners. The campaign for Abd el-Fattah’s release was led by his family, including his mother, who was admitted to hospital in London twice after going on hunger strikes trying to secure his release. The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, is also known to have telephoned Sisi three times to lobby for Abd el-Fattah’s release

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah reunited with family after release from prison – video

    The Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah was released from jail on Tuesday, a day after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi pardoned him and five other prisoners. The campaign for Abd el-Fattah’s release was led by his family, including his mother, who was admitted to hospital in London twice after going on hunger strikes trying to secure his release. The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, is also known to have telephoned Sisi three times to lobby for Abd el-Fattah’s release

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah freed from prison

    Writer, who has served six years for sharing a Facebook post, was given a presidential pardon

    The British-Egyptian human rights activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah has been released from jail after serving six years for sharing a Facebook post.

    Egypt’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, granted him his freedom after intensive lobbying by the UK government and pressure from Egypt’s national human rights council.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Conor Gearty obituary

    A skilled and persuasive human rights lawyer who fought for civil liberties in the face of over-reaching anti-terror law

    As a leading authority on counter-terror legislation, Conor Gearty was incensed at the way anti-terror laws are so often enacted to stifle debate and intimidate protest.

    The Labour government’s banning of Palestine Action, he argued, was “preposterous”. He told a podcast for Prospect magazine that the then home secretary, Yvette Cooper, had fallen back on the “usual claim they make in a tight corner”, that “‘you have no idea what I know’ … They calculated the ban would produce not much of a reaction.”

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The ECHR is flawed, but be warned: it would be unwise to entrust human rights to an ‘elective dictatorship’ |

    Brexit removed many checks and balances from the UK government. That’s why leaving the European convention on human rights would be a huge risk

    ‘Humbug”, and “a half-baked scheme to be administered by an unknown court”. Nigel Farage or Robert Jenrick attacking the European convention on human rights (ECHR)? No – Herbert Morrison, leader of the Commons, and William Jowitt, lord chancellor in Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour government, respectively, both arguing that Britain should not accede to the convention.

    Labour was suspicious, fearing that it would prevent nationalisation. It did not. Today, Conservatives and Reform UK fear that it will frustrate immigration control. It need not.

    Vernon Bogdanor is a professor of government at King’s College London. His books include The New British Constitution and Beyond Brexit: Towards a British Constitution

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • MI5 concedes it ‘unlawfully’ obtained data from former BBC journalist

    Revelation relating to then Northern Ireland home affairs correspondent, Vincent Kearney, a ‘matter of grave concern’

    MI5 has conceded it “unlawfully” obtained the communications data of a former BBC journalist, in what was claimed to be an unprecedented admission from the security services.

    The BBC said it was a “matter of grave concern” that the agency had obtained communications data from the mobile phone of Vincent Kearney, a former BBC Northern Ireland home affairs correspondent.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UK politics: No 10 says Starmer found Mandelson’s emails to Epstein ‘reprehensible’ – as it happened

    Despite being repeatedly asked, No 10 declines to say the PM was ‘misled’ by Mandelson

    Stephen Doughty, a Foreign Office minister, is responding to the UQ about Peter Mandelson.

    He starts by making the point that it is the anniversary of the “despicable” 9/11 terrorism attacks.

    Keir Starmer must sack Peter Mandelson without further delay – and come clean about what he knew when, and whether he sanctioned blocking the publication of damaging material.

    UK government documents shouldn’t be hidden from the public just because they are damaging to the Labour party – and by backing Peter Mandelson to the hilt, the prime minister’s own reputation is now on the line.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Pro-Palestine activists call for arrest of Israeli president during UK visit

    Campaign group accuses Isaac Herzog, arriving in UK next week, of aiding and abetting indiscriminate killing in Gaza

    Pro-Palestine activists have requested that an arrest warrant be issued against Israeli President Isaac Herzog for alleged war crimes ahead of his arrival in the UK this week.

    Herzog is accused of aiding and abetting the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza in the request to the director of public prosecutions filed by the Friends of Al-Aqsa campaign group.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UK has ‘not concluded’ Israel carrying out genocide in Gaza, Lammy says

    Government position set out in letter to select committee as No 10 prepares for visit by Israeli president

    The UK has not concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, nor that any of the British-made parts for F-35 jets sold to Israel have directly led to breaches of international humanitarian law, ministers have told parliament.

    Ministers have also rejected calls for an independent audit of UK arms sales, but admitted they were not in a position to say if Israel’s assault in Gaza had led to any breaches of humanitarian law owing to the complexity of the fighting terrain.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.