Tag: Dan Squires QC

R (Akbar) v Secretary of the State for Justice

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Court of Appeal: Haddon-Cave, Nicola Davies and Nugee LJJ, [2021] EWCA Civ 898 [2021] 4 WLR 94, 15 June 2021

This was an unsuccessful claim brought under Article 14 ECHR read with Article 5 and/or 8 to Rule 7(1A) of the Prison Rules 1999, which prevented the transfer to open conditions of prisoners in respect of whom deportation orders had been made to take effect on release from lengthy prison sentences. The Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the the Divisional Court (Hickinbottom LJ and Johnson J) essentially on the same grounds as the Divisional Court had relied upon, rejecting the claim that the discrimination in issue was on grounds of nationality (a suspect ground) and applying the “manifestly without reasonable foundation” test, albeit as modified by the Court of Appeal in R (Drexler) v Leicestershire County Council [2020] EWCA Civ 502. Continue reading →

R (Bridges) v CC South Wales Police

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Court of Appeal: Sir Terence Etherton MR, Dame Victoria Sharp P and Singh LJ [2020] EWCA Civ 1058, 11 August 2020

The Court of Appeal allowed the Claimant’s appeal against the decision of the Divisional Court that the Defendant had not breached the PSED in its trial of live automated facial recognition technology (“AFR Locate”), by which the Defendant compared images of members of the public captured by surveillance cameras to images of persons on a watchlist. It was argued on appeal that AFR Locate breached Article 8 ECHR, data protection legislation and the PSED. This note is concerned only with the PSED challenge. The decision is an important one in that it underlines the proactive nature of the PSED and the evidence-gathering obligation it places on public authorities.

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