Supreme Court Attacks Independent Safeguarding Authority
The UK Supreme Court has spoken out against the Independent Safeguarding Authority‘s (ISA) Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS):
“The widespread concern about the compulsory registration rules for all those having regular contact with children, as proposed by the Government in September 2009, demonstrates that there is a real risk that, unless child protection procedures are proportionate and contain adequate safeguards, they will not merely fall foul of the Convention [on human rights], but they will rebound to the disadvantage of the very group they are designed to shield, and will undermine public confidence in the laudable exercise of protecting the vulnerable,” wrote Lord Neuberger, one of the panel of five judges considering the case.
It’s interesting to see the UK’s supreme legal body agrees that the direction the ISA is going in won’t just end up disadvantaging the vulnerable groups it’s supposed to ‘safeguard’, but that it will actually breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). I really hope Sir Roger Singleton, Ed Balls, anyone with influence over the ISA appreciates the significance of this, but I doubt it.
The ISA must be abolished. Only then can agencies and resources already tasked with protecting children and ‘vulnerable’ adults actually do their jobs properly. It’s reassuring to see that the Supreme Court understands this, but it’ll take more than this ruling to end the agency.
Gary McKinnon Betrayed by High Court
Gary McKinnon’s appeal to the nascent UK Supreme Court against extradition to the United States has already been turned down:
The High Court ruled the case was not of “general public importance” to go to the UK’s highest court.
Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon, 43, of Wood Green, London, is accused of breaking into the US’s military computer system.
Mr McKinnon, who has Asperger’s syndrome, insists he was just seeking evidence of UFOs.
In July he lost a High Court bid to avoid extradition.
Giving the court’s decision on Friday, Lord Justice Stanley Burnton, who heard Mr McKinnon’s latest appeal earlier this year with Mr Justice Wilkie, said extradition was “a lawful and proportionate response” to his alleged offending.
There was no real prospect of him succeeding with his claim under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights that extradition would breach his right to a private and family life.
Nor did the court think, on the evidence it had seen, that he had an arguable case that extradition to the US would result in a breach of his Article 3 right not to be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment.
What we have is a terrible situation where a man’s rights are being systematically violated by anti-terror legislation, which was never intended for cases such as this, and wasn’t even voted on by Parliament. We have a Home Secretary who admits he could block the extradition but who prefers not to set a precedent for genuine terrorists in the future. We have a High Court which believes that this situation doesn’t count as inhuman or degrading treatment for someone with Asperger’s Syndrome.
The US hasn’t made a case against him because they don’t have to under the 2003 Extradition Act, and the Department of Public Prosecutions itself doesn’t think the case would stand in the US (and that it definitely would not in the UK. So why is Gary McKinnon now forced to try the European Court of Human Rights to prevent this mean-spirited and entirely unnecessary extradition?
