Politics

Election fever

For those who’ve managed to enjoy a winter break, welcome back to backlog Britain. According to the latest available statistics, the prison population currently stands at 87,549; the Crown Court caseload at over 65,000; magistrates’ courts’ at 340,102; the asylum processing backlog remains at 98,599 despite recent claims by the government to have cleared 112,000 cases (most of which were “legacy” backlog cases and the methods used to clear them have been questioned). Meanwhile the latest figure for the waiting list for NHS elective care is at 7.61 million. The rivers are flooding and some of them are full of as much something as the chief executives of the water companies; the railways are late, the roads are blocked, and the wars, famines, pestilences and so forth continue around the world.

But things are looking up, sort of. We begin what will almost certainly be an election year with exciting publicity campaigns by the two main parties designed to reassure the voters that they have the answers to all the nation’s problems.

Both Labour and the Conservatives have emerged from years of moral scandal, ideological turmoil and party disunity, but the Conservatives have been in power long enough to have caused many of the problems which now require solutions. Other parties may not escape blame either, as the Conservatives cast about for mud to fling. Both Keir Starmer and Ed Davey have been challenged for failing when they had the chance to do something to help the victims of the Post Office Fujitsu Horizon Miscarriage of Justice Scandal, Starmer while Director of Public Prosecutions (although these were mostly private prosecutions over which he had no oversight) and Davey, with more reason, because he was for a while the relevant government minister supposedly charged with oversight of the government-owned Post Office. He is currently leader of the Liberal Democrats, known to voters (if at all) for his goofy publicity stunts at recent by-elections. Starmer is now also being castigated for his pro bono legal work, representing those condemned to suffer the cruel and unusual penalty of death, in jurisdictions which continue to impose it, for admittedly heinous crimes.

Inquiries

Post office scandal

Following the broadcast into the nation’s living rooms of ITV’s drama series, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, the government and press have suddenly woken up to a scandal that was hitherto the domain of a few doughty campaigners and a few stubborn journalists and investigators. Or so it seems. Even the statutory public inquiry, whose proceedings are streamed online, has not had the same galvanising effect on the machinery of government, for whom some damp squib of a statement that “lessons will be learned” after the eventual publication of a final report is simply no longer going to do. (But, promises, promises… Only as good as the government that gave them.)

The media

There’s been a lot of name calling and credit claiming in the press and social media, along the lines of “where were you when this story broke?” Yes, ITV did the drama, but the BBC was there long before, with a radio series and two Panorama documentaries (one back in 2015). For the record, Weekly Notes first covered this story in June 2020, promoting the radio series, presented by Nick Wallis, who later wrote the book (see Weekly Notes, 1 June 2020). At the time there was little coverage in the mainstream or legal press, but Computer Weekly from 2009 (Rebecca Thomson and Karl Flinders) and subsequently Private Eye from 2011 (Richard Brooks) had investigated claims long before the case eventually hit the courts. ICLR published all the judgment transcripts, of course, and even reported a couple of them in the Weekly Law Reports (see Bates v Post Office [2017] EWHC 2844 (QB); [2017] 4 WLR 221, QBD and R v Hamilton (Josephine) [2021] EWCA Crim 21; [2021] 4 WLR 115; [2021] 1 Cr App R 17; [2021] WLR(D) 66, CA).

In January 2021 we publicised on here a series of four webinars organised by journalist Louise Tickle of the Transparency Project, and supported by Bath Publishing. One of them featured Nick Wallis, and it turns out (as reported in The Guardian) that this encounter is what led to his deal with Bath Publishing, who published his The Great Post Office Scandal, which was in turn reviewed in The Times. That the mainstream media are now all over it is, of course, fantastic. That the government is finally now taking action to deal with the problem is a tribute, perhaps, to the power of public scrutiny, and the enduring need for transparency and freedom of expression to make such scrutiny possible.

See also, Press Gazette: Attention to Post Office Horizon IT scandal follows 14 years of dogged journalism

Recent developments raise a number of interesting issues:

Parliament v the courts

The government’s proposal is that it should legislate to make all the wrongful convictions vanish in a puff of smoke, so that the wrongly convicted subpostmasters can be given proper compensation. Ideally, convictions imposed by courts should be quashed by appellate courts, in most cases the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division. For the government to come along and legislate to make facts that supported convictions suddenly not be facts, or not be sufficient to support convictions, is eerily similar to the government legislating to declare Rwanda a safe country, in immigration (asylum, non-refoulement) terms, notwithstanding a factual ruling by the Supreme Court to the contrary. It doesn’t seem quite right. As a legislator, the government should be laying down principles of law, and the courts should be applying, or disapplying them to the facts of any given case or cases. For the government to find facts in advance or in arrears, overriding the courts’ fact finding function, seems to sit ill with the doctrine of the separation of powers.

A better approach would seem to be for the government, by legislation or otherwise (perhaps by altering the powers of the Criminal Cases Review Commission), to enable a collective appeal, to the CACD, of all the unresolved criminal convictions of subpostmasters, and for the court to make a collective judgment overturning all the appeals on grounds of abuse of process.

The government’s “blanket exoneration” proposal has been questioned by some judges, and by a former Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken Macdonald KC, in The Times: I was a prosecutor. Parliament deciding Post Office guilt is dangerous. He says the CCRC

“has too narrow a remit, only allowed to submit cases it considers the appeal court is likely to overturn. This mind-numbing calculation may minimise the number of cases reaching overworked judges, but only at the price of innocents sitting in prison cells. Reasonable grounds for believing that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred should be enough.”

He suggests these cases could be “reviewed very swiftly and fast-tracked through the system in batches”, with the courts retaining their proper oversight role.

Joshua Rozenberg, in a piece entitled Innocent postmasters to be cleared, asks “But what about the guilty ones?” He too thinks the court should decide.

However, Prof Richard Moorhead is sceptical about the ability of the CACD to do justice in this particular situation, given the limitations of the court and appeal process: How soon is now… a quick post on what’s wrong with the Post Office Appeal cases. An earlier paper from the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, outlines problems with the current appeal system.

The law: computer evidence

Mass exoneration will not cure a fundamental problem with the law that led to many of these convictions. That’s because those convictions relied on evidence from Horizon that was assumed to be reliable by virtue of a common law presumption. They were unable to displace that presumption (and essentially ‘prove’ their innocence) without the technical or forensic accounting evidence to the contrary (which they could not afford to obtain) and without full disclosure of potentially relevant evidence by Post Office prosecutors (which we know was not provided).

The old common law presumption was initially reversed by section 69 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 (which required the prosecution to show that a computer was operating correctly before evidence from it could be relied on), and then restored by section 60 of the Youth and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, which repealed section 69 of PACE.

There is a good explanation of the presumption and its effect by David Allen Green: “Computer says guilty” — an introduction to the evidential presumption that computers are operating correctly.

And in relation to the wider failings of the law in this case: How the legal system made it so easy for the Post Office to destroy the lives of the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses — and how the legal system then made it so hard for them to obtain justice

Paul Marshall, a barrister involved in some of the subpostmasters’ criminal appeals, has posted (via LinkedIn) a paper, co-authored with a number of experts, entitled Recommendations for the Probity of Computer Evidence, which goes into the problem in more detail, which he submitted to then Under Secretary of State for Justice, Alex Chalk MP, now the Lord Chancellor, back in 2020.

Mediation?

Following the recent decision of the Court of Appeal in Churchill v Merthyr Tydfil County BC [2023] EWCA Civ 1416; [2023] WLR(D) 498  — that the court has power to stay proceedings to permit the option of an alternative dispute resolution process offered or suggested by one party to be tried or exhausted first — one cannot help wondering whether, had it been decided at the time when Alan Bates and 554 other claimants began their group litigation against the Post Office, the court (or a less robust judge) might have acceded to an application by the Post Office for a stay on the grounds that its own mediation process had not been fully engaged with or exhausted. Put it this way, you wouldn’t put it past them. In fact, the POL mediation scheme turned out to have been a bit of a sham, more obstructive than inquisitorial, and one hopes any judge, even faced with the Churchill authority, would not have stayed proceedings on account of it.

For a more detailed look at Churchill and its implications, see David Burrows: Power to stay civil proceedings for alternative dispute resolution

Litigation funding

Another recent decision has thrown another aspect of the Bates litigation into doubt, namely the funding. The decision of the Supreme Court in the Paccar case (R (PACCAR Inc) v Competition Appeal Tribunal [2023] UKSC 28; [2023] 1 WLR 2594) over the definition of what constitutes an unenforceable “damages-based agreement” might, had it occurred before the Bates litigation began, have made it more difficult or even impossible for the 555 claimants to have pursued their incredibly complex and challenging case against the very determined defence tactics of the Post Office.

Alan Bates himself has written about this in the Financial Times: Why I wouldn’t beat the Post Office today. He explains how:

“ The [Paccar] judgment — on a technical challenge brought by a group formerly found to be cartelists and seeking to exploit poorly drafted legislation — makes litigation funding almost impossible in the UK, and risks unwinding years of historic judgments against proven corporate wrongdoers who have harmed people and small businesses”.

The lawyers

The conduct of the lawyers involved on behalf of the Post Office has been under scrutiny. Prof Richard Moorhead, in particular, has been covering this, and a recent post on his Lawyer Watch blog reminds us that lawyers have been implicated in the scandal from the very start. See: Post Office Scandal: Where were the lawyers? (A primer)

Legal Futures reports that the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) “could take action against solicitors over misconduct in the Post Office scandal before the public inquiry ends but has yet to see evidence that requires it”. Although initially the SRA said it would await the outcome of the inquiry before swooping on the baddies, it now suggests that if enough evidence emerges to justify earlier action, it would contemplate doing so forthwith. Presumably, to prevent any ongoing misconduct, if such were detected.

The police

Scotland Yard are now investigating “potential fraud offences” committed in the handling of the Horizon IT scandal. By prosecuting or pursuing subpostmasters with claims for huge sums on the erroneous basis that they were dishonestly appropriated “shortfalls”, the Post Office was in effect obtaining the funds fraudulently. Earlier this month a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police told The Times that officers were “investigating potential fraud offences arising out of these prosecutions”, relating to “monies recovered from sub-postmasters as a result of prosecutions or civil actions”.

The Metropolitan Police Service is already investigating two former Fujitsu experts, who were witnesses in the trials, for perjury and perverting the course of justice. See The Times, Horizon scandal: Police investigate Post Office ‘potential fraud’

The taxpayer

The Post Office is owned by the government, but it still pays (or ought to pay) taxes. However, the investigative expert Dan Neidle of Tax Policy Associates says that

“The Post Office has claimed a £934m tax deduction for its compensation payments to the victims of the Post Office scandal. That’s outrageous — and also unlawful. The consequence is that the Post Office has underpaid its corporation tax by over £100m over the last five years, and may no longer be solvent.”

Analysis of its accounts over the last decade suggests that it has treated the compensation it pays to postmasters as tax deductible. That, says Dan, is not correct.

It is doubtful if anyone will be in the least surprised at this latest example of POL attempting to slide round the normal moral and regulatory expectations of ethical business practice. The matter has been reported in the Financial Times: Post Office ‘faces £100mn tax bill’ and potential insolvency. It says that “While businesses can claim corporate tax deductions for legitimate business expenses, costs related to penalties or fines are not generally tax deductible.” However, it indicates that some tax experts don’t regard the matter as clear-cut.

In any event, since the Post Office is owned and supported by the government, the person who will end up paying for the compensation is always going to be the same, ie the taxpayer.

Who else will pay?

Should Fujitsu? Yes, say lots of people. Their role, as supplier to the Post Office of the fateful (and fatally flawed) Horizon IT system, seems to have largely escaped scrutiny over the years, but is now at last beginning to get the spotlight. They will need to answer to the inquiry. There is talk of some staff being prosecuted. A senior Fujitsu officer, its Europe director Paul Patterson, has just given evidence to the Business and Trade select committee of MPs, admitting that the company has a “moral obligation” to contribute to compensation for sub-postmasters.

“We did have bugs and errors in the system and we did help the Post Office in their prosecutions of the sub-postmasters. For that we are truly sorry.”

This is an improvement on their position back in 2020 when responding to questions in a letter to Darren Jones MP, as chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee:

“Q. Do you accept that local Horizon terminals could be accessed and altered centrally?

A. Yes, local Horizon terminals could be accessed and altered centrally.

Q. Why did it take a highly expensive court case to establish these facts?

A. This is a matter for the Post Office; they determined the litigation strategy and their conduct towards the sub- postmasters.”

You couldn’t ask for more thorough hand-washing even at the height of the covid pandemic.

Paula Vennells: from CEO to CBE

CBE stands for Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and it was the honour conferred upon Paula Vennells, CEO of the Post Office, in the 2019 new year’s honours list, shortly before she stepped down to take up other public and corporate appointments. Later that year a judgment of the High Court found the Horizon IT system — the accuracy of which she had stubbornly defended throughout the earlier campaigns, investigations, mediations and compensation schemes — to be fundamentally flawed.

After more than a million people recently signed an online petition calling for her to do so, Vennells has offered to relinquish her CBE. But she cannot do so without the approval of the King himself, on the advice of the Forfeiture Committee an ad hoc committee of the Cabinet Office (for which, as it happens, Vennells served for a while as a non-executive director after receiving her CBE). O how the revolving door becomes it! And it beggars belief, perhaps literally, that Vennells, who was once a part-time curate, was seriously considered for appointment as the Bishop of London.

But Vennells is far from the only person to blame. We’ve mentioned Ed Davey, who was the relevant government minister for a while: but over the entire period of the scandal there have been some 17 government ministers, numerous senior civil servants, Post Office board directors, and others who, had they bothered to listen or ask a few awkward questions, and not been ear-washed with bland assurances from Fujitsu and the Post Office about the robustness and infallibility of the Horizon system, might have done something to help.

Lest we forget….

The Post Office scandal isn’t the only one in town. And its victims are by no means the only ones awaiting compensation or redress. There are also (to name but three recent scandals):

Windrush

The Home Office scandal that impacted the Windrush generation is not over. Actors, musicians and campaigners have added their names to a new drive to put pressure on the Home Office to speed up its payment of compensation to people affected by the Windrush scandal, according to The Guardian.

An open letter presented by the campaign group Justice4Windrush urges the Prime Minister to appoint an independent neutral body to oversee the Windrush Compensation Scheme and to pledge delivery of full compensation to Windrush victims as part of its forthcoming general election manifesto.

Infected blood

People affected by the contaminated blood scandal have called on ministers to also address their fight for compensation alongside government moves to fix the injustice suffered by sub-post office operators, according to The Guardian. Although While interim compensation payments of £100,000 have been made to victims and bereaved partners, the government is apparently waiting for the final report of Sir Brian Langstaff’s inquiry, expected in March 2024, before responding to his proposals for more complete compensation.

Grenfell Tower

Last year a “global settlement” was reached in 900 civil claims in the High Court to provide a compensation sum of about £150m, against various defendants, who included the Home Office, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and firms involved in the construction or refurbishment of the tower block. But there remains the possibility of criminal proceedings which may depend on the final report of the inquiry chaired by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, which is not expected until later this year.

Now for some other news…

Open justice

Family court reporting pilots

From 29 January 2024, the Transparency Implementation Group (TIG) Reporting Pilot will be extended to another 16 courts across the country. The original pilot was launched a year ago, in January 2023 and covered courts in Cardiff, Leeds and Carlisle. The courts involved will now be greatly expanded to also cover:

  • North West: Liverpool, Manchester
  • North East: West Yorkshire, Kingston-upon-Hull
  • Midlands: Nottingham, Stoke, Derby, Birmingham
  • London: Central Family Court, East London, West London
  • South West: Dorset, Truro
  • South East: Luton, Guildford, Milton Keynes

As in the original pilot, journalists and legal bloggers who can attend family court hearings held in private will be allowed to write about them by default, subject to a Transparency Order that protects children from being identifiable. At first, only public law proceedings will be included for the new pilot courts, but eventually private law will also be included.

Financial remedy proceedings are to be covered in a separate pilot, also due to begin at the end of this month. FRC proceedings concern financial issues that need to be resolved after the breakdown of a marriage or civil partnership, including financial support for children. As part of the pilot, cause lists for all FRC courts, including cases heard at the Royal Courts of Justice, will name the parties and state that the proceedings involve financial remedies. However, it’s clear that the intention in the new Pilot is for hearings to still be private and for parties and any children to have their identities protected.

For more information, particularly if you are interested in blogging, see the Transparency Project blog:

Public guidance published

HMCTS have issued guidance entitled “How you can attend or access courts or tribunals — a guide for members of the public”. It is not the “charter” promised in the Ministry of Justice’s response to the Justice Select Committee’s consultation, Open justice: court reporting in the digital age, and again in the MoJ’s own subsequent Consultation on Open Justice. Moreover it is too imprecise and its content too insubstantial to constitute something on which a court observer could rely to know and enforce their rights to attend or access particular types of hearing, to take notes, and to obtain information necessary to select, understand and comment on particular cases. In addition, it appears to contain some serious inaccuracies, as legal blogger Mouse in the Court discovered.

For a full review, see the Court and Tribunal Observers’ Network: Fine words — but new HMCTS public guidance falls short

HMCTS publicised the guide via X/Twitter, in a simplified version that highlights its vagueness and inaccuracy still further:

Consultations

Ownership of land

The government is consulting on the transparency of land ownership when trusts are involved in the ownership structure. This consultation seeks views on improving transparency of land ownership involving trusts. It seeks specific views on options to widen access to trust information held on the Register of Overseas Entities (ROE). It also seeks general views on how ownership of land involving trusts can be made more transparent.

For more information, see Transparency of land ownership involving trusts

You can also Respond online

Archiving of wills

The government has launched a consultation on the Storage and retention of original will documents.

At present all of the wills and documents submitted in support of probate (legal authority to manage larger estates of deceased persons) are preserved indefinitely in the original paper form. These records date back to 1858. This consultation paper proposes a reform that will enable older wills and documents to be converted to a digital form and then destroyed, with the wills of famous persons preserved. Views are sought on the proposals from interested parties.

Our view is that will documents ought to be retained in their original form, and that The National Archives are well placed to manage this, while also providing digital scanning and access services. It is impossible to determine in advance what may in future be of social, historic or scientific interest, or who might eventually be “famous”; and the time-consuming task of selecting those worthy of retention while discarding the rest may be subject to unconscious or conventional biases.

Recent case summaries from ICLR

A selection of recently published WLR Daily case summaries from ICLR.4:

ARBITRATION — Costs — Security for costs: Czech Republic v Diag Human SE, 21 Dec 2023 [2023] EWCA Civ 1518; [2024] WLR(D) 11, CA

CHILDREN — Child support maintenance — Enforcement: R (Ingold) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, 15 Dec 2023 [2023] EWHC 3207 (Admin); [2023] WLR(D) 530, KBD

CRIME — Sentence — Assisting unlawful immigration: R v Ahmed (Abdul), 21 Dec 2023 [2023] EWCA Crim 1521; [2024] WLR(D) 9, CA

ENVIRONMENT — Protection — Climate change: R (Global Feedback Ltd) v Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 21 Dec 2023 [2023] EWCA Civ 1549; [2024] WLR(D) 14, CA

EVIDENCE — Witness — Examination of witnesses: Skatteforvaltningen v Solo Capital Partners LLP, 12 Jan 2024 [2024] EWHC 19 (Comm); [2024] WLR(D) 15, KBD

HEALTH AND SAFETY — Railways — Rolling stock: R (West Coast Railway Co Ltd) v Office of Rail and Road, 22 Dec 2023 [2023] EWHC 3338 (Admin); [2024] WLR(D) 3, KBD

INTERNATIONAL LAW — Sanctions — Economic sanctions: Phillips v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, 12 Jan 2024 [2024] EWHC 32 (Admin); [2024] WLR(D) 13, KBD

LAND REGISTRATION — Registration — Adverse possession: Clapham v Narga, 22 Dec 2023 [2023] EWHC 3337 (Ch); [2024] WLR(D) 6, Ch D

PASSING OFF — Ingredients of tort — Damage: Easygroup Ltd v Easy Live (Services) Ltd, 20 Dec 2023 [2023] EWCA Civ 1508; [2024] WLR(D) 4, CA

PRISONS — Prisoners’ rights — Release on licence: R (Sneddon) v Secretary of State for Justice, 21 Dec 2023 [2023] EWHC 3303 (Admin); [2024] WLR(D) 7, KBD

REVENUE — Search, right of — Property obtained through unlawful conduct: R (Kingdom Corporate Ltd) v Revenue and Customs Comrs, 21 Dec 2023 [2023] EWHC 3315 (Admin); [2023] WLR(D) 532, DC

Recent case comments on ICLR

Expert commentary from firms, chambers and legal bloggers recently indexed on ICLR.4 includes:

UK Human Rights Blog: A newcomer to the world of injunctions: Barking and Dagenham London Borough Council v Persons Unknown [2023] UKSC 47; [2023] WLR(D) 513, SC(E)

Lawyer Watch: Arbitration and the rule of law: keeping it in the family: Federal Republic of Nigeria v Process & Industrial Developments Ltd [2023] EWHC 2638 (Comm); [2023] WLR(D) 464, KBD

Law & Religion UK: Abortion clinics, Public Space Protection Orders and the ECHR: Tossici-Bolt: Tossici-Bolt & Anor v Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council [2023] EWHC 3229 (Admin), KBD

International and Travel Law Blog: The Assessment of Damages for Negligent Cosmetic Surgery Abroad: Mann v Towarzystwo Ubezpieczen Inter Polska SA [2023] EWHC 2794 (KB), KBD

Out-Law: AI cannot be an inventor under UK patent law, rules Supreme Court: Thaler v Comptroller General of Patents, Designs And Trade Marks [2023] UKSC 49, SC(E)

Local Government Lawyer: High Court allows judicial review against council over failure to support child trafficking victim: R (AM) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 3034 (Admin); [2023] WLR(D) 525, KBD

International and Travel Law Blog: Griffiths v TUI: Supreme Court Unanimously Allows Appeal: Griffiths v TUI (UK) Ltd [2023] UKSC 48; [2023] 3 WLR 1204, SC(E)

Park Square Barristers: Marriage and beneficial interests in POCA —R v Thompson (Rebecca) [2023] EWCA Crim 1244, CA

New Square Chambers: Supreme Court clarified the meaning of a relevant fact being “deliberately concealed”, with reference to the postponement of limitation by s.32 Limitation Act 1980: Potter v Canada Square Operations Ltd [2023] UKSC 41; [2023] 3 WLR 963, SC(E)

Tanfield chambers: Hippersley — an important point: Adriatic Land 5 Ltd v Long Leaseholders at Hippersley Point [2023] UKUT 271 (LC), UT

Nearly Legal: Upper Tribunal on ‘person managing’ and ‘person in control’ of HMO for an RRO: Phoebe Cottam & Ors v Lowe Management Limited [2023] UKUT 306 (LC), UT

Nearly Legal: Failed succession, residential care and human rights incompatibility: Dudley Metropolitan Council v Mailley [2023] EWCA Civ 1246; [2023] WLR(D) 443, CA

Law & Religion UK: Vicarious liability for sexual assault yet again: JXH v The Vicar, Parochial Church Council and Churchwardens of the Parish Church of Holcombe Rogus [2023] EWHC 3221 (KB), KBD

Doughty Street Chambers: What is the appropriate level of damages when a property is unfit for human habitation? Dezitter v Hammersmith and Fulham Homes 07 Nov 2023 (unreported), County Ct

Clinical Negligence Law: Material Contribution and Holmes v Poeton Holdings Limited: One Issue Down, More to Go: Holmes v Poeton Holdings Ltd [2023] EWCA Civ 1377; [2023] WLR(D) 486, CA

Free Movement: Home Office ordered to pay £20,000 for 60 days’ false imprisonment: Oluponle v Home Office [2023] EWHC 3188 (KB), KBD

Cloisters: A blow — possibly fatal — to the IWGB’s quest for union recognition with Deliveroo: R (Independent Workers Union of Great Britain) v Central Arbitration Committee [2023] UKSC 43, SC(E)

Electronic Immigration Network: Court of Appeal examines procedural unfairness in EEA family permit case and holds FTT acted unfairly on remittances: Abdi v Entry Clearance Officer [2023] EWCA Civ 1455, CA

And finally…

Tweet of the week

… may not have a partridge in a pear tree, but it has several judges leaping on and off differently constituted benches. Quite the party game for the festive break.

That’s it for now. Thanks for all your tweets and toots and threads. May your blue sky remain unclouded.

This post was written by Paul Magrath, Head of Product Development and Online Content. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of ICLR as an organisation.

Featured image: Frozen prospects (Shutterstock)