UK Law Articles
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The Times
September 26 2000
Rebecca Money-Kirle looks at the implications of the definitive articles
Business affected across the board
The Act will have extraordinarily broad implications for business. Fundamental rights of companies and individuals are protected. Regulators will be more accountable, so that legal challenges of unfair or heavy-handed decisions will have added weight.
Generally, all regulatory decisions must comply with the Convention: Department of Trade and Industry licensing, City regulation, professional standards regulation, tax tribunal proceedings, planning inquiries, policing of petrol pickets, competition regulation, criminal prosecutions, employee relations, health and safety, industry and environmental regulation will be directly affected. Regulators' breaches of Convention rights could lead to damages and court orders quashing decisions.
Article 6 of the Convention guarantees fairness in court, tribunal and some administrative proceedings. Criminal prosecutions invoke additional safeguards, such as the right against self-incrimination, famously relied upon by Ernest Saunders against the UK in the European Court of Human Rights. Parnes, Ronson and Lyons look set to challenge their convictions after similar rulings in Strasbourg last week.
Recent legislation, such as the Competition Act 1998 and the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, aims to bring law into line with Article 6. In other areas, non-compliance is widespread: a recent Scottish case suggests that planning inquiries are not independent, breaching Article 6, calling into question numerous commercial planning decisions.
Freedom of expression (Article 10) protects against media and advert-ising censorship and will be relied on as a defence to libel and defamation allegations; proportionate interference is permitted in the wider public interest. A balance must also be struck between privacy and family life: journalism interfering with privacy must be in the wider public interest. Inevitably, judges will have an increasingly political role, deciding the merits and motality of censorship.
Commercial property rights protected by the Convention include shares, contractual rights, patents and other business interests. State interference, eg, competition regulation affecting existing contracts, amendment of commercial licences and so on, will be in breach if not prescribed in law, proportionate and in the general, or public, interest.
Employee and union rights are also affected. In unfair or constructive dismissal claims, courts and tribunals must consider Convention rights. Protection of privacy and family rights prevents covert telephone and e-mail monitoring, although new legislation under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 allows such activity in narrowly defined circumstances.
Freedom of expression and religion (Article 9) will have an impact on compulsory dress codes. Freedom of assembly and association will bolster rights of unions, pickets and protesters. Reticence towards overt restraint of recent petrol blockades may have been related to the Act's imminence.
- The author is a solicitor with SJ Berwin & Co.
