AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

Although the new Justice Secretary
announced in August that the government
intended to continue with plans to replace
the Human Rights Act (which incorporates
the European Convention on Human Rights
into domestic law) with a British Bill of
Rights, by the end of the year the Attorney
General suggested that concrete proposals
would be deferred until after the EU
referendum process had been completed.
JUSTICE SYSTEM
Calls intensified for a review of cuts to civil
legal aid brought about by the Legal Aid,
Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act
2012 (LASPO), based on their impact on
vulnerable and marginalized people in
various contexts, including inquests,
immigration, welfare, family and housing
law. 1 Official statistics published in June by
the Legal Aid Agency showed that legal help
in civil cases had dropped to one third of pre-
LASPO levels. In July, the UN Committee on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights called
on the government to reassess the impact of
reforms to the legal aid system. The
government failed to establish a review.
COUNTER-TERROR AND SECURITY
Counter-terrorism powers and related policy
initiatives to counter “extremism” continued
to raise concerns.
Definition of terrorism
Despite a Court of Appeal judgment in
January which narrowed the definition of
terrorism, and recurring criticism of the overbroad
statutory definition by the Independent
Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, the Home
Secretary confirmed, in October, that the
government had no intention of changing it.
Administrative controls
In November, Parliament extended the
Terrorism Prevention and Investigation
Measures (TPIM) Act 2011 for five more
years. TPIMs are government-imposed
administrative restrictions on individuals
suspected of involvement in terrorism-related
activity.
The Independent Reviewer’s annual
report, published in November, documented
that new powers to prevent suspected
“foreign terrorist fighters” from travelling were
applied 24 times during 2015, and preexisting
powers to withdraw passports from
British citizens were exercised 23 times, but
that a power available since 2015 to
temporarily exclude returning “foreign
terrorist fighters” had not been used.
“Counter-extremism” policy
Plans for a Counter-Extremism and
Safeguarding Bill were announced in May,
but no concrete legislative proposal had been
tabled by end of year.
NGO research into the statutory “prevent
duty” on certain public bodies, including
schools, to “have due regard to the need to
prevent people from being drawn into
terrorism”, found that the scheme created a
serious risk of violating human rights,
including peaceful exercise of freedom of
expression, and that its application in
educational and health care settings
undermined trust.
In April, the UN Special Rapporteur on the
rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of
association warned that the government’s
approach to “non-violent extremism” risked
violating both freedoms. In July, the
Parliamentary Joint Committee for Human
Rights recommended the use of existing laws
rather than drafting new, unclear legislation.
Drones
In May, the Joint Committee for Human
Rights published its inquiry into the use of
drones for targeted killing. The inquiry
examined the drone strike by the Royal Air
Force in 2015 in al-Raqqa, Syria, killing three
people, including at least one British national,
believed to be members of the armed group
Islamic State (IS). The inquiry called on the
government to clarify its policy of targeted
killings in armed conflict and its role in
targeted killing by other states outside armed
conflict.
382 Amnesty International Report 2016/17