Jones v Birmingham City Council

This appeal concerns the power of the courts on the application of public authorities to grant injunctions to prevent gang-related violence and drug-dealing activity pursuant to section 34 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009 and to grant injunctions pursuant to Part 1 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. The appeal concerns the question whether article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights, as given effect within the United Kingdom by the Human Rights Act 1998, requires the criminal standard of proof to be satisfied in respect of: proof that a person has engaged in or has encouraged or assisted gang-related violence or gang-related drug dealing activity within section 34(2) of the 2009 Act; and proof that a person has engaged or threatens to engage in anti-social behaviour within section 1(1) of the 2014 Act. Section 34(2) of the 2009 Act and section 1(2) of the 2014 Act provide expressly that the court must be satisfied that these respective conditions are met on the balance of probabilities. It is established that such applications under the 2009 Act and the 2014 Act are civil proceedings, both as a matter of domestic law and for the purposes of the ECHR. The appellant argues that the right to a fair hearing under article 6(1) of the ECHR requires the application of the criminal standard of proof in proceedings brought by public authorities to obtain injunctive relief under these provisions because of the potentially significant effects upon a person’s right to respect for his family life, private life and home, and upon that person’s rights of freedom of association and expression. The Supreme Court considered that the Strasbourg authorities to which they had been referred provide no support for the view that a fair hearing under article 6(1) requires the application of the criminal standard of proof in circumstances such as those in the present appeal. It was not the function of the domestic court to undertake a substantial development of Convention rights. Rather, it was intended that the rights enforced domestically under the HRA 1998 and those enforced in Strasbourg should, in general, correspond. In the case of the 2009 Act and the 2014 Act, Parliament has expressly provided that the standard of proof applicable to the proof of condition 1 shall be the civil standard. The Supreme Court concluded that Article 6(1) of the ECHR does not require the criminal standard of proof to be satisfied in respect of (a) proof that a person has engaged in or has encouraged or assisted gang-related violence or gang-related drug dealing activity within section 34(2) of the 2009 Act or (b) proof that a person has engaged or threatens to engage in anti-social behaviour within section 1(1) of the 2014 Act. It considered that under Part 4 of the 2009 Act and Part 1 of the 2014 Act Parliament had devised statutory schemes which conform with the requirements of a fair hearing under article 6 of the ECHR. The appeal was dismissed.