“Due to the political situation, dispatching of all mail products to Syria has been suspended.”
“Further to my previous email, we have not been able to conclusively determine whether at any time [Royal Mail Group] were aware (or should have been aware) of the route via Jordan, nor is it clear whether this remains a viable route. The IB Circular 126 (15.07.2013) provides an explanation as to why services were suspended back in 2012. We have not discovered anything to suggest the rationale was influenced by the sanctions position of the UK government.”
“(1) Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. (2) There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.” ii) A1P1 which provide: “Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law. The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a state to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties.”
“It is necessary to determine: (1) whether the objective of the measure is sufficiently important to justify the limitation of a protected right; (2) whether the measure is rationally connected to the objective; (3) whether a less intrusive measure could have been used without unacceptably compromising the achievement of the objective; and (4) whether the measure’s contribution to the objective outweighs the effects on the rights of those to whom it applies.”
“Various expressions have been used in the case law to describe the quality of the judicial scrutiny called for when considering the proportionality of an interference with a Convention right: ‘heightened’, ‘anxious’, ‘exacting’, and so on. These expressions are necessarily imprecise because their practical effect will depend on the context. In particular, it will depend on the significance of the right, the degree to which it is interfered with, and the range of factors capable of justifying that interference, which may vary from none at all ( article 3 ) to very wide ranging considerations indeed: article 8 . But the legal principle is clear enough. The court must test the adequacy of the factual basis claimed for the decision: is it sufficiently robust having regard to the interference with Convention rights which is involved? It must consider whether the professed objective can be said to be necessary, in the sense that it reflects a pressing social need. It must review the rationality of the supposed connection between the objective and the means employed: is it capable of contributing systematically to the desired objective, or its impact on the objective arbitrary? The court must consider whether some less onerous alternative would have been available without unreasonably impairing the objective. The court is the ultimate arbiter of the appropriate balance between two incommensurate values: the Convention rights engaged and the interests of the community relied on to justify interfering with it. But the court is not usually concerned with remaking the decision-maker’s assessment of the evidence if it was an assessment reasonably open to her. Nor, on a matter dependent on a judgment capable of yielding more than one answer, is the court concerned with remaking the judgment of the decision-maker about the relative advantages and disadvantages of the course selected, or of pure policy choices (e.g. do we wish to engage with Iran at all?). The court does not make the substantive decision in place of the executive. On all of these matters, in determining what weight to give to the evidence, the court is entitled to attach special weight to the judgments and assessments of a primary decision-maker with special institutional competence.”
“(1) ‘[A] state can, consistently with the Convention, adopt general measures which apply to pre-defined situations regardless of the individual facts of each case even if this might result in individual hard cases’ (para 106). (2) The European court attaches particular importance to ‘The quality of the parliamentary and judicial review of the necessity of the measure’ (para 108). In that regard, the court made clear at paras 115–116 the importance which it attaches to judicial consideration of proportionality issues in the light of the Convention case law. (3) ‘It is also relevant to take into account the risk of abuse if a general measure were to be relaxed, that being a risk which is primarily for the state to assess’ (para 108). (4) ‘A general measure has been found to be a more feasible means of achieving the legitimate aim than a provision allowing a case-by-case examination, when the latter would give rise to a risk of significant uncertainty, of litigation, expense and delay as well as of discrimination and arbitrariness’ (para 108). (5) ‘[The] more convincing the general justifications for the general measure are, the less importance the [European] court will attach to its impact in the particular case’ (para 109). (6) ‘The central question as regards such measures is not … whether less restrictive rules should have been adopted or, indeed, whether the state could prove that, without the prohibition, the legitimate aim would not be achieved. Rather the core issue is whether, in adopting the general measure and striking the balance it did, the legislature acted within the margin of appreciation afforded to it’ (para 110).”
“This approach seems to me not only contrary to the reasoning in the recent decision of this House in R (SB) v Governors of Denbigh High School[2007] 1 AC 100 but quite impractical… Either the refusal infringed the applicants’ Convention rights or it did not. If it did, no display of human rights learning by the Belfast City Council would have made the decision lawful. If it did not, it would not matter if the councillors had never heard of article 10 or the First Protocol.” iv) In any event, as the Court of Appeal noted in Dalston at [208]: “The difficulty with this line of argument is that … the proportionality assessment required by the court is not concerned with the decision-making process by the Secretary of State. It is a question of substance for the court to decide in the light of all the material before it.”