The Press Association has a few more of the legal details concerning Brian Haw's Judicial Review in the High Court of the controversial Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 Designated Area around Parliament and beyond.
'" Allowing his application for judicial review, Lady Justice Smith, sitting with Mr Justice McCombe and Mr Justice Simon, said the new law did not catch Mr Haw because of a drafting error.She said: "If parliament wishes to criminalise any particular activity, it must do so in clear terms. "If it wishes to do so, parliament can amend this act."
Home Office lawyers accepted that the original drafting of the 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, which was passed in April and introduced the demo clampdown, was flawed.
The court heard an attempt was made by the Home Office to rectify the problem in June through an order which stated that the law applied to all demonstrators whether "starting" or "continuing" their protests.'
The discrepancy in the wording "on the face of the Act" and in the
Statutory Instrument 2005 No. 1537, The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (Designated Area) Order 2005
was a source of puzzlement and confusion.
Now it seems that this was a deliberate attempt by the Home Office to sneak in an illegal "correction" as they saw it, one which the High Court has taken a dim view of.
'But the judges ruled today that this type of secondary legislation could not be used to catch Mr Haw, who has been protesting in Parliament Square since June 2001.Lady Justice Smith said she was "surprised" that it had been suggested that such an order could be used "to criminalise conduct which would not otherwise be criminal".
She said the court could not take into account statements made in parliament making it clear that the 2005 Act was meant to catch Mr Haw because the wording of the legislation was "neither obscure nor ambiguous".'
Other vague promises made in Parliament, that the legislation would not currtail peaceful protests also did not materialise in the Act as passed into law, and excessive and illogical extent of the Designated Area was eventually revealed, with no press release publicity.
If Parliament had done its job properly, and actually scrutinised the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 properly, in detail, line by line, then this legal mess might not have happened.
This High Court Judicial Review only seems to apply to Brian Haw, and not to the rest of us, who may still fall foul of the law, if we wear a T-shirt, or a badge or a wristband with a "political" slogan, in a "public place" within the Designated Area e.g. across the River thmaes by the London Eye ferris wheel, without having first obtained prior written permission from the Metropolitan Police.