Recent legal news

Immigration

The government organised an organised immigration crime summit last week. Representatives from the UK and allies including France, Iraq, Vietnam and the USA, and partners including the National Crime Agency (NCA) and from social media organisations met to discuss:

  • tackling the supply chains and enablers of OIC
  • the role of criminal finances in facilitating OIC
  • the UK’s systems based approach to border security

as well as how countries can tackle organised crime groups’ operations online in relation to the advertising, promoting and facilitating of illegal immigration services.

Concrete outcomes have been agreed across Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa, and North America to strengthen international partnerships to disrupt OIC networks, according to the government’s announcement. This also includes new joint work with France to tackle irregular migration in source and transit countries, through community outreach and bolstering false document detection capabilities to Iraqi officials.

In her speech to the summit, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper MP said everyone was really determined tackle the problem. After explaining how well organised the criminals masterminding people smuggling are, and how they are using modern technology to drive their business and outwit law enforcement, she acknowledged that

“no country can do this alone, and that is why the partnerships and everyone gathering here is so important … It is our determination to do this together, the alliances that we build across our borders can be stronger than the criminal gangs who seek to undermine us”.

One of the specific pledges was a fund of nearly £1 million from the UK to support Iraq in its fight to take down the kingpins of organised immigration crime and fortify border security in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The promised funding would support new anti-smuggling legislation in the KRI, which is a critical milestone in the region’s ability to prosecute organised crime groups involved in people smuggling. It will also be used to provide targeted training, specialist technological support, and community engagement to address key security challenges in the region.

Another initiative was to launch adverts on Zalo, the Vietnamese instant messaging and social platform with over 77 million monthly users, as part of its campaign warning people about the dangers of trusting people smuggling gangs. The ads will run on Zalo and Vietnamese news aggregator Báo Mới in the coming weeks, the first time the UK government has ever advertised on these platforms, helping to secure our borders as part of the Plan for Change.

The government is currently running ads on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube in Vietnam, countering content encouraging people to come to the UK illegally. Vietnamese nationals remain among the top nationality groups crossing the Channel illegally. They accounted for 17% of small boat arrivals in the first half of 2024, reducing to 6% in the second half. Further campaigns have recently been launched in Albania and Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Tariffs

Restrictions on people crossing borders is one thing; restrictions on goods doing the same thing is quite another. US President Donald Trump seems to be agin them both. Having erected a “beautiful wall” to stop the people (if you build it they won’t come, he was perhaps told), he has now done the same thing, in a metaphorical sense, with tariffs on goods coming into the United (still, just) States of America.

Trump has this month imposed a baseline 10% tariff on all nations, including the UK (though some goods are subject to a higher rate), with a higher baseline rate of 20% on the EU, and even higher rates on some other countries, such as 49% on Cambodia, 46% on Vietnam and 54% on China (an extra 34% on top of 20% which had been previously announced).

How, in law, has he done this? According to a White House “Fact Sheet”: President Donald J. Trump Declares National Emergency to Increase our Competitive Edge, Protect our Sovereignty, and Strengthen our National and Economic Security. This explains that:

“President Trump is invoking his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to address the national emergency posed by the large and persistent trade deficit that is driven by the absence of reciprocity in our trade relationships and other harmful policies like currency manipulation and exorbitant value-added taxes (VAT) perpetuated by other countries.”

But it also says: “The President’s reciprocal trade agenda means better-paying American jobs making beautiful American-made cars, appliances, and other goods.” That sounds more like a run of the (steel) mill trumped up trade war than a national emergency.

In response, China said it would impose a 34% tariff on US goods. Trump then threatened to introduce a further 50% tariff on China — meaning a 104% tariff on some products. China has vowed to “fight to the end”. The EU’s response has also been forthright, with the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, saying: “Unjustified tariffs on the EU will not go unanswered — they will trigger firm and proportionate countermeasures”. Retaliatory tariffs are one such potential countermeasure.

The UK has reacted more calmly, by not retaliating, although the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer KC MP and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves MP, did visit one of the UK sites of Jaguar Land-Rover (JLR) to allay fears over the effect on motor manufacturers, whose products have been subjected to a 25% tariff (and to offer minor concessions in the form of promising not to penalise the auto industry quite as much as it might otherwise have done for failing to eliminate fossil fuelled vehicles by 2030). For its part JLR has said it would “pause” all shipments to the US as it worked to “address the new trading terms”.

BBC: What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?

Shropshire Star: ‘I will protect Jaguar Land Rover from Trump’s tariffs’ — PM Keir Starmer pledges in West Midlands speech

One interesting legal question concerns the effect, in the Venn Diagram overlap zone of Northern Ireland, of the difference between the UK’s 10% tariff and the EU’s 20% tariff.

House of Commons Library: The geopolitics of trade tariffs: The new Trump presidency and US tariffs on EU goods: What could it mean for Northern Ireland?

Another interesting legal question concerns the status of the tariffs as a force majeure event in so far as they affect supply contracts for manufactured goods. But as David Allen Green points out, in How Trump’s tariffs can be a Force Majeure event for some contracts on his Law and Policy Blog, “a force majeure event is whatever the parties to a contract agree it to be”, and will have whatever effect the parties have agreed it should have. So it depends on the individual contract. His comment was sparked by a news report from Reuters saying Howlett, a Pittsburg based aircraft parts manufacturer, told customers it had declared a force majeure event, “a legal practice that allows parties to a contract to avoid their obligations if hit by unavoidable and unpredictable external circumstances” — which presumably refers to Trump’s declaration of a national emergency justifying the tariffs.

Sentencing retorts

The political hoo-hah over pre-sentence reports has blossomed into a full scale constitutional showdown. That is, if you characterise the Sentencing Council as an emanation of the judiciary, locked into a dispute with the executive, in the form of the Secretary of State for Justice (though as Lord Chancellor the lines are rather more blurred) and the government more generally, including the Prime Minister; plus the opposition (shadow Justice Secretary). And of course the think tanks or pressure groups who sounded the alarm in the first place. For all that, the fuss (which we wrote about when it first blew up — see Weekly Notes, 17 March 2025) seems exaggerated.

In essence it boils down to this: does guidance suggesting that judges should normally commission a pre-sentence report in the case of certain categories of person, including those over-represented in the criminal justice system, such as those from some ethnic minority backgrounds, create a “two-tier” justice system, favouring certain types of defendant over others? Or is it, as Anna Wright suggests in a generally supportive post on the Mountford Chambers blog, A Move in the Right Direction?

So toxic had this debate become that the Justice Secretary / Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood MP brought forward legislation to address it: the Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill, which the government says will block any “new sentencing guidelines that would mean differential treatment for different races and religions”. The effect of the Bill is more fully explained by Joshua Rozenberg on A Lawyer Writes: Characteristics or circumstances?

The Sentencing Council had already withdrawn the new guidelines, in a bit of a huff, to avoid a more damaging showdown, so the legislation may not even be necessary. But it makes the government look tougher this way, jumping on something after the alarm has been raised — than if it had simply responded to the long consultation process which the Sentencing Council says it undertook when drafting its updated guidance. It was, perhaps, a welcome distraction from more embarrassing questions about the criminal justice system.

For example, the number of defendants awaiting trial and sentence continues to be a problem to which the government is not allocating sufficient resources. Times are hard, we get it; and a quick bill is more easily settled than a big backlog.

Victims can view

Victims and survivors of crime will be able to apply to observe a Parole Board, if conducted orally, in a national deployment of a process that has been successfully piloted in two probation regions. The announcement from the Board says

“We greatly value victim and survivor participation in the parole process though we recognise that it has the potential to be daunting and can be a difficult process to navigate. The opportunity to observe a parole hearing provides victims and survivors with access to vital information about the prisoner and how parole panels assess their risk.”

What they need to understand, though, is that they have no role or influence in the question the panel needs to decide, which is solely to assess the prisoner’s risk of reoffending which may cause serious harm. The point of allowing them to watch is so they can understand the process and be reassured that it is robust and fair and properly respects the public interest.

The public interest in proper scrutiny will, of course, be best served by allowing other observers, including the media, to see and comment on the process.

Other recent items

Evaluation of the Pathfinder Pilot in Private Law — published, reports Julie Doughty on the Transparency Project blog. This relates to the government’s process evaluation and financial analysis of the Private Law Pathfinder pilots in Dorset and North Wales family court areas. The Pathfinder procedure was developed after the Harm Report (2020) recommended a more investigative approach to private law disputes. Given how positive the evaluation was, it is surprising the government is not rolling it out more quickly to other areas.

In Modernising courts and tribunals: what we’ve achieved and learned, Nick Goodwin, Chief Executive of HMCTS, reflects with some institutional self-congratulation, on the formal completion at the end of March 2025 of the Courts and Tribunals Reform project, which was launched in 2016 with the aim of digitising and modernising all court processes and developing an online court. (We will be writing in more detail about this ourselves.)

Recent case summaries from ICLR

A selection of recently published WLR Daily case summaries from ICLR.4

CONFLICT OF LAWS — Jurisdiction under European Union Regulation — Matters relating to maintenance obligations: RK v K Ch, 27 Mar 2025 (Case C-67/24); EU:C:2025:214; [2025] WLR(D) 186, ECJ

CONTRACT — Construction — Condition precedent: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd v Disclosure and Barring Service, 04 Apr 2025 [2025] EWCA Civ 380; [2025] WLR(D) 184, CA

CRIME — Sentence — Imprisonment: R v Rice (Sam), 01 Apr 2025 [2025] EWCA Crim 352; [2025] WLR(D) 183, CA

CROWN COURT — Jurisdiction — Arraignment: R v Layden, 02 Apr 2025 [2025] UKSC 12; [2025] WLR(D) 182, SC(E)

IMMIGRATION — Leave to remain — Overstayer: R (Seerangan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, 28 Mar 2025 [2025] EWCA Civ 354; [2025] WLR(D) 177, CA

LANDLORD AND TENANT — Covenant — Service charge: Davies v Benwell Road RTM Co Ltd, 02 Apr 2025 [2025] EWCA Civ 368; [2025] WLR(D) 178, CA

LANDLORD AND TENANT — Management order — Variation: Kirk v The Sheffield Bath Company Ltd, 31 Mar 2025 [2025] UKUT 111 (LC); [2025] WLR(D) 180, UT

LEGAL AID — Availability — Civil legal aid: Rex (HJK and others) v Director of Legal Aid Casework, 01 Apr 2025 [2025] EWHC 774 (Admin); [2025] WLR(D) 181, KBD

PLANNING — Development — Planning permission: New Forest National Park Authority v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, 27 Mar 2025 [2025] EWHC 726 (Admin); [2025] WLR(D) 171, KBD

PRACTICE — Family proceedings — Reporting restrictions: M v F, 02 Apr 2025 [2025] EWHC 801 (Fam); [2025] WLR(D) 187, Fam D

Recent case comments on ICLR

Expert commentary from firms, chambers and legal bloggers recently indexed on ICLR.4 includes:

Gatehouse chambers: Principles applying to the recovery of CFA uplifts: AKS v National Farmers Union Mutual Insurance Society Limited [2025] EWHC 126 (SCCO), Costs

Nearly Legal: Oddities and Ends: Bluestone Mortgages Ltd v Stoute [2025] EWHC 755 (Ch), Ch D

Gatehouse chambers: Did you miss? Adverse possession — Schedule 6 LRA 2002 — ‘reasonable belief’-10-year period: Brown v Ridley [2025] UKSC 7; [2025] 2 WLR 371; [2025] WLR(D) 118, SC(E)

Transparency Project: Are young people losing their freedom because of Deprivation of Liberty Orders? Bury Metropolitan Borough Council v EM & Ors, [2024] EWCOP 76 (T2), Ct of Protection

Law Society Gazette: Blood is not always thicker than water: Copinger-Symes v Copinger-Symes & Anor [2024] EWFC 415, Fam Ct

Blackstone chambers: GI Globinvestment Ltd & Ors v XY ERS UK Ltd [2025] EWHC 740 (Comm), KBD

Mental Capacity Law and Policy: Parental consent to the confinement of younger children — again: In re QX (Parental Consent for Deprivation of liberty: Children under 16) [2025] EWHC 745 (Fam), Fam D

Park Square barristers: Court of Protection Case Review: Irwin Mitchell Trust Corporation Ltd v KS [2025] EWCOP 7 (T2), Ct of Protection

4 New Square chambers: What does SRA v Dentons tell us about the role of solicitors in preventing money laundering and what approach the SRA is now likely to take towards any shortcomings? Manta Penyez Shipping Inc v Zuhoor Alsaeed Foodstuff Co [2025] EWHC 353 (Comm), KBD

Gatehouse chambers: Don’t Lease Back in Anger: MVL Properties (2017) Ltd v The Leadmill Ltd [2025] EWHC 349 (Ch), Ch D

Nearly Legal: Oddities and Ends: R (Simpson) v Brentwood Borough Council [2025] EWHC 462 (Admin), KBD

Public Law for Everyone: The principle of legality and heightened-scrutiny rationality review: The Supreme Court’s judgment in the Spitalfields case: R (Spitalfields Historic Building Trust) v Tower Hamlets London Borough Council [2025] UKSC 11; [2025] WLR(D) 175, SC(E)

Free Movement: Damages awarded for unlawful detention at Heathrow airport: R (Tazeem) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 347, CA

Free Movement: Man unlawfully denied spouse visa wins appeal too late: R (Tomlinson) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 253; [2025] WLR(D) 168, CA

Law & Religion UK: Exhumation where father’s coercive control undermined decision on place of burial: Re Exhumation Of A Baby [2024] ECC Exe 1, Const Ct

Administrative Court Blog: Legal aid for victims of trafficking: Rex (HJK and others) v Director of Legal Aid Casework [2025] EWHC 774 (Admin); [2025] WLR(D) 181, KBD

Littleton chambers: Duty to determine state immunity of own motion applies to all courts and tribunals: Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia (Cultural Bureau) v Costantine [2025] UKSC 9; [2025] 1 WLR 1207; [2025] WLR(D) 133, SC(E)

UK-EU Relations Law: EU law leaves a mark: Sky plc v SkyKick UK Ltd [2024] UKSC 36; [2025] Bus LR 251; [2025] 2 All ER 1, SC(E)

Pump Court chambers: Competing Article 8 rights to family life for siblings in a decision on adoption: South Gloucestershire Council v Mother & Ors [2025] EWFC 21 (B), Fam Ct

Inforrm’s Blog: Vince v Lord Bailey, Preliminary Issues Trial and Summary Judgment Application: Vince v Lord Bailey of Paddington [2025] EWHC 287 (KB), KBD

And don’t forget…

ICLR Pupillage Award

If you are taking up pupillage at any time between October 2025 and October 2026, and being paid a total for the pupillage year (including guaranteed earnings) of no more than £37,500 (in London) or £32,500 (outside London), you could receive our top-up award of a further £13,000.

Find out more: ICLR Pupillage Award 2025

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading, and make sure you’re signed up for our email alerts. Don’t forget you can also now find ICLR on BlueSky.

This post was written by Paul Magrath, Head of Product Development and Online Content. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of ICLR as an organisation.

Featured image: Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash