À La Carte Before The Horse?

They are only stating the obvious about what the deal would have to be, and in any case, Leo Varadkar and Michel Barnier are the least of our worries. Those who would welcome the victories of Marine Le Pen and the AfD are a thoroughly international lot, sitting very light indeed on borders as surely as the royal and aristocratic elites of old, or indeed of the present day. They believe in a Western civilisation that transcends such matters. If they thought that that were getting a hearing in Paris, in Berlin, and thus in Brussels, then they would be as enthusiastic for rejoining the European Union as the Monday Clubbers Geoffrey Rippon and Jonathan Guinness were for joining it in the first place. Present affections for Donald Trump would easily be transferred.

The centrist affection for the EU would be baffling if we did not know that centrism and right-wing populism were con tricks to sell exactly the same economic and foreign policies to different audiences by pretending to wage culture wars, and that Fascism was the shield and sword of the liberal bourgeoisie, which for a century had always chosen it when the choice had to be made. But even so, and not least because they were only stating the obvious about what the deal would have to be, Leo Varadkar and Michel Barnier are the least of our worries.

Like Trying To Play Chess With A Squirrel

Peter Hitchens writes:

I'll never forget the night Russell Brand offered to kiss me. He had been busy losing an argument about drugs on the BBC Newsnight programme, back in 2012. I already knew him of old. During our first encounter, at a London debate on drugs chaired by Emily Maitlis, I had teased him about his silly hat and referred to him as an 'alleged comedian' (I think the jury is still out on that).

I thought that a person who enjoyed mocking others, such as poor Andrew Sachs, might not be used to it himself. I tried to get him to say if he had been responsible for his own drug-taking. But instead I received a verbal explosion about how I was bigoted, about how The Mail on Sunday was bigoted, about how I 'peddled hatred' and lacked love for other human beings. Then there was the usual accusation of racial prejudice. The audience at that debate loved it, and the encounter ended with the unmistakable sound of North London liberals baying for more.

Now here we were again, debating drugs and the law, this time under the chairmanship of the BBC's Stephanie Flanders. Not that it mattered that he was losing the argument: Mr Brand was the one who had been asked to make a series of programmes on the subject, and I wasn't. I was the one who had written and published a critical history of British drug laws since the 1960s, and he had written a volume called My Booky Wook. He was also the one who knew how to rip his shirt (or on this occasion, I think, his jeans).

Not long before, Mr Brand had been invited to give evidence — cowboy hat, ripped shirt and all — to the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee. I had the strong impression that its members were keener to hear from him than they were from me and my two colleagues Mary Brett and Kathy Gyngell, increasingly lonely opponents of the weakening of the drug laws.

Mr Brand, remember, had in 2008 distinguished himself with his horrible, creepy prank, alongside Jonathan Ross, that he played on the actor Andrew Sachs. Remember what he did. He left three messages on Mr Sachs' answerphone, making repeated lewd and graphic claims about his granddaughter. These were then broadcast by BBC Radio. The BBC was fined £150,000 over the so-called Sachsgate scandal. It cost Brand his job at Radio 2, and led to the suspension of Ross and the disciplining of executives. Yet four years later the same Russell Brand was commissioned by another part of the BBC to make a major documentary series about drugs, apparently because he had once taken them.

Brand, in my view, is not stupid, though he is ill-informed and very bad at arguing. He makes much use of his teeth, baring them as he jeers. His voice, if you challenge him, is very strange. It is a sort of rising hedge-trimmer whine when he is trying to talk over you. Then it is a disturbing baby-talk simper (disturbing because it is issuing from a grown man), when he is trying to ingratiate himself either with you, the presenter or the audience. He may be conscious of this. He once called me, without any obvious justification, a 'peculiar child', but I remember thinking the term applied much more to him. 

He is especially contemptuous towards anyone older than him. I was struck, during his appearance before the Home Affairs Committee, by his attitude towards the oldest member, the very spry and sharp David Winnick, then aged nearly 80. Mr Winnick very properly rebuked Mr Brand for being flippant, saying: 'It is not quite a variety show, Mr Brand.' The supposed comedian slashed back like an irritated cat, displaying an unpleasant smirk and once again demonstrating that he was not as nice as he looked.   He chose a direct sneer about Mr Winnick's age, saying: 'You are providing a little bit of variety, though. You are making it more like Dad's Army.' 

Mr Brand jumped into the discussion and emitted the following: 'Being arrested isn't a lesson. It is just an administrative blip. You need to demonstrate an awareness of the situation. Yes, of course, in many ways the disease or the condition of addiction does exacerbate, and if you start taking drugs it is likely you will take worse drugs, and if you are taking expensive drugs you will end up committing crime. But again, mate, what we need to identify is a degree of authenticity and compassion in the way we deal with this problem, otherwise you just seem like you don't know what you are talking about.'

It is gibberish. Note the mixture of long, pretentious words and the pseudo-friendly use of the word 'mate'. Arguing seriously with such a person is like trying to play chess with a squirrel, which might move the occasional piece without any real idea what it was doing, but at the next moment will overturn the board, scattering the pawns, kings and queens, and chattering shrilly as it does so. But I have seen him taken seriously. I meet people quite often who do take him seriously. And that is why I am a bit proud that, on that August night, Brand tried so hard to put me off my stride, and failed. Once again there was the molasses-like sentimentality about how we should feel more compassion, calling me 'mate', then the patronising dismissal, calling me antiquated and accusing me of 'foghorn madness from bygone times'.

Then it came. The baby voice was fully deployed, the teeth fully displayed: 'I have learned to love you, Peter, and in a minute I am going to give you such a kiss on the lips. I am going to challenge you on a few other of your prejudices.' He never got near me, I am pleased to report. I asked then as I ask now why such a person is given such a powerful place in the national debate. The answer, I think, lies in the astonishing power of celebrity over those deprived of any real hope in life. In our society, what would once have been a comfortable, secure way of life is incredibly hard to obtain. Education has failed, the economy offers little but low pay and high rents. Celebrities are like us, yet they are rich. The more like us they are, the more we love them for their success, and the more we listen to them. The older voices of education, research, skill, experience are just crabby, Victorian and outdated. Unless we can do something pretty radical about it, the future belongs to Russell Brand, or someone very like him.

There cannot be a “free” market in general, yet not in drugs, or prostitution, or pornography, or unrestricted alcohol, or unrestricted gambling. That is an important part of why there must not be a “free” market in general, which is a political choice, not a law of nature. Enacting and enforcing laws against drugs, prostitution and pornography, and regulating alcohol, tobacco and gambling, are clear examples of State intervention in, and regulation of, the economy. Radical change would be impossible if the workers, the youth and the poor were in a state of stupefaction. Contrived in the past, that baleful situation is being contrived again today.

We need a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of two years for a first offence, three years for a second offence, four years for a third offence, and so on. No prison sentence should include the possibility of release in less than 12 months; in that case, then your crime was not bad enough to warrant imprisonment, which the possession of drugs is. We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one’s premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. And we need Hitchens’s The War We Never Fought to be taught in schools.

Sharp

The events in Kraków are a reminder that 10 years ago, the targets were the Poles. But now, the fallen hero is a boy with the most common surname in Poland, his father’s native land. Shabana Mahmood is many things, but she is not a fool, so she knows exactly how it would be received if the kirpan were to be banned or severely restricted by a Muslim Home Secretary of Pakistani parentage. And from a Right that now wanted to replicate the American Second Amendment, whatever happened to blaming the assailant rather than the weapon?

The exemption of the kirpan from the ban on bladed articles in public places is one of the expressly intended effects of section 139 (5) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. Who was the Prime Minister in 1988? And the weapon used by Vickrum Digwa to murder Henry Nowak was not a kirpan. Digwa was also wearing a real one at the time. In this country, they are far smaller than that weapon, and usually dull-edged.

Rather, Digwa’s murder weapon was just one of his and his family’s extensive collection of non-ceremonial bladed articles. Families like that are not peculiar to any one community. That said, the family does belong to the Akali-Nihang warrior order within Sikhism, though not at all essential to it. With its obvious attraction to Digwa’s type of weapons-obsessed young man such as might accrue to Active Clubs and the like, many members of that order reject the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee’s 2001 ban on shaheedi degh, their traditional drink to aid meditation and, interestingly, to make them fiercer in battle. Interestingly, because its base is cannabis, the hashish taken by the members of the Order of Assassins when they set out to murder the enemies of the Alamut state.

Proscribe that order under the good old Terrorism Act 2000, while introducing a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of two years for a first offence, three years for a second offence, four years for a third offence, and so on. I no longer believe in prison sentences that included the possibility of release in less than 12 months; in that case, then your crime was not bad enough to warrant imprisonment, which the possession of drugs is. We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one’s premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. And we need Peter Hitchens’s The War We Never Fought to be taught in schools, as pro-drugs propaganda is routinely.

Proportionate and Lawful?

Timandra Harkness writes:

A day is a long time in immigration enforcement technology. On 4 November, The Guardian and campaign group Liberty reported on new Home Office plans to deploy Live Facial Recognition (LFR) technology as part of a massive expansion in immigration enforcement.

Following a trial at the ferry port in Holyhead, where passengers enter the UK from the Republic of Ireland, LFR will now be deployed more widely. Cameras in public places and transport hubs will seek to identify visa-overstayers, as well as those already due for removal — or who were removed once, and are trying to return.

But on 5 November, the relevant Home Office documents had mysteriously vanished, leaving only a “410 Gone” message. A new page on LFR in Immigration Enforcement provides almost no information, just a couple of links — one to the Holyhead trial deployment data (three arrests in nine days), and the other to standard operating procedures.

Instead, the Home Office was keen to promote its new legal framework for using LFR in law enforcement, to be included in the Police Reform Bill. Taking into account the results of a large public consultation, the UK Government is finally making laws to control the use of AI camera systems that turn everybody’s face into an ID card. The Policing Minister promises that, in future, an independent regulator will oversee use of LFR and other biometric technology by law enforcement, to ensure that it is used proportionately and lawfully.

Nothing in this new framework would rule out using the technology to identify anyone wanted by Immigration Enforcement (IE). Indeed, an industry explainer written in early October spells out how the new Home Office IE policy will apply rules to ensure proportionate and lawful use of LFR.

Meanwhile, travellers through major UK airports are being told to look forward to passport-free travel. Soon, even putting your passport into an e-gate will be unnecessary, as the same cameras that currently match your physical face to the mugshot on your travel document will go straight to the biometric passport database.

Like the redundant road tax discs and parking permits that no longer sit on a driver’s windscreen because the traffic warden can put their vehicle registration straight into a computer, the paper passport will be a quaint relic of the pre-digital era. The entire passport database will be accessible directly for matching with your weary, post-flight features, a boon for convenience and a nightmare for cybersecurity.

It seems obvious that the Live Facial Recognition technology which enables paperless entry points can also be used for checking our faces against watchlists of criminals and recidivist deportees. Many will ask why it’s taken so long, given the vagueness of official records about who is in the country, and when they arrived.

Why, then, is the Home Office suddenly so coy about its plans to apply the same technology within, not just at, our borders? Could it be that the new, long-overdue legal framework governing the use of LFR on the public is primarily “designed to improve public confidence”? That confidence could be undermined by reports of its use in immigration enforcement.

Expanding its use beyond dangerous criminals and vulnerable runaways to include people who entered Britain on a student visa and took a cash-in-hand job rather than returning home does raise questions of proportionality. Many immigration breaches are civil, not criminal. If the threshold is set that low, could I be spotted by a camera and hauled off the street for non-payment of a parking fine, or letting my dog foul the pavement, or simply breaching a Respect Order forbidding me to feed the birds?

Perhaps the Home Office is right to rethink “we will have cameras everywhere to recognise irregular immigrants” as a selling point for ever-expanding surveillance.

Russell Brand’s Secret Injunction

Groypers? Is that they call themselves? In any event, if they want Russell Brand as their living martyr, then they can have him. He was always one of theirs anyway, a Randian without ever having read her. Lucky him. And you really do learn something new every day, when it is possible to be injuncted from talking to the Police about having been a victim of crime, as Dan Neidle writes:

In 2014, a massage therapist called Sylvie Berki accused Russell Brand of assaulting her. The police took no further action. Mr Brand and his then girlfriend, Jemima Goldsmith, sued her. Ms Berki had no lawyer, and there was no trial. But the High Court issued an extraordinary injunction that silenced her for the rest of her life. This week Mr Brand was convicted of rape and three sexual assaults.

We have obtained a copy of the injunction, which has never previously been published. It was supposed to prevent harassment, but it went well beyond that. It prohibits Ms Berki from telling anyone what she says happened to her – not journalists, not friends, not family, and not even the police. The court also ordered Ms Berki to pay £50,000 in legal costs within two weeks (which she couldn’t afford) and authorised her bankruptcy.

We don’t know whether Ms Berki’s allegations were true, and Mr Brand’s convictions don’t establish that they were. But whilst nobody established that Ms Berki was lying, the High Court made an order that prevents her from ever speaking about what she says happened to her.

This September, a Court of Appeal judge acknowledged concerns about the extraordinary breadth of the injunction, but it remains in place. We think the injunction should never have been granted in these terms. It’s a disturbing example of what happens when wealthy, powerful people take an unrepresented defendant to court.

What happened

In June 2014 Ms Berki told Thames Valley Police that Mr Brand had assaulted her. The police found no case to answer.¹ She also took her allegations to the press and Twitter, and Mr Brand and Ms Goldsmith sued. The claim form initially included libel, for which it is in practice almost impossible to obtain an injunction, but the claim they ended up pursing was for harassment.²

The interim judgment thought the claimants would probably show her allegations were false, but said their truth was “not the ultimate issue”.³ In October 2015 Mr Justice Jay gave summary judgment, a month before the trial was due to start. Ms Berki represented herself.⁴ He refused permission to appeal, and the Court of Appeal has since turned her down three times.

We don’t know if her allegations were true; none of the parties gave evidence to the court, and there was never any finding of facts.Mr Brand’s convictions this week for rape and sexual assault don’t tell us what happened in 2014. But we don’t think Ms Berki should be silenced for life.

The order

Here’s the final injunction order:⁵

This was a harassment injunction. So, given the judge’s findings, it would have been appropriate for the court to injunct Ms Berki from harassing Mr Brand and Ms Goldsmith. Paragraph 3(a) is perhaps what one would expect:

But that introduction to paragraph 3 talks about harassment by communicating “about” the Claimants. And paragraph 3(b) prohibits contact with journalists. If a journalist called Ms Berki today about Mr Brand, and she spoke to them, Ms Berki would be breaching the injunction (and so would the journalist if they knew about its terms).

The order then goes much further, constraining Ms Berki’s private speech. She cannot disclose “any information” about the events in question, to anyone. In no sense is a private discussion with friends or family “harassment”. But it’s prohibited:

There’s an exception, but it is extremely narrow:

The obvious omission: she can’t speak to the police.⁶ The police are expecting more of Mr Brand’s victims to come forward, but Ms Berki can’t: if she even answered the phone, she’d be prohibited from speaking to them.

The Court of Appeal’s order this year records that the doctors named in (i) and (ii) no longer treat Ms Berki. Those exceptions are now useless. Short of an emergency, she cannot mention the incident to any doctor or therapist.

None of this seems necessary or proportionate in an harassment injunction.

The overall impression is that in substance this wasn’t a harassment injunction at all. It was a libel injunction in disguise. That’s an attractive strategy for a claimant because libel defendants can raise the defence of truth; harassment defendants cannot (and libels injunction are hardly ever issued). The courts have, therefore, been rightly sceptical about attempts to dress up libel as harassment. Mr Justice Jay was not.

The specifics of Ms Berki’s accusations are contained in a Confidential Schedule, which we have seen but cannot publish because of the reporting restriction in the order:

and:

The claimants’ lawyers then obtained permission to bankrupt Ms Berki if she didn’t pay £50,000 within two weeks (although that was just the initial payment; we expect total costs would have been £100,000 or more):

Mr Justice Jay had said Ms Berki was “probably impecunious”, so there was no prospect of her paying this.

How did this happen? 

The summary judgment, by Mr Justice Jay, explains the reasons for granting an injunction, but does not discuss the terms of the injunction order itself, or explain why it was so draconian.

We’d expect the judgment would contain the discussion of whether these restrictions were necessary and proportionate, and whether they were compatible with the exclusions in the Protection from Harassment Act. It does not. A lawyer would surely have raised these arguments, but Ms Berki of course had no lawyer.

It’s not obvious why this was susceptible to summary judgment at all. Mr Justice Jay didn’t find that Ms Berki was lying. There was a two-hour pre-trial review, with a trial of four to five days scheduled for a month later. The judge said the dispute about what happened that day was “likely to be resolved in the claimants’ favour, but I cannot say that the defendant has no real prospect of success”. He then decided it didn’t need resolving, because her motive was to harass “regardless of the rights and wrongs of what occurred on 7 June”.⁷

When a person is not represented by a lawyer, a judge is supposed to make allowances. The rules say so. The overriding objective requires the court to ensure that “the parties are on an equal footing”, and from 1 October 2015, four weeks before this hearing, the court has had an express duty in any case with an unrepresented party to “adopt such procedure at any hearing as it considers appropriate to further the overriding objective”.⁸ Lady Justice Falk, who read the available transcript this year, thought “some of Jay J’s comments could have been put in more muted terms”, but that Ms Berki “was properly heard, and had a full opportunity to put the points she wished to make”. Being heard on whether you harassed someone is one thing. Settling the terms of a lifelong injunction is another – and there’s no evidence Ms Berki’s interests were protected when those terms were settled. We think the judge should have scrutinised the form of the order (which was likely drafted by Mr Brand’s lawyers). It seems he did not.⁹

Mr Justice Jay does not have a good record of dealing with litigants-in-person. Two years later, in a different case, he behaved so poorly that the Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court found that he’d bullied a litigant-in-person. The Supreme Court found that he had aimed a “barrage of hostility” at the litigant-in-person, and “harassed and intimidated him in ways which surely would never have occurred if the claimant had been represented”.

The appeals 

Ms Berki tried to appeal, still without a lawyer. In August 2016 Lady Justice Arden refused permission on the papers: the skeleton argument was too long, too general, and had no proper grounds of appeal (the result we’d expect if a layperson tried to conduct an appeal). But she had read the judgment herself, and set out what troubled her. Mr Justice Jay “did not give any reasons” for concluding that Ms Berki had no defence. He “appears to have made findings about the appellant’s motives on the basis of her submissions (and not on evidence given in her witness statements or in the witness box)”, and it was “not clear that the appellant had an opportunity to deal with these matters”. If Ms Berki tried again, the claimants’ lawyers were to answer those points:

Ms Berki tried again. In March 2017, after a 52 minute hearing at which she represented herself against the claimants’ barrister, Lady Justice Arden refused permission and ordered her to pay another £2,000. The order gives no reasons:

This year, now with a pro bono lawyer, Ms Berki asked the Court of Appeal to reopen that refusal. In September Lady Justice Falk declined to do so. We think that was inevitable. The court reopens a final decision only in “exceptional cases, where the integrity of the earlier process has been critically undermined”.

Lady Justice Falk said that the concerns in the 2016 order “must be taken to have been addressed to her satisfaction” when Lady Justice Arden refused permission in 2017. But we don’t know if the concerns were ever actually addressed, and it’s not clear Lady Justice Falk if knew that either.

Lady Justice Falk seemed uncomfortable with the terms of the order, though. It “on its face appears to prohibit”, she said, “further communication to the police, communication with other claimants in relation to civil claims, and disclosures to treating physicians or therapists”. And:

While I quite see the concerns about the breadth of the order, the proper way to deal with those concerns would be to apply to the High Court to amend the scope of the injunction based on changed circumstances.

That must be correct: as she said, “It is not a matter for this court.” We understand that Ms Goldsmith has indicated she is amenable to the injunction being varied. Presumably Mr Brand will not be, so a court application is required.

The responsibility of the lawyers 

The firm acting for Messrs Brand and Goldsmith was Archerfield Partners LLP. We think they have serious questions to answer.

How could lawyers justify asking a court to prohibit speech that couldn’t conceivably constitute harassment – including private conversations with friends and family, and reports to the police?

There are also questions for the judiciary: how could Mr Justice Jay grant an order of such breadth against an unrepresented defendant, without a trial, and without determining whether her allegations were true? Did he consider the proportionality and necessity of the order?

Then there’s a bigger question. Was this a one-off? Or have other injunctions been granted, supposedly to prevent harassment, but actually silencing people even in private conversations with friends, family and the police?

Interested Persons

Always answer them with this. John McEvoy writes:

A pre-inquest review opened on 21 September into the killing of three British citizens working as security consultants for World Central Kitchen (WCK) in Gaza. James ‘Jim’ Henderson, 33, James Kirby, 47, and John Chapman, 57, were among seven aid workers killed in a series of Israeli drone strikes on 1 April 2024. Then UK prime minister Rishi Sunak told Benjamin Netanyahu he was “appalled” by the incident while current foreign secretary Ed Miliband described the killings as “cold-blooded”. Nochi Mendel, the colonel who ordered the strike, said he is “not sorry” and the Israeli military recently announced it would not pursue any criminal investigations.

At Avon Coroner’s Court in Bristol, lawyers for the aid workers’ families demanded a full investigation into the incident including the actions and policies of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) as well as the munitions used. They want the inquest to establish whether the aid workers were unlawfully killed and whether the strikes were conducted in accordance with Israel’s targeting and deconfliction policies, with the coroner already indicating she will include the IDF and Mendel as interested persons. The families have also requested that enquiries be made to Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) amid questions about intelligence sharing with Israel, with a view to also including that department as an interested person.

This comes after Declassified revealed a British surveillance aircraft overflew Gaza shortly before the attack, with the UK government refusing to release the footage or even disclose the aircraft’s flight path. In a statement outside the court, the Kirby family said: “The coroner told us today that Colonel Mendel, the Israeli military and the Israeli government are going to be made interested persons in this inquest. We also have questions for the British government. An RAF surveillance plane was flying over Gaza on the day James died. The Ministry of Defence has the footage from that flight but will not tell us whether it shows the area where the convoy was hit. We think the coroner should be given it. We are now asking the Government to give the Coroner whatever it has, and to keep pressing Israel for the drone footage and the other evidence. If Israel says no, people should be told that. There is no other independent investigation into James’ death. This inquest is all we have, and we are going to see it through.”

The massacre 

Over the past two years, an Australian government investigation alongside various media and firsthand accounts have shed light on what happened the night of the attack. Shortly after 11pm local time, the aid workers were targeted by three Israeli drone strikes launched roughly four minutes apart while travelling in a WCK convoy towards Rafah. Earlier that evening, the convoy had escorted aid trucks from a makeshift pier to the WCK welcome centre in Deir el-Balah, where locally contracted security guards boarded the vehicles, according to the Australian investigation. Some of those local guards were armed, according to IDF officers who were monitoring the operation from above with surveillance drones, with one allegedly firing a gun into the air.

The IDF claimed the presence of the local guards indicated a hijacking by Hamas, despite the convoy continuing along its planned route and unloading the aid at a WCK warehouse some three miles south. After unloading the aid, IDF drones continued to watch from the skies as the WCK convoy departed west towards the coastal road while a car carrying the local guards drove north. The WCK convoy was supposed to return via the welcome centre, but a decision was made to travel directly to the accommodation in Rafah due to the operation being delayed, according to the Australian investigation.

While this amounted to a modification in the route, it did not impact the decision to target the convoy because the IDF only became aware of this diversion later on. The IDF says it then “mistakenly believed that the vehicles” travelling south “contained Hamas military operatives and therefore struck the vehicles”, with one account suggesting a bag put into one of the WCK vehicles was erroneously thought to be a weapon. When the airstrikes were launched, the WCK convoy was nowhere near any Israeli troops and posed no reasonable threat to the IDF. In written submissions to the coroner’s court, lawyers for the Henderson family argued the IDF’s narrative is “contradicted by all of the available evidence”.

“At its highest”, they wrote, “there was an alleged mistaken identification of a bag being placed into one of the cars being a gun or containing a gun”. Pete Weatherby, representing the Henderson family, noted how the lawyers were “piecing together from open source material either from Mendel or the Israeli official position different and not entirely consistent narratives”. He said it would therefore be useful for the Israeli government to finally outline “what they say actually happened factually as a starting point for the investigation”. The strikes were “intentionally lethal”, lawyers added in written submissions, “and the postmortem finding shows that Jim’s injuries were so severe they resulted in his immediate death”. When asked about WCK, Mendel previously said: “Unfortunately, they aren’t really a neutral organisation. Not really an organisation you can say is innocent and completely clean… It has ties to Hamas”.

Scope of the inquest

Given Israel’s failure to provide a full account of the incident or pursue a criminal investigation, lawyers for the families have requested that the coroner launch a thorough and independent investigation into how the deaths came about. The investigation, they contend, should go beyond the immediate circumstances of the incident to the IDF’s policies on targeting and deconfliction with the goal of determining whether the aid workers were killed unlawfully. This is particularly important within the context of the IDF carrying out a pattern of strikes on aid convoys and premises during the six months prior to the WCK massacre.

“It appears prima facie that this is a case where three British citizens (and others) were unlawfully killed by the military of an allied nation”, the Hendersons’ lawyers argued in written submissions. They pointed to a recent investigation in The Guardian which found the WCK strikes were “in line with a general policy employed by the Israeli military of… ‘incrimination’, which gives commanders in the field wide discretion on designating someone as a ‘terrorist’.” The coroner’s court also heard that the strikes were launched with a Hermes 450 drone, alleged by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) to be powered by UK-made engines.

“There has been a great deal of public concern around the possibility that UK manufactured components or UK based research and development contributed to the killing of Jim and his colleagues”, the lawyers submitted. Establishing the source of weaponry used in the attack is therefore “central” to understanding how the aid workers came to their death and “should be investigated”. The lawyers also pointed to how an inquest jury previously found Tom Hurndall, another British national who died in Gaza in 2006, had been “unlawfully and intentionally killed” by the IDF.

Surveillance footage

The lawyers also requested that Britain’s MoD disclose whether it holds relevant surveillance or intelligence data relating to the incident. The MoD previously informed Declassified that it holds video surveillance footage of Gaza from the day of the aid worker massacre but is refusing to publish the tape. The footage was taken by a RAF surveillance plane which spent approximately five hours above the strip that day, returning to base shortly before the airstrikes took place. The MoD may therefore have collected footage of events leading up to the tragedy, which could provide clarity over Israeli claims regarding Hamas “gunmen” near the convoy.

To this end, lawyers submitted that “the British Ministry of Defence… should be given the opportunity to be interested persons in these inquest proceedings”. The lawyers specifically noted how any footage taken over Gaza that day “is obviously potentially relevant, and may show the progress and actions of the convoy”. The coroner suggested that initial questions will be put to the MoD before deciding whether to include the department as an interested person. Further information was requested from the Foreign Office with regard to what measures were in place to keep British aid workers in Gaza safe prior to April 2024, and what additional actions have been taken since the incident.

Elbit Systems has also been recommended as an interested person given the company could provide a witness statement confirming “whether any part of the [drone] originated in the UK”. “As you know Elbit operates 16 facilities in the UK, the centrepiece is very close to where we are now in Bristol,” the lawyers said today. In terms of allaying public concern we would say this is a key part of this particular inquisitorial process and therefore evidence should be obtained from Elbit and they should be invited to take part in the process.”

In addition, the coroner has been requested to seek disclosure of IDF drone footage and audio, the IDF’s investigation file, IDF policy and procedures documents, and internal material from WCK. The Foreign Office recently announced: “The World Central Kitchen attack is one of countless incidents in Gaza where there has been no accountability. In Gaza, humanitarian workers continue to work tirelessly to support civilians in desperate need, risking their lives whilst working in the most perilous conditions. Yet despite the fragile ceasefire, Gaza remains the deadliest place to deliver aid, with 186 humanitarian workers killed in 2025. Israel must comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law, and must do more to ensure that humanitarian staff can carry out their work safely. Lessons must be learnt from this tragedy”. The coroner is now expected to seek disclosure from interested persons as well as other relevant parties before a second pre-inquest review takes place on 5 March 2027.

Put The Fear

It has taken them since the Cameron Government, via the ferocious support of Theresa May and of Boris Johnson, but they have got round to it, as Janet Eastham, Amy Gibbons and Daniel Martin write:

Labour’s controversial new trans law risks criminalising prayer, the Church of England has warned. The Anglican Church said the legislation must not “unintentionally criminalise” providing prayer and pastoral support, and that it must allow for discussion and disagreement. A spokesman told The Telegraph that Church leaders would raise these concerns with MPs and peers scrutinising the draft Conversion Practices Bill. Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church have also voiced concerns about the bill and called for it to be abandoned.

The legislation threatens people with five years in prison for trying to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill would cover parents, meaning mothers and fathers risk arrest for asking their child whether they really want to change gender. The Telegraph has launched a campaign for the proposed legislation to be scrapped amid warnings that it would have a chilling effect on family relationships. Opponents have said the bill could also apply to prayer. The warning from the Church will be seen as a blow by ministers who have touted the Church’s support for the controversial law. On Friday, Cabinet Office officials told The Telegraph that there was “support for our draft bill from the Church of England” and cited an earlier endorsement from the Bishop of Manchester.

However, in a statement, a spokesman for the Church of England said: “We believe that everyone is made in the image of God and should be cherished for who they are. In 2017, the General Synod voted overwhelmingly to call on the Government to bring forward a ban on conversion therapy with respect to sexual orientation, which has since been echoed by senior leaders. It is, however, important to ensure that any legislation does not unintentionally criminalise providing appropriate prayer and pastoral care to those who seek it, and we will reflect this concern in our evidence to the pre-legislative scrutiny process. Of course, pastoral care and prayer should never be coercive. A ban on conversion therapy must still allow space for discussion and disagreement. We want to prevent abuses of power and coercive practices, which should be the focus of any legislation.”

Parents and religious leaders ‘at risk of criminalisation’

The vote at General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – was passed before the proposed law was expanded to include attempts to change someone’s gender identity. Ministers insist the legislation is needed to close loopholes that leave gay and transgender people vulnerable to abuse, while setting “high bars which protect freedom of expression”, including for religious leaders. However, opponents argue that abusive practices such as assault, threats and harassment are already illegal, and warn that the new offence could criminalise concerned parents, as well as therapists and religious leaders providing pastoral care.

Leaders from the Catholic Church have also revealed they oppose the bill. John Sherrington, the Archbishop of Liverpool and the chairman of the department of social justice of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, said that the bishops “recognise that it is important for governments to use appropriate legislation to protect people from abuse”. But he added that they believe “current legislation already covers such abusive practices and makes them illegal”.

He said: “There is a danger that this legislation will create uncertainty around lawful pastoral care by the Church, family life and the legality of open conversations that might take place in a range of social settings. There are clearly a range of scenarios under this proposed legislation in which legal action of various types may be taken against individuals or organisations, including parents of children who express well-informed opinions and make well-intentioned statements. We are concerned that this legislation will challenge the Church’s ability to fulfil its calling to proclaim an authentic understanding of the human person with clarity, simplicity, love and respect. People of faith must remain free to express their beliefs through speech and prayer. We call on politicians to abandon this bill and focus instead on enforcement of existing protections and accessible support for anyone facing abuse or coercion.”

Law’s ‘overreach into normal family life’

Bishop Brian McGee, the vice-president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, echoed these concerns, telling The Telegraph: “Nobody should fear violence, abuse, or coercion, and the law must do all it can to make sure everybody is protected from such behaviour. This law, however, appears to go far beyond the protection of citizens, overreaching into normal daily family life, pastoral conversations and everyday teaching.”

Some religious figures told The Telegraph they feared that liberal campaigners would use the law to silence people with more traditional views on issues such as marriage and gender. Simon Calvert, the deputy director of the charity The Christian Institute, said it was “quite clear” that the legislation could “criminalise parents praying for their children”. He told The Telegraph: “It is a bizarre new approach to the criminal law which makes all kinds of legitimate speech vulnerable to police investigation. Lawyers are lining up to condemn the way it’s drafted. And the activists the Government are trying to placate are quite open that they really do want the law to ‘put the fear’ into parents over their family prayers.”

Mr Calvert added: “Elizabeth I famously declined to make windows into men’s souls. This bill makes a window and will force police, prosecutors and courts to peer through it to decide if your intentions, your beliefs, mean your conversation with your gay or trans friend was a criminal offence.”

On Monday, MPs scrutinising the draft bill were told that it should include a ban on prayers aimed at changing someone’s gender identity or sexuality. Giving evidence to the bill committee, Jayne Ozanne, a gay evangelical Christian and the founder of the Ban Conversion Practices Coalition, insisted the practice should be illegal. Asked whether such prayers should be criminalised, including in a family setting, she said: “I think we need to be clear about what is wrong and right. Stealing is stealing. Whether you steal a sweet or a car, it is still stealing.”

Ms Ozanne, who said she had been traumatised by people praying for her to be straight, said the issue lay with “the impact on the individual in front of you”. She added: “A lot of prayer will be directed – somebody will have their hand on you and pray. It is the fact that they are trying to pray for you to be changed to a thing that they think you ought to be as opposed to praying for you to find a point of peace. You might say that that is too subtle a difference, but they are worlds apart. Helping me come to a place where I know who I ought to be is very different from telling me that I have to be straight.”

A Government spokesman said: “Our draft bill would outlaw a specific form of abuse, setting high bars which protect freedom of expression, including for religious leaders, while ensuring no one is free to commit abuse. LGBT+ people should never, without exception, have to suffer coercion or abuse in an effort to change who they are. Successive governments have agreed for almost a decade that conversion practices have no place in modern Britain. This Government is clear that freedom of belief, whether faith-based or wider, will be respected by the ban, while our draft bill has already been welcomed by religious groups.”