Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Census Refuser challenges Census Act by way of Judicial Review

NoCONcensus | 28.05.2012 04:18 | 2011 Census Resistance | Anti-Nuclear | Anti-militarism | Repression | Birmingham

A Birmingham Census refuser, Nigel Simons, has been granted a judicial review that will consider the legality of the Census Act. Simons is arguing that the Act, which makes it a criminal offence to fail to complete the Census, is incompatible with Human Rights legislation. If his challenge is successful, other ongoing prosecutions of census refusers are likely to collapse, previous convictions may be overturned and it may become impossible for the government to contract with arms companies (and other businesses to which people may have legitimate conscientious objection) to provide any public services.

See this article (text below)
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/26/census-act-judicial-review

BACKGROUND

As well as the two cases mentioned in the article, Judith Sambrook's case at Shrewsbury was dismissed on 17 May after the CPS offered no evidence against her.

There are more hearings coming up, including an appeal by Derek Shields against his conviction to be heard at the Crown Court in Liverpool on 8 June (as far as we know) and two more Liverpool cases after that, a case in Bury St Edmunds at the end of June, another in August in Exeter and a case (date not yet fixed) in Ashford. A Scottish census case has been adjourned until September.

Most 2011 Census refusals have been around privacy concerns and conscientious objection to the involvement of the world's largest weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin in the England & Wales Census data processing.

More information:
 https://network23.org/countmeout/
 https://indymedia.org.uk/en/actions/2011/census/

TEXT OF ARTICLE

Census objector granted leave to challenge Census Act

Granting of judicial review comes days after campaigners see Crown Prosecution Service drop their cases

by Dan Glaister

The government's prosecution of census objectors is in jeopardy after a Birmingham man was granted a judicial review to challenge the legality of the act that makes it an offence not to complete the 10-yearly survey.

Privacy campaigner Nigel Simons, who did not fill out the census, argues that section 8 of the 1920 Census Act conflicts with his right to privacy guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights.

The granting of a judicial review comes days after two census objectors saw their prosecutions unexpectedly dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service. One of them, John Marjoram, who is mayor of the Cotswolds town of Stroud, said he thought the CPS had dropped his case rather than face the prospect of having the issues around privacy aired in a public trial.

"Given the pervasive culture of citizen surveillance and the erosion of individual liberties pursued by recent governments, it is no surprise to me that the CPS preferred to keep these issues under wraps." he said.

The judicial review at the high court next month will be an embarrassment for the Office of National Statistics, the government body that runs the census, and the CPS. To date, the CPS has prosecuted 252 people for failing to complete the census.

Of those, 198 have been given fines of up to £1,000, while 55 have filled out the form. Should the judicial review be successful, those convictions could be appealed.

Objections over the 2011 census focus on three issues: the perceived intrusiveness of some questions, the lack of safeguards to protect data gathered for the census, and the role of the UK subsidiary of the US defence contractor Lockheed Martin in processing census data.

Lockheed Martin insists that "no Lockheed Martin employee has access to the data". However, objectors fear that once the census data has been processed by the company it will be vulnerable to seizure by the American government. The US Patriot Act compels US companies operating in the States or overseas to hand over any information that is required. One scenario is that the US government takes the information without informing British authorities.

Another company awarded one of the lucrative census contracts, UK Data Capture, is jointly owned by the US company Vangent, which is in turn part of the US defence giant General Dynamics Information Technology. Earlier this year GDIT won a £30m Department of Health contract.

"The legal case is of fundamental importance," said Tony Muman, the barrister who represented Marjoram and John Voysey, a Quaker and pensioner whose case was also unexpectedly dropped by the CPS.

"The government is awarding more and more contracts to companies like Lockheed Martin. The question of the security of the data of UK citizens is of the utmost importance. It's not just about two naughty boys. You can imagine that someone with Marjoram's pedigree and profile might well be of interest to them."

Marjoram, 72, a Green party councillor, Quaker and life-long campaigner against the arms trade, was once imprisoned for trying to plough a US Air Force base in East Anglia to grow crops.

The legal arguments focus on section 39 (4) (f) of the Statistics and Registration Services Act of 2007. The act prohibits the disclosure of personal information gathered for the census. However, section 4 (f) exempts disclosure that is made for criminal proceedings. Critically, the act does not specify whether the proceedings have to be in the UK."Our argument is that the part of the act about data being shared is incompatible with Article 8, "said Birmingham Law Centre's Michael Bates, who is representing Simons. "If that is the case, then the section of the Census Act that compels people to complete the census does so in a way that abuses their Article 8 rights. It is an abuse of process. Therefore anyone that has been convicted has been convicted unlawfully."

Nick Pickles, director of the think-tank Big Brother Watch, demanded that the government come clean about requests for information. "The reach of the Patriot Act extends to the global operations of US companies, so it is imperative the UK government is transparent about any and all the requests to access census data."

Pickles also derided the CPS for dropping the prosecutions. "Having made the decision to prosecute, for the CPS to now bottle it and deny people their day in court is a shameful retreat that illustrates just how absurd the census process has become.

Sam Walton of the census campaign group Count Me Out highlighted one of the potential effects of the judicial review: "The ONS are scared that if they lost this case all government contracts involving the public interacting with arms companies would have to be torn up."

In his legal submissions, Simon points to the recent bid by US defence contractor Kellogg Brown & Root for the £1.5bn contract to run West Midlands and Surrey police. The US company, a former subsidiary of the Halliburton group, built the Guantánamo detention facility in Cuba.

"These cases being dropped shows that there is a strong legal argument to say that conscientious objectors should never have been forced to associate with weapons dealers like Lockheed Martin in the first place," said Walton.



NoCONcensus
- e-mail: noconcensus [at] yahoo.co.uk

Comments

Display the following comment

  1. cool — x
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech