CHAPTER 6: POWERS AND SAFEGUARDS
covered by a RIPA s8(4) warrant were sufficiently accessible and foreseeable to be in
accordance with the law.121
6.109. After 2013, a number of NGOs and individual brought claims to the IPT seeking
detailed consideration of the legality of elements of the investigatory powers regime.
There were several open hearings in 2014, one of which lasted five days, at which
what the Tribunal itself had described as “the clarifying and collaborative value of
adversarial oral argument” was on public display. Sustained pressure from NGOs,
concerned individuals and their advocates has led both to significant disclosures from
security and intelligence agencies and to the uncovering of unlawfulness. In particular,
and in recent weeks:
(a) The IPT ruled for the first time against the security and intelligence agencies on 6
February 2015, stating that prior to disclosures made during 2014, the regime
governing the treatment in the UK of data obtained by the US pursuant to the Prism
programme was not in accordance with the law, as required by Articles 8 and 10
of the ECHR.122
(b) A Code of Practice governing CNE was released on the same day, against the
background of the Privacy International challenge to the use of CNE.
(c) The agencies conceded on 18 February that their policies and procedures relating
to legal professional privilege had not accorded with human rights standards.
6.110. The IPT so confirmed in its Belhadj judgment of 29 April 2015, in the first judgment to
find in favour of an individual against the security and intelligence agencies.
6.111. The IPT’s procedure is different from an ordinary court procedure in a number of ways:
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122
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124
125
(a)
Proceedings may on occasion be held in closed session without reporters and
without the person who is raising the complaint attending the hearing.
Alternatively, part of the hearing may be held in open and other parts in
closed.123
(b)
The IPT’s decisions are normally only that it has made a determination in favour
of, or against, the person complaining. The reasons for or explanation of the
decision are not normally given.124
(c)
There is no right of appeal against the IPT’s decisions.125
(d)
The IPT is not a “senior court” that has the power to declare an Act of Parliament
incompatible with the ECHR, pursuant to HRA 1998 s4.
IPT/01/77, 9 December 2004.
[2015] UKIPTrib 13 77-H.
In practice, many complaints to the IPT do not result in a hearing but are disposed of on the papers.
The Tribunal has expressed doubts as to its capacity to grant relief (in the absence of undertakings)
where there has been no determination in favour of a Claimant: Belhadj IPT Case, judgment of 29 April
2015, para 24(viii).
RIPA ss65-68.
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