With the recent step forwards for gender equality and a new year coming in it seems a fitting time to consider how far English law has come in regard to establishing equal rights and to consider and highlight where, as housing lawyers, we need to see some change.

This has been one of the most significant years for human rights globally in living memory. The pandemic has brought inequalities into sharp focus and further entrenched them. It is against this backdrop that the government has spoken out increasingly against ‘activist lawyers’ and launched reviews of the Human Rights Act 1998 and other mechanisms for challenging state decisions. The role of human rights in holding the state to account has never been more crucial. The government must have proper regard for human rights in its continued response to the pandemic and the recovery from it in the years to come.

Notting Hill Carnival is the second largest in the world and celebrates Caribbean culture, and it is one of the safest festivals in the world. Yet, every year, the apparently numerous arrests made at Carnival is widely reported and used as justification to threaten the existence of Carnival itself and to employ police tactics that are unfair and discriminatory.

Following a call by Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights for a national oversight mechanism to ensure that lessons are learned from deaths in prisons, Clair Hilder reflects on the growing number of cases that demonstrate the failure of our current system to protect vulnerable prisoners.

Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (the JCHR) is currently carrying out an inquiry into mental health and deaths in prison, looking at three broad themes…

Mr Conway, a 67 year old man, was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, a degenerative and terminal illness, in 2014. His wish, while he retains capacity to make such choices, is to enlist the assistance of medical professionals, lawfully to bring about his peaceful and dignified death. Section 2(1) of the Suicide Act 1961 however, criminalises assisted dying.