Church and State blog: Ministry of Justice: Complaint to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice against the County Court at Central London in the Royal Courts of Justice (WITH UPDATE

Friday, June 09, 2017

Ministry of Justice: Complaint to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice against the County Court at Central London in the Royal Courts of Justice (WITH UPDATE - Day 13 21/6/2017)

Re: Blocks on public access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016

From my newer blog post's Update 21 June (8.39am):

"I have updated my blog post of 16 January with last night's 510th block on public access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016. The blog post also not only reveals a record-breaking 52 such blocks in one week at the end of April (an unprecedented escalation that kicked off with our focus on Denmark's cartoon crisis; 94 blocks last month), but it reveals the daily targeting to fluctuating degrees of category pages throughout the site which continues to this day."

An unprecedented ten blocks in one day on 7 May with our publication of Atheist Ireland republishes 25 blasphemous quotes in solidarity with Stephen Fry. 21 blocks last week; 5 blocks so far this week; 4 blocks yesterday; none since midnight today (as of 21 June at 8.39am).

The War on Free Expression

County Court at Central London, Royal Courts of Justice

Our experience of the Central London County Court has been so bad that this afternoon Declan complained to Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Elizabeth Truss. This email barely scratches the surface of the opposition we have encountered from this court at every turn:

For the attention of Neelam Ahuja, Customer Service Manager, Central London County Court

Rt Hon Elizabeth Truss MP
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
Ministry of Justice

Address removed for email

9 June 2017

Dear Secretary of State for Justice,

Central London County Court Case No. C01CL855

I complained to you on 8 March 2017 about my non-receipt of District Judge Avent's order dismissing my claim against the Greater London Authority (GLA)-commissioned St Mungo's that alleged the falsification and fabrication of data against me. In fact, I did not receive the attached order from the Central London County Court until 15 March 2017, two days after my statutory 21 days to apply for permission to appeal had expired.

Now, according to the Court's telephone service, my application for a full refund of the £80 hearing fee was approved on 26 April 2017 but the cheque has yet to be cleared by the Court's finance section. "That's up to their working time, sir," I was told on 9 May 2017.

Please find below a finding by the Information Commissioner's Office that the Ministry of Justice breached the Data Protection Act 1998 in respect of an application to contest the court's jurisdiction that was filed by the GLA at Central London County Court on 14 October 2015 in another unrelated case.

I am copying the Court's Customer Service Manager Neelam Ahuja into this complaint. I respectfully request that someone look into the delay in my refund and inform me how much longer it is going to take to get the cheque to me. My telephone number is 0788 043 7681.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey
Managing Director
Network for Church Monitoring

"Let me recommend an important web site - churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out." - Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

Finding of Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) against the Ministry of Justice (MoJ)

From the ICO's email dated 16 December 2015 regarding an application to contest the court's jurisdiction that was filed by the Greater London Authority at Central London County Court on 14 October 2015:

"Section 7(8) of the DPA states that a data controller shall comply with a request under this section promptly and in any event before the end of the prescribed period beginning with the relevant day. The 'relevant day' being the first day a data controller receives the request and specifically the fee, and the 'prescribed period' meaning 40 calendar days.

"As the MoJ received your SAR on 19 October 2015, it should have provided its final disclosure in response by 28 November 2015. However, it appears that the MoJ has failed to disclose any personal data to you.

"Therefore, it seems the MoJ has not met its obligations under the sixth data protection principle. Consequently, in our view, it is unlikely that the MoJ has complied with the requirements of the DPA in this case."

Click to enlarge

DAY 13 UPDATE 21 June (11.30am): Elizabeth Truss was moved to the Treasury on 11 June, two days after Declan's email above (13 days ago). On 16 June Declan redirected his complaint to the new Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice David Lidington. This morning we finally received our £80 cheque from the Central London County Court in full refund of the money we paid for the court hearing that took place on 20 February. They say that the refund was approved on 26 April but it appears not to have been processed. "Please accept my sincere apologies for the oversight," writes Rubina Begum, Temporary Customer Correspondence Section Team Leader, The County Court at Central London.

From My Picks:

20 February: The Central London County Court: District Judge Avent dismisses Declan's claim against the Greater London Authority-commissioned St Mungo's that alleged the falsification and fabrication of data against us (WITH UPDATE 16/3/2017)

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Friday, June 09, 2017

Ministry of Justice: Complaint to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice against the County Court at Central London in the Royal Courts of Justice (WITH UPDATE - Day 13 21/6/2017)

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