This Week in Law: Jailed Environmentalist to Dodge Deportation

BBC News

Markus Decker, a German National and environmental activist, made headlines when he received one of the longest custodial sentences for peaceful protest in the modern history of the UK, being jailed for 31 months for unveiling a ‘Just Stop Oil’ banner across the Dartford Tunnel. He now has once again made headlines by winning his appeal against a deportation order issued against him.

The trial took place at an immigration tribunal on November 10th with Deckers’ legal representatives Nick Armstrong (KC) and Rosalind Comyn arguing that Decker had acted as a model citizen, out of compassion for the cause of environmental protection, drawing a comparison between modern environmentalists and notable historical campaign groups such as the suffragettes and civil rights groups and affirming that like them environmentalists should be celebrated.

Mr Decker made a statement upon winning his appeal in which he called the result “a huge victory for the climate movement and for the laws protecting peaceful protest in this country as a whole”. For many, this case has been a key moment to take stock and reflect on the current political climate regarding peaceful protest, especially given the growing sentiment that peaceful protest has been restricted under the current government. Paul Parker, a representative for Quakers in Britain and comrade of Decker, said that they “welcome this ruling but urge the government to reconsider the increasingly repressive laws against protest.”

Decker also received widespread support from members of the public, climate experts and even celebrities such as Olivia Colman and Emma Thompson, who were key in appealing to the Home Office to reconsider his deportation.

Though he has now won his appeal, it is expected that the Home Office will challenge the decision once the proper report outlining the legal reasons behind the judgment is issued.

This case has been seen by many as a key moment for environmentalism in the UK. It has also equally been a key moment for the UK legal system, with the deportation order that Decker faced being the first example of protest being handled with deportation in the modern history of Britain.

It is also possible and hoped by many that Decker’s victory may fuel greater scrutiny around increasingly long and severe sentences being handed out for protest as well as greater scrutiny regarding the use of “public nuisance” laws such as Serious Disruption Prevention Orders as means to control protest.

The Legal Graduate Employment Crisis — Contained?

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

For the last couple of years, there has been a general feeling regarding the increased difficulty that law graduates have had in securing roles in large city law firms. This has been a growing fear with several law graduates being forced into underemployment in non-law roles, due to not being able to successfully apply to any legal roles, given a large amount of competition.

Nowhere is the massive amount of competition for these roles more evident than with the statistics regarding training contract applications. Per Chambers Student, it is estimated that only around 2% of the applicants were successful in securing their training contracts. Further statistics from The Law Society also show that this is a more general pattern that can be seen outside of training contracts with a continued trend of the number of law graduates heavily outweighing the number of available trainee roles, such as in 2020 where 17,076 law graduates had to compete for a mere 5626 roles, meaning on average that year only ⅓ of law graduates were able to secure a trainee role in the legal sector.

However, hope does not seem fully lost for aspiring lawyers. Recent reports have shown that, in actuality, firms have been increasing the number of legal roles and placements in coordination with the large number of law graduates that are produced each year (around an average of 17,000–19,000 over the last 4 years). A report by Legal Cheek has revealed that over the last 5 years, the number of training contracts offered by 62 of the largest city law firms has risen beyond 2,000 a year, peaking at 2,267 in last year’s cycle (2024). This signifies a wider increase in supply for legal trainee roles; however, the question remains whether it will be enough to deal with the supply of law graduates, which shows no sign of slowing, apart from perhaps the growing popularity of legal degree apprenticeships.

It should also be noted that since last year, these expanded trainee roles seem to have been somewhat cut back, falling by 8% last year, with many speculating that economic uncertainty and the end of post-COVID-19 hiring peaks have been responsible.

An Orange by Another Name

Photo by Philippe Gauthier on Unsplash

The supermarket giant Asda, with an 11.9% market share, has, over the last month, been faced with intellectual property issues, being sued by Nador Scott Protection for, of all things, the branding of some of their oranges.

Nador Scott Protection has claimed that a breed of oranges that Asda sells, named the Tang Gold, is derived from the Nadorscott and therefore infringes on the plant breeders’ right that, by way of contract, Nador Scott Protection owns. In response, Asda has maintained that their Tang Gold does not actually derive from the Nadorscott despite sharing similarities, but rather comes from another breed of orange called the W.Murcott, which they maintain is distinct from the Nadorscott.

A recent development has come after the case, currently in the High Court, received the decision from Justice Mellor that it was not Asda’s position to claim the distinctness of the W.Murcott and the Nadorscott as they had, and that if they wanted to do this going forward, they set out an argument stating the precise differences between the breeds.

Looking back to the preliminary hearing in September and considering the agreed statement of facts from each party, it was seen that Asda representatives had agreed that the W.Murcott was largely a renamed Nadorscott. Justice Mellor noted this and concluded that it can be said to be implied that they are, for all intents and purposes, the same breed, further describing Asda’s claims to draw a distinction between the two breeds as “wishful thinking”.

The case is headed for the Patents Courts for a four-day trial that will commence on the 24th November; however, it would very much appear that the state of play seems to be on the side of Nador Scott Protection.

Boatloads of Barristers Blocked Up

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Being a lawyer is a stressful job, and being a Barrister specifically is perhaps even more stressful. The hours are long, the responsibility is immense, and the workload extensive. But it seems to have become even worse in the last couple of years.

The annual report on wellbeing from ‘Wellbeing at the Bar’ has revealed that for the past 2 years, over one quarter of UK barristers have reported issues with managing their workloads. With 27.2% of respondent barristers in the 2025 survey from the Wellbeing at the Bar survey stating that they feel they are unable to manage their workload effectively

Though this has been a slight improvement over last year, with the number of barristers saying that they were able to cope effectively with their workloads increasing from 49% to 56%, there is still a long way to go. Bar Council Chair Barbara Mills (KC) emphasised that there was still “work to do”, especially given the fact that lower wellbeing has consistently been reported from female, minority and more junior barristers, with the Bar Council reporting that these groups may not have seen the same gains as other barristers have in wellbeing over the last year.

The question being asked is why barristers have been struggling so much with their workloads. There has been a clear link seen between the wellbeing of barristers and the extensive backlog of cases in England and Wales, which has now increased by 11% over the past year and now sits at around 78,000 cases.

The court backlog has been cited by barristers as a key issue, with around 51% of respondent barristers in the 2023 Barristers’ Working Lives Report stating that the backlog of cases was their most pressing issue. So, with the seeming exponential growth of the court backlog in the future, questions must be asked about how barristers will cope and whether we can really expect to see reports on barrister wellbeing following the trend of improvement we have seen between this year and last year.

Asylum Seekers to Stay at Epping Hotel

The Telegraph

Earlier this week, the High Court ruled that asylum seekers will continue to be housed at the Bell Hotel in Essex. This decision was made in response to Epping Forest District Council’s appeals to the court for an injunction that would block the hotel from being used to accommodate asylum seekers.

This followed events earlier in the year where Epping Forest District Council proceeded with legal action against the hotel’s owners, Somani Hotels, after an Ethiopian asylum seeker housed in the Bell Hotel, Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, sexually assaulted a 14 year old girl.

The key arguments made by Epping Forest District Council in the High Court hearing were that the Bell Hotel’s planning rules made no provision for the hotel being used to accommodate asylum seekers, the fact that the asylum seekers were disrupting the local community and “had a propensity for anti-social behaviour” as well as the fact that protest around the hotel had become regular and obstructive.

Justice Mould heard the case and ruled against the injunction, despite the fact that a temporary injunction had been granted earlier in the year. In his judgement he expressed that “there is no evidential basis at all for the assertion that asylum seekers as a cohort have a greater propensity than the settled population to engage in criminal or anti-social behaviour” and that he was not convinced that the current usage of the Bell Hotel was an appropriate enough departure from its intended use to rule in favour of the injunction on the basis of planning permission.

In the meantime, the Bell Hotel has remained a hotspot of protest against immigration and the Labour government, with protestors campaigning on the fact that it had been promised that the hotels would cease to be used as a place to house asylum seekers by the government.

This case has become emblematic of the current discourse of immigration in the UK, with opinion being divided massively.