Practice Areas
Partner and Head of Public Law and Human Rights.
John Halford is a public law specialist. He represents individuals, campaign and action groups, unions, charities, schools, professional associations and regulators, arts organisations and commercial companies – not only as judicial review claimants but also as interested parties and interveners in cases brought by others that affect their interests, or those of people they represent.
He has had a number of notable successes in high profile test cases in the Court of Appeal, the House of Lords and the UK Supreme Court, most recently in the Article 50 litigation, where he represented a group of interested parties. He has European Court of Human Rights experience at Grand Chamber level.
John is also a source of decisive and trusted advice on a wide range of complex public law issues. His advisory caseload spans Brexit and other EU law issues, regulatory and licensing, professional disciplinary, procurement, planning, pensions and human rights law matters.
John has given talks and provided training on public law, judicial review and human rights to audiences as diverse as the Malaysian Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association of Caserta, Italy, and at the Public Law Project and JUSTICE annual conferences.
Career
John began work as a lawyer in the voluntary sector, as a solicitor at the Public Law Project. He joined Bindmans LLP in 2003.
John has experience litigating against a wide range of public bodies and organisations on issues as diverse as adequacy of Legal Aid, the legality of Brexit without Parliamentary control, mass stops and searches, the scope of licensing authority powers, and meaningful accountability and redress for human rights abuses in the 1940s. His public law and human rights advisory experience is equally broad, ranging from healthcare, skills funding and licensing regulation to EU, procurement planning and environmental issues.
John’s current work includes:
challenging the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s injustice findings in his investigation into state pension age changes;
advising on complex regulatory issues involving the Regulator for Social Housing;
acting with Shirin Marker for the family of extraordinarily rendered Biafran leader Nnamdi Kanu in a challenge to FCDO inaction;
acting on a high profile extradition case pending before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; and
assisting the traders of Seven Sisters Market secure fair and lawful decision-making on the Market’s future
Significant anti-discrimination and equality work includes:
challenging the shocking treatment of Ebenezer Azamati by the Oxford Union, securing compensation an apology, and institutional change;
overturning a racially discriminatory MoD policy that had denied compensation to over 1,000 British people held in Japanese concentration camps during World War II – Secretary of State for Defence v Elias (Court of Appeal);
establishing that a school’s admissions policy unlawfully discriminated on grounds of ethnic origins – JFS v E (House of Lords and Supreme Court);
successfully challenging the withdrawal of funding from the UK’s longest established Black theatre company – R (Talawa Theatre Company) v Arts Council England;
exposing the unlawful failure to take equality into account in planning, healthcare, school transport and taxi licensing decisions – R (Harris) v LB Haringey (Court of Appeal), R (Eisai) v NICE, R(Diocese of Menevia) v Swansea City Council and R(Lunt) v Liverpool City Council; and
advisory work on sex discrimination in state pensions arrangements
High impact regulatory work includes:
successfully defending the new press regulator, IMPRESS, in a challenge to its accreditation by the Press Recognition Panel – R (News Media Association) v Press Recognition Panel and IMPRESS;
advising a professional association on guidance that restricts it’s members’ ability to properly report to and advise the courts;
investigating TfL’s actions in response to the increasing use of taxi and private hire apps;
successful challenges to unfair government procurement processes for a major advertising agency and an apprenticeship provider;
assisting GP consortia to challenge Clinical Commissioning Group decision-making;
successfully challenging to Liverpool’s taxi licensing policy on the basis of disability discrimination and EU competition law for a disability rights campaigner and a vehicle manufacturer – R (Lunt and another) v Liverpool City Council; and
successful challenges to other local authorities’ restrictive taxi licensing policies for a manufacturer of disabled – accessible Hackney cabs – e.g. R (Allied Vehicles Ltd) v Norwich City Council and R (Allied Vehicles Ltd) v Transport for London
Work promoting access to justice and the Rule of Law inludes:
acting for the Law Society in its successful challenge to a £36 million per annum legal aid cut in complex Crown Court cases – R (Law Society) v Lord Chancellor;
acting for several law firms as part of the team that successfully brought the UK’s most far-reaching procurement challenge;
a challenge to the refusal to hold a public inquiry into the 1948 massacre of their relatives by British troops at Batang Kali, a village in Malaysia – R (Keyu and others) Secretary of State for Defence and another (Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights);
acting for the Law Society in its challenge to dual contracting (Court of Appeal)
Important work for action groups, charities and NGOs includes:
advising the People’s Challenge (the group that used crowdfunding to champion ordinary people’s interests in the Article 50 Supreme Court case, Miller) on the consequences of the Brexit process for fundamental rights;
the first challenge of a government department’s rejection of an Ombudsman report. The Minister’s decision was found unlawful and irrational by the courts, leading to the extension of compensation schemes worth several billion to affected pension scheme members – R (Bradley and others) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Court of Appeal) ; and
representing the RNIB in a proposed challenge to DWP policies which made it particularly difficult for blind and partially sighted people to seek work
Professional disciplinary experience includes:
securing the reconsideration of proposals to regulate psychotherapists and councillors for a consortia of professional bodies – R (AGIP and others) v Health Professions Council;
acting as standing advisor to the Association of Child Psychotherapists; and
challenging GMC decision-making on behalf of a patient whose child was wrongly diagnosed – R (Campbell) v GMC (Court of Appeal); and
a challenge to the refusal by a professional regulatory body to investigate a disciplinary matter – R (Winter) v NMC
Planning and environmental litigation experience includes:
assisting environmental campaigning organisation, Marinet, to seek protection of the remains of service personnel, their ships and aircraft against the risks posed by the proposed dredging of Goodwin Sands;
a successful challenge by a member of an action group which exposed planning decisions on a multi-million-pound development had been taken without proper regard to equality of opportunity for the local community – R (Harris) v London Borough of Haringey (Court of Appeal);
advising an association on the legality of local authority planning decisions which favoured developers over established market traders; and
challenging a flawed consultation process which preceded the introduction of a controlled parking zone
Test cases on civil liberties, the extent of police powers and protest rights include:
establishing that forcible return of 120 protesters who had travelled to an organised demonstration by coach breached their common law rights and Articles 10 and 11 ECHR – R (Laporte) v Chief Constable of Gloucestershire (House of Lords);
a judicial review of the £5.3 million policing operations which imposed a cordon around the Kingsnorth Climate Change Camp. The multiple stops and searches of those who wanted to pass through and join the protest were shown to be unlawful and a breach of protestors’ Article 8, 10 and 11 rights – R (Morris, E and T) v Chief Constable of Kent Police; and
a successful challenge to the unlawful retention of a child’s DNA, fingerprints and photographs – R (LH) v Chief Constable of Staffordshire
Health and community care cases include:
the first judicial review of NICE’s guidance to the NHS in which John acted for the Alzheimer’s Society, whose discrimination law arguments “won the day” according to the first instance judge – R (Eisai) v National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence; and
successful challenges to inadequate care planning for autistic children and young adults, withholding Herceptin from women with breast cancer and inadequate local authority service provision for disabled adults
John has written widely on public law, human rights equality and healthcare issues. For example, Judicial Review and Legal Action have published a series of his articles on the impact of equality legislation and Ombudsman decision making, he was jointly responsible for the TUC’s guide to the new public sector equality duties, he wrote Legal Action’s health law series and co-authored Butterworth’s Health Services Law and Practice
John has served on two Law Society committees (Mental Health and Disability and Immigration), as a Board member of the Public Law Project, the Management Committee of Camden Law Centre and on the Law Centres’ Federation Executive
