Parents lose SEND High Court challenge
Steadily rising
In March 2024, the previous government agreed a bailout of £53.7m for Bristol City Council and £95m for Devon County Council.Safety Valve agreements are currently in place for 38 local authorities across the country in a bid to control high levels of spending.The case was heard over three days at the High Court in Bristol in January. The number of children with SEND has been steadily rising and is currently at about 1.6m.
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The Independent
6 hours ago
- The Independent
Airline fined over £43 million for illegally sacking 1,800 workers during Covid pandemic
Australia's biggest airline has been fined AU$90 million ($59m or £43m) for illegally firing more than 1,800 ground staff at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. A judge issued the penalty to Qantas Airways on Monday, in addition to the AU$120m ($78m) in compensation the airline had already agreed to pay its former employees. Australian Federal Court Justice Michael Lee said the outsourcing of 1,820 baggage handler and cleaner jobs at Australian airports in late 2020 was the 'largest and most significant contravention' of relevant Australian labour laws in their 120-year history. Qantas agreed in December last year to pay AU$120m ($78m) in compensation to former staff after seven High Court judges unanimously rejected the Sydney -based airline's appeal against the judgment that outsourcing their jobs was illegal. The Transport Workers Union, which took the airline to court, had argued the airline should receive the largest fine available — AU$121,212,000 ($78,969,735). Lee ruled that the minimum fine to create a deterrence should be AU$90m ($59m), noting that Qantas executives had expected to save AU$125m ($81m) a year through outsourcing the jobs. Lee questioned the sincerity of Qantas 's apology for its illegal conduct, noting that the airline later unsuccessfully argued that it owed no compensation to its former staff. 'If any further evidence was needed of the unrelenting and aggressive litigation strategy adopted in this case by Qantas, it is provided by this effort directed to denying any compensation whatsoever to those in respect of whom Qantas was publicly professing regret for their misfortune,' Lee said. "I do think that the people in charge of Qantas now have some genuine regret, but this more likely reflects the damage that this case has done to the company rather than remorse for the damage done to the affected workers,' Lee added. Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson, who was the airline's chief financial officer during the layoffs, said in a statement after Monday's decision: 'We sincerely apologise to each and every one of the 1,820 ground handling employees and to their families who suffered as a result.' 'The decision to outsource five years ago, particularly during such an uncertain time, caused genuine hardship for many of our former team and their families," she said. 'Over the past 18 months, we've worked hard to change the way we operate as part of our efforts to rebuild trust with our people and our customers. This remains our highest priority as we work to earn back the trust we lost,' she added. Lee ruled that AU$50m ($33m) of the fine go to the union, because no Australian government agency had shown interest in investigating or prosecuting Qantas. 'But for the union … , Qantas' contravening conduct would never have been exposed and it would never have been held to account for its unlawful conduct,' Lee said. 'Hence the union has brought to the attention of the court a substantial and significant transgression of a public obligation by a powerful and substantial employer,' Lee added. A hearing will be held at a later date to decide where the remaining AU$40m ($26m) of the fine will go. Michael Kaine, national secretary of the union that represents 60,000 members, said he felt vindicated by Monday's ruling, which ends a five-year legal battle that Qantas had been widely expected to win. 'It is a significant — the most significant — industrial outcome in Australia's history, and it sends a really clear message to Qantas and to every employer in Australia: Treat your work force illegally and you will be held accountable,' Kaine told reporters. 'Against all the odds, we took on a behemoth that had shown itself to be ruthless, and we won,' Kaine added. Qantas has admitted to illegally dealing with passengers as well as employees in its responses to pandemic economic challenges. Last year, Qantas agreed to pay AU$120m ($78m) in compensation and a fine for selling tickets on thousands of cancelled flights. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, a consumer watchdog, sued the airline in the Federal Court, alleging that Qantas engaged in false, misleading or deceptive conduct by advertising tickets for more than 8,000 flights from May 2021 through to July 2022 that had already been cancelled.
BBC News
9 hours ago
- BBC News
'Facial recognition can make mistakes, it's not a decision-maker'
Later this year, as you walk down the street in West Yorkshire, your face may well be checked against a criminal facial recognition (LFR) has been used by some police forces for eight years - but new funding means it is now to be rolled out in more week, the Home Office confirmed that a total of 10 new LFR vans would be deployed across the country, with two of those set to be used in West Yorkshire, according to government said the technology had been used in London to make 580 arrests in 12 months, including 52 registered sex offenders who breached their groups have said they are worried about how intrusive LFR could prove to Alison Lowe, West Yorkshire's Police and Crime Commissioner, has told the BBC that photographs and data collected by LFR will not be Lowe explained: "Those photographs will be inputted into the system. It's using a live feed, and it measures against that police watch list. Other faces get pixelated out automatically."The technology is so sophisticated that it just has numbers - even for the people that it recognises, it's just a series of numbers. But then there's a match that will pop up for the police and they'll only see the face of the person on the watch list. "After that piece of work is finished, when they're going home for the day, all those faces are deleted from the system." There have been concerns about false matches when LFR is Thompson, 39, who was wrongly identified as a suspect by LFR last year, and who is now bringing a High Court challenge against the Metropolitan Police, describes live facial recognition as "stop and search on steroids".Ms Lowe said she was aware that LFR technology could make mistakes and police needed to be clear in how they used it."It definitely causes me concern as I've worked with black and brown communities for many years and I hold myself to a very high standard in regard to cases of disproportionality," she said."It can make mistakes, and the whole point of live facial recognition is that it's not a decision-maker."Ms Lowe said mistaken identity was easy to disprove when a human reviewed the matches by LFR technology."There's got to be a lot of training associated with this," she said."We know the College of Policing have been looking at whether or not bias in relation to ethnicity, race or gender is embedded, and apparently it's neutral as to those things. "We need to be alive to those risks. We need to be holding the police and criminal justice partners to account." West Yorkshire Police declined an interview request about the introduction of LFR vans in the county, but confirmed that two LFR vehicles would be brought into use by the force later this a statement, human rights organisation Liberty said of the use of LFR technology by police forces: "Any tech which has the potential to infringe on our rights in the way scanning and identifying millions of people does need to have safeguards around its use."Madeleine Stone, senior advocacy officer at privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said LFR was being rolled out "without a proper legal basis"."There's never been a vote, there's never been a consultation from the public or from parliament," she said."So the fact that the government is investing millions in taxpayer's money into this Orwellian and undemocratic technology is a real misstep and we're really, really concerned about it."Home Secretary and West Yorkshire Labour MP Yvette Cooper has pledged that people's data would remain secure if their images were caught on Cooper said: "The overwhelming majority of images are deleted within 0.2 seconds, so for those who are not on the wanted list of serious criminals, those images are not held. They are immediately deleted."There do have to be safeguards. We will do a new legal framework. I think this is technology that we do need to make sure is properly used." Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North
The National
a day ago
- The National
Alex Salmond's widow suing Scottish Government
Moira Salmond, 88, has appointed a team of lawyers to restart Salmond's case against the government he once led. At the time of his death, Salmond was pursuing legal action through the Court of Session and Police Scotland following his acquittal of charges of sexual assault at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2020. The action related to a flawed Scottish Government investigation into the complaints levelled against him. READ MORE: Rachel Reeves failed to raise Grangemouth with refinery owner days before closure In the August prior to his heart attack in October, Salmond's lawyer Gordon Dangerfield told the Court of Session that Salmond was seeking "significant damages" and compensation for loss of earnings that could stretch into the millions. Moira's determination to proceed is said to be driven by comments made in Nicola Sturgeon's memoir, Frankly. Moira previously released a rare public statement following an interview in which Sturgeon discussed Salmond's behaviour.
