On 21 April, Dominic Raab resigned as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, to be replaced by Alex Chalk KC. On 8 May, The Times reported that the Bill of Rights Bill was to be dropped and that the Ministry of Justice had told its reporters that the new Justice Secretary had been ‘looking carefully’ at the Bill, while another Government source had described the Bill as a ‘complete mess’.

The issue of lack of legal recognition for same-sex partnerships has come before the European Court of Human Rights yet again, but this time before the Grand Chamber.

In the June to September report, I noted that Boris Johnson had announced his resignation as leader of the Conservative Party on 7 July and had been replaced as Prime Minister by Liz Truss on 6 September. Little did anyone imagine that she, in turn, would be replaced by Rishi Sunak on 25 October after only 50 days in office and a disastrous mini budget presented by her Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, which Sunak's replacement as Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, then repudiated almost in its entirety.

Though public policy continued to be dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, restrictions began to ease as the vaccine rollout progressed. The volume of secondary legislation barely slackened, however, and the lack of parliamentary scrutiny was a cause of concern both to academic commentators and to parliamentarians. On 10 June, the House of Lords Constitution Committee published its third and final report on the constitutional implications of coronavirus and was clearly very unhappy with the course of events: ‘The Government has introduced a large volume of new legislation, much of it transforming everyday life and introducing unprecedented restrictions on ordinary activities. Yet parliamentary oversight of these significant policy decisions has been extremely limited.’

The period under review continued to be dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Westminster Government and the devolved administrations issued a joint statement on 16 December 2020 outlining a series of relaxations on social contacts between 23 and 27 December but even so it seemed that there were mixed feelings about any relaxation. The Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, continued to stress that the Scottish Government's recommendation was to celebrate Christmas at home and to keep interactions with other households to a minimum. The Welsh Government decided that social interactions should be limited to two households only, to be followed by a further lockdown from 28 December.

The impact of COVID-19 on the capacity to hold face-to-face meetings meant that the normal pattern of synods and assemblies in 2020 was almost totally disrupted. The Church of England's General Synod met in the normal way from 10 to 13 February, but the July group of sessions, which is normally held in York, was reduced to an ‘informal virtual meeting’ on 11 July. A socially distanced special session was held on 24 September at Church House and the November group of sessions was held remotely from 23 to 25 November.

Much of the period under review was dominated by the impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Advice both from the Government and from the Churches was at first fairly muted. On 10 February the Government introduced the Health Protection (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020, which applied to England only and which made provision for detention for screening for the virus under certain conditions and imposing restrictions on individuals to limit the risk of those with the infection contaminating others; however, at the same time, the Prime Minister was urging people to remain ‘confident and calm’. Similarly, an Ad Clerum on hygiene at Holy Communion issued by the Bishop of Peterborough on 20 February deprecated the practices of intinction and of receiving the bread directly on to the tongue but did not recommend the ending of communion in both kinds.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the conjoined cases of Miller and Cherry that the advice given by the Prime Minister to Her Majesty that Parliament should be prorogued from a date between 9 and 12 September until 14 October was unlawful, and that the resulting Order in Council and the prorogation itself were also unlawful, void and of no effect – so it was back to the constitutional drawing-board. Parliament was subsequently prorogued from 8 to 14 October, sat until 5 November and was dissolved at 00.01 am on the following day.

This report covers the groups of sessions held in February 2019 and July 2019. After the spate of legislation in 2018, when nine Measures were enacted – the highest number in a single year since the Church was empowered by the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919 to make Measures having the force and effect of statute – 2019 saw the enactment of just a single Measure.

Mr G Conisbee v Crossley Farms Ltd & Ors [2019] ET 3335357/2018 was a preliminary hearing to determine whether or not vegetarianism was ‘capable of satisfying the requirement and definition of being a philosophical belief (protected characteristic) under the Equality Act 2010’. Employment Judge Postle held that vegetarianism did not amount to a philosophical belief, comparing it to veganism. The case is the latest in the confusing and contradictory case law on the meaning of the term ‘religion or belief’ under English law.

On 9 September, the European Union (Withdrawal) (No 2) Act 2019 received Royal Assent and Parliament was prorogued until 14 October. The prorogation was challenged in the courts both in England and Wales and in Scotland, and a strong Divisional Court of Queen's Bench and the Inner House of the Court of Session came to opposite conclusions as to its legality. The judgments were appealed to the Supreme Court, and on 24 September an eleven-judge bench handed down a unanimous judgment in the conjoined cases of Miller and Cherry.

The Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill, originally introduced by Tim Loughton MP as a private Member's bill in the Commons, received Royal Assent on 26 March and came into force two months after it was passed. Section 1 empowers the Secretary of State to amend by regulations the Marriage Act 1949 to provide for a central register of marriages in England and Wales ‘which is accessible in electronic form’. Section 2 requires the Secretary of State to amend the Civil Partnership Act 2004 so that opposite-sex couples become eligible to form a civil partnership in England and Wales – and the amending regulations must be in force no later than 31 December 2019. Section 3 requires the Secretary of State to report on whether the law should be changed to allow the registration of pregnancy losses which cannot be registered as stillbirths under the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 and section 4 requires the Secretary of State to make arrangements for the preparation of a report on whether, and if so how, the law should be changed to enable or require coroners to investigate stillbirths.

On 22 January 2019, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe agreed the text of Resolution 2253: Sharia, the Cairo Declaration and the European Convention on Human Rights. The Resolution begins – on an uncontroversial note – by reiterating ‘the obligation on member States to protect the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion as enshrined in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights … which represents one of the foundations of a democratic society’. It then goes on, however, to recall that the Assembly ‘has on several occasions underlined its support for the principle of the separation of State and religion, as one of the pillars of a democratic society’. This statement is not entirely non-contentious: it ignores the situation in several Member States of the Council of Europe and is based more on notions of laÿcitÕ than on the observable facts in countries such as England, Denmark, Finland and Norway that have state Churches. Unfortunately, this simplification and confusion set the tone for what is to follow.

HM Land Registry has published an updated Practice Guide on the property aspects of converting a charitable trust into a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (‘CIO’). Church of England parishes cannot convert themselves into CIOs, but congregations in some smaller denominations have either done so already or are contemplating conversion.