Double Jeopardy - UK Law and Politics

When Parliament suspended the death penalty for murder in 1965, it replaced it with the mandatory life sentence. Sixty years on, the nature and administration of the life sentence have changed almost beyond recognition. In this episode of Double Jeopardy, Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC are joined by legendary human rights and public law barrister Edward Fitzgerald KC to trace how “life” in England and Wales went from meaning a decade or so behind bars to meaning, for a small but growing group of prisoners, death in custody.

With expert legal commentary on the...

Ten months into Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC over an edit to a Panorama documentary aired days before the 2024 Presidential election, a federal Magistrate in Miami has issued a strict deadline, ordering Trump to sit for a deposition under oath by 11th December or risk having his claim struck out. The hour long documentary (“Trump: A Second Chance?”) spliced quotes from Trump’s speech, omitted context and gave a misleading timeline but plainly caused no damage to Trump’s election campaign or added further harm to his reputation as a shyster, fraudster, sexual predator, pathological liar and a...

On Double Jeopardy, Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC discuss the announcement on Friday 16th October that the Government had reached an out-of-court settlement with Sir Oliver (Olly) Robbins following his summary dismissal last April by former PM Keir Starmer as the permanent under secretary at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Head of the Diplomatic Service and the FCDO’s statutory Accounting Officer. According to The Guardian, the settlement included a six-figure sum by way of damages for Robbins’s unlawful dismissal.

Sir Olly had taken the highly unusual step of initiating a ju...

Last week’s ruling quashing the search warrants executed on 19th February 2026 at the homes of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor at Sandringham and Royal Lodge in the context of the investigation into alleged offences of misconduct in public office was a major embarrassment for Thames Valley Police. The police accepted that the warrants had been unlawfully issued but who was to blame for the fact that the wrong section of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 was relied on? Thames Valley police claim that “the court was presented with all the necessary information and paperwork”, giving the impression that the error lay wit...

The Conversion Practices Bill was formally announced in the King's Speech in July and confirmed Labour's Manifesto commitment to introduce into UK law a full, trans-inclusive ban on abusive "conversion practices" intended to change or suppress someone's sexual orientation as well as their transgender identity. The short, six-clause Bill was published in draft form on 25th June and is due to commence pre-legislative scrutiny later this month by a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament.

The Bill creates new criminal offences based on three limbs: first, conduct intended to change a person's s...

At a High Court hearing on 18th September before the Lady Chief Justice, the President of the King's Bench Division and Lord Justice Chamberlain, the Security Service (MI5) accepted that it gave evidence based on lies to three courts and that senior MI5 officers were repeatedly dishonest while seeking to defend a violent neo-Nazi agent identified as Agent X whose alleged abuse of two women was uncovered by the BBC.

Counsel for MI5 told the Court that "MI5 accepts without reservation" the findings of a damning report prepared by Deputy Investigatory Powers Commissioner Sir...

The publication of Lady Justice Thirlwall’s Report of the Public Inquiry into the Events at the Countess of Chester Hospital 2015-2018 (https://thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/the-report/#Summary-report-on-report-page) has reignited the sharply divided – and almost entirely uninformed - public debate about the safety of Lucy Letby’s convictions on 7 counts of murdering, and 8 counts of attempting to murder, new born babies in the hospital’s neo-natal unit between June 2015 and June 2016.

Without expressing any view on whether Letby was rightly convicted after a fair trial or is the victim of the greatest miscarriage of justice...

In the wake of the Metropolitan Police’s announcement that it’s Special Enquiry Team has expanded its criminal investigation into donations made to Reform UK by Fiona Cottrell, the mother of “Posh” George, to include suspected breaches of foreign funding laws based on the Verbatim/C4 undercover sting operation, Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC focus on the rise and fall of Dr James Orr, the former Reform UK Head of Policy - or “contractor” as he was contemptuously described by Nigel Farage soon after Orr was indefinitely suspended from the Party.  Just how clever is the Associate Pro...

Is the Verbatim Investigations/C4 film which shows senior (now ex) Reform UK officials apparently engaged in procuring illegal foreign donations to the Party a “hoax”, as Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick have claimed, or a brilliant example of investigative journalism in the public interest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXut3s90rUI)? And did the undercover operation breach journalistic ethics by crossing the line into “entrapment”, or did the evidence captured on film simply reveal the willingness of Reform’s former Head of Policy, James Orr, and senior aide to Farage, Dan Jukes, to operate an “off the books” i...

The failure of successive Conservative governments to build sufficient prison capacity to accommodate the growing prison population handed Labour a criminal justice crisis which demanded urgent action. In enacting the Sentencing Act in January 2026, Parliament approved the "earned progression" model recommended by the Gauke Sentencing Review which held out some hope of long term relief from the perma-crisis afflicting our penal system. But in the face of sustained media pressure concerning the release of the killers of PC Harper, Andy Burnham's first major policy decision as PM has been to water down the release scheme in a way guaranteed...

With co-hosts Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC travelling in widely separated time zones, it’s proved impossible to record the weekly episode as normal. But rather than skip an episode altogether we thought that with Parliament due to return next week and with the new Lord Chancellor Alex Norris due to announce major changes to the early release provisions of the Sentencing Act 2026 as a result of public fury at the prospect of the killers of PC Harper benefiting from the scheme, our audience would appreciate a chance to listen (or re-listen) to the 4th June 2025 episode wh...

Andy Burnham’s decision to pause the emergency early release scheme in order to ensure that the killers of PC Andrew Harper do not benefit from it, is an act of political desperation given the data showing that the UK prison system is at bursting point and can't cope with the rising prison population without a significant, rapid reduction in those currently imprisoned (https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/prison-early-release-scheme). It also demonstrates a grave lack of political judgment by former Justice Secretary David Lammy in failing to anticipate the inevitable public outcry that the scheme would trigger given th...

The Law Commission for England and Wales is currently consulting on reform of the antiquated common law of homicide (murder and manslaughter) with a view to addressing long-standing criticisms that the current legal system is outdated, overly complex and fails accurately and fairly to distinguish between varying degrees of culpability (https://lawcom.gov.uk/project/law-of-homicide/).

On Double Jeopardy, Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC provide expert legal commentary on the implications for UK law and politics of fundamental change to homicide law and sentencing in discussion with the Law Commissioner for Criminal...

The Burnham purge of the Cabinet has resulted in radical personnel changes in the Ministry of Justice and among the Law Officers, with the departures of David Lammy, Lord Hermer KC, Baroness Levitt KC and Lord Timpson. Their replacements are all less experienced legally and politically, less well known and consequently lacking in political weight.

To discuss the implications of these developments for UK law and politics, the rule of law, sentencing and prisons policy, Double Jeopardy hosts Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC are joined by regular guest Danny Shaw, a former...

In this episode of Double Jeopardy, the 12th June decision of the Trump administration to issue an export control directive forcing AI giant Anthropic to suspend access to its new AI tool Fable 5 "by any foreign national including one in the USA" on the basis of national security concerns triggered a huge current affairs debate in the EU about AI sovereignty, with former French PM Attal likening the shutdown to Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

To offer expert legal commentary on the implications of Trump's approach to AI and cyber-security for UK...

Reaction to the damning judgment handed down by Mr Justice Nicklin on 7th July (https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/lawrence-and-others-v associated-newspapers-limited/) dismissing the privacy and unlawful information gathering claims brought by Prince Harry and six other well known individuals against the Daily Mail publishers has been sharply divided. In an extraordinary, potentially reckless statement, given that Nicklin is due to decide the issues of costs later this month, Prince Harry condemned it as "a complete and obvious whitewash", questioning the objectivity and fairness of the Judge while Associated Newspapers welcomed the judgment as "a magnificent vindication" of the freedom...

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is a vital cog in the UK legal system but both before and after the catalogue of failures in handling of the Andrew Malkinson case were laid out in great detail in Chris Henley KC’s 2024 Report (https://cdn.websitebuilder.service.justice.gov.uk/uploads/sites/5/2024/10 henleyreport.pdf) it was widely regarded as an institution in permanent crisis, badly managed and apparently incapable of fulfilling the goals which lead to its creation via the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 in the wake of a series o high profile legal cases and miscarriages of justice.

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With the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum upon us, Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC begin the episode with a reminder of actor Danny Dyer’s memorable thoughts on “this whole Brexit thing” and his unflattering assessment of David Cameron’s role in enabling our departure from the EU, before they reflect on what the impact of Brexit has been on the UK legal system.

Ken and Tim then discuss how the interregnum between Keir Starmer’s resignation and the imminent arrival of Andy Burnham as Prime Minister has brought uncertainty in relation t...

Last week two parallel Private Bills were introduced in the House of Commons and House of Lords by Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Sir John Whittingdale MP (https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/4163) with the aim of expanding the existing law to tackle so-called SLAPP litigation – Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation – defined by the Solicitors Regulation Authority as “a misuse of the legal system through bringing claims or threatening claims that are unmeritorious or characterised by abusive tactics in order to stifle lawful scrutiny and publication”.

To debate the justification for extending the existing law as set o...

The last three episodes of Double Jeopardy covering the media ban on convicted murderer Jeremy Bamber, the Fordingbridge rape sentences and the murder of Henry Nowak have generated big audiences and plenty of comments and questions from listeners. And so in this week’s episode Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC respond to a range of listeners’ questions including – why bother to debate the rights and wrongs of the decision by the prison authorities to ban Bamber from all contact with the media given the numerous unsuccessful attempts he has made to overturn his convictions? Is it really necess...

The bodycam footage released by the Hampshire Constabulary following the conviction of Vickrum Singh Digwa depicts the moments immediately following the stabbing by Digwa of 18 year old Henry Nowak in Southampton on 3rd December 2025. Influenced by Digwa’s lying claims that Henry had racially abused and assaulted him, officers treated Henry as a suspect rather than a victim and initially ignored his desperate claims that he had been stabbed before recognising the severity of his injuries, removing the handcuffs and attempting CPR.

Despite these efforts Henry died at the scene and the evidence of the pathologist at Di...

The non-custodial Youth Rehabilitation Orders handed down by Judge Nicholas Rowland at Southampton Crown Court on 21st May 2026 on 3 teenage boys (aged 14 and 13 at the date of their crimes) for the gang rape of two lone girls aged 14 and 15 in Fordingbridge, Hampshire in 2024 and 2025 has triggered a major public outcry, generating public intervention by the Prime Minister and a decision by Attorney General Lord Hermer KC to refer the sentences to the Court of Appeal under the Unduly Lenient Scheme set out in s.36 Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Attorney general had 'no doubt' on reviewing teen boys' rape sentences).  The he...

Why has the Prison Service banned the convicted murderer Jeremy Bamber from any contact with the media, whether by letter, email, phone calls or face to face visits? And is such a ban lawful? Bamber was convicted in October 1986 of the cold-blooded murders of his adoptive parents, Neville and June Bamber, his adoptive sister Sheila Caffell and Sheila’s 6 year old twin sons Daniel and Nicholas, making him the UK’s most notorious living mass murderer. 

Now in the 40th year of his whole life sentence, Bamber has consistently maintained his innocence via a high p...

After a year of political pressure from a growing number of Member States concerned to counter populist anti-ECHR rhetoric over asylum, illegal migration and deportation of foreign criminals, the 46 members of the Council of Europe issued the Chisinau Declaration on 15th May 2026 (https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/council-of-europe-foreign-ministers-adopt-political-declaration-on-the-echr-and-migration). The Declaration targets the two articles of the ECHR most frequently deployed by migrants to halt deportations – the Article 3 absolute prohibition on torture and inhuman/degrading treatment and the Article 8 qualified right to respect for private and family life.

While the Declaration is a...

Is the Serious Fraud Office “on the ropes” as the headline in a recent Financial Times article declared? Was the former anti-corruption tsar Ken Clarke right in 2014 when he told SFO Director David Green that he had “always thought the SFO was a load of crap”? And if so, why is it that the UK is so poor at investigating financial crimes in comparison with other countries?

Does the recent announcement of SFO Director Nick Ephgrave’s early retirement, the collapse of the London Mining case, and the two-year postponement of the Patisserie Valerie trial prov...

On 21st April, almost two months since the US launched Operation Epic Fury “to destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy Iran’s navy and other security infrastructure” and “finally ensure that Iran will never have nuclear weapons”, the Office of the Legal Adviser to the State Department issued a detailed justification of the legality of the attack, asserting that the US “is acting well within the recognised contours of international law relating to the use of force and self-defence” (StateOperation Epic Fury and International Law - United States Department of State)

To discuss the State Departmen...

How far away is the reality of an artificial "legal brain” thanks to the extraordinary speed of developments in AI? With the CEOs of the key frontier labs (Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepMind) predicting that “lift off” (meaning the point at which AI is sufficiently autonomous to improve itself faster than humans can improve it) may be here within 1-2 years what are the implications for the law and the regulation of lawyers?

To answer these and other questions, Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC are joined by their Matrix Chambers colleague and AI/media law ex...

With numerous former senior civil servants attacking Keir Starmer for his decision to sack Sir Olly Robbins – former Cabinet Secretary Lord Gus O'Donnell says the sacking “risks having a serious and sustained chilling effect on serving and prospective civil servants” - Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC examine the claim by those defending Robbins that he was forbidden by law from disclosing to Starmer even the bare outcome of Mandelson’s developed vetting process by UK Security Vetting.  

Does - as previous FCDO Perm Sec Lord Simon McDonald has said - the Constitutional Reform and G...

With Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill apparently doomed to extinction thanks to the co-ordinated efforts of a handful of Peers determined to ensure it cannot complete scrutiny in the House of Lords, the future looks bleak for any form of assisted dying legislation to become law in the UK any time soon.

To discuss the arguments for and against the Leadbeater Bill, Ken and Tim – both supporters of some form of assisted dying legislation – are joined by philosopher and writer Kathleen Stock to discuss her new book Do Not Go Gen...

On 19th March 2026 the Chief Inspector of Prisons issued an Urgent Notification placing Woodhill Prison into special measures (https://hmiprisons.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmipris_reports/hmp-woodhill-urgent-notification-2/).    

On the same day he published a truly shocking report into HMP Swaleside (https://hmiprisons.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmipris_reports/hmp-swaleside-5/), another jail in the long-term high secure estate holding some of the most dangerous men in the country.

Coming less than 18 months after an Urgent Notification was issued at HMP Manchester, the Inspectorate’s findings reveal a disturbing, indeed shameful, picture of systemic failure and loss of contr...

The 2026 US/Israel war against Iran is a rapidly evolving, multi-front war.  What started as a massive joint air campaign (Operation Epic Fury) and involved the execution of Ayatollah Ali Khameini and some 40 other senior Iranian leaders and key military commanders has expanded into a regional confrontation involving cyber warfare, energy blockades and direct missile exchanges without any current sign of an uprising by the Iranian people to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Hormuz Straits remain effectively closed to Western-aligned commercial traffic, creating a looming crisis of global economic disaster.  

Following their discussio...

With world events continuing to dominate the domestic news agenda, Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC respond to a range of listeners’ questions generated by recent episodes. 

What explains the huge gap which has emerged between the broad consensus among international lawyers that the US/Israel attack on Iran was illegal and the mild or even supportive reactions given to Operation Epic Fury by many States? Ken and Tim respond to the many questions from listeners who disagreed with Shadow AG Lord Wolfson KC’s confident assertion that the attack was both legally and morally j...

Undaunted by near unanimous opposition from the legal profession, the Government last week published the Courts and Tribunals Bill which, if enacted, will mean that roughly half of cases currently tried by juries will be decided either by magistrates or a single Crown Court Judge. And to discuss the content and implications of the bill, Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC are joined by the Chief Executive of JUSTICE, Fiona Rutherford who, in a previous life, was the Director of Access to Justice Policy at the Ministry of Justice as well as holding other frontline policy roles in t...

With Operation Epic Fury, the US/Israel attack on Iran, triggering reprisals by Iran that risk the stability of the entire Gulf Region, what are the shifting international law justifications for the initial attack? And was the Starmer/Hermer explanation for the UK’s cautious approach to involvement in “offensive” action an example of weakness or wise restraint? 

To answer these and other questions Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC are joined by the Shadow Attorney General, Lord David Wolfson KC, who attacked the Prime Minister’s statement explaining why the UK did not particip...

Is Misconduct in Public Office “one of the most notoriously difficult offences to define in England and Wales” as the Law Commission observed in its 2020 Report into the history of the offence? And what reforms are needed for it to satisfy 21st century requirements of legal certainty according to the Commission’s conclusions ?

To answer these and other questions, Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC are joined by the former Criminal Law Commissioner and distinguished Professor of Criminal Law, Jeremy Horder, who, in addition to being the current editor of Ashworth’s Principles of Crimina...

Why did the High Court quash the Home Secretary’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation? And what are the prospects of the Home Secretary winning on appeal?   

With Ken Macdonald KC refraining from public comment on public order/protest issues while he leads the independent review commissioned by Shabana Mahmood into existing public order and hate crime legislation, Tim Owen KC is joined by freelance criminal justice and policing expert Danny Shaw to discuss the background to Yvette Copper’s June 2025 decision to proscribe Palestine Action and the reasoning which led the H...

The second Part of Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts was published last week but largely overlooked in light of the Mandelson scandal.   

In this week’s episode Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC are joined by Sir Brian to discuss the details of his mammoth, Part 2 Report and to get his response to the very strong criticisms from both the legal profession, the judiciary and politicians from all sides to his first Report on jury reform. 

Sir Brian’s Second Report covers a vast range o...

What is the future of anti-SLAPP laws in the UK?  And what are the implications of the recent High Court Judgment in Hurst v Solicitors Regulation Authority (https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/082-Hurst-v-SRA-002.pdf)in which the SRA was heavily criticised for holding that the experienced Osborne Clarke media solicitor, Ashley Hurst, was guilty of professional misconduct on the basis that he had wrongly attempted to deter tax campaigner Dan Neidle from publishing allegations of dishonesty over his tax affairs against former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nadim Zahawi?  

Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC disc...

Are the Government’s plans to reduce the shameful backlog of some 80,000 cases awaiting trial in the Crown Court built on sand? Is the prediction in Part 1 of Sir Brian Leveson's Independent Review of Criminal Courts reliable?

Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC are joined by Cassia Rowland. Cassia is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Government (IFG) and the author of the IFG's Report “Trial and Error? The impact of restricting jury trials on court demand” published on 21st January - https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/judge-only-trials-court-demand-productivity⁠

Ca...

In this week’s episode Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC discuss a wide range of issues affecting UK law and politics and answer some listeners’ questions.  

Does Elon Musk’s climbdown over Grok’s image generator represent a victory for online safety campaigners and have Ken and Tim been unfair about Ofcom’s record of enforcing the Online Safety Act ? 

Will the US Supreme Court’s imminent ruling in  Learning Resources v Trump declare Trump’s unilateral imposition of tariffs without Congressional approval to be unlawful and what would that mean for Trump’...