Gareth Rhys

Public Law & Human Rights

Gareth accepts instructions across all areas of public law and human rights. He is a member of the Attorney General’s London C panel of Counsel. Gareth was also Senior Crown Counsel and Crown Prosecutor for St Helena, in which he advised on a broad range of public law issues.

Selected Cases

• Gareth appeared as sole counsel in Buckley v Attorney General of St Helena [2024] SHSC 522,  a human rights claim brought under the Constitution of St Helena by a former elected Member of the island’s legislature for breaches arising from prison conditions at HMP Jamestown. It was the first claim to involve the fundamental rights provisions of the St Helena Constitution.
• Advising and representing the Commissioner for the British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Islands) on several judicial reviews in relation to migrant asylum seekers housed on Diego Garcia island.
• Advising and representing the Secretary of State for Defence in judicial reviews of decisions made under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy.
• Advising the Attorney General of St Helena on the lawfulness of actions taken in relation to a valuable and high profile procurement project on St Helena.
• Advising the Attorney General of St Helena on financial transparency legislation, namely the implementation of a publicly accessible register of beneficial ownership. This involved the provision of detailed advice to Ministers and the FCDO on public law and human rights aspects of the proposed legislation.
• Advising a potential intervener on the judicial review of the Home Office’s use of Wethersfield Airfield as a site to accommodate asylum-seekers on the basis that the Home Office failed to adopt adequate procedures for screening and monitoring vulnerabilities that made them unsuitable for accommodation on a large scale former military site.

As a Judicial Assistant in the Court of Appeal, Gareth worked on:

• R (Friends of the Earth Ltd) v Secretary of State for International Trade/Export Credits Guarantee Department (UK Export Finance) [2022] EWHC 568 (Admin) a judicial review concerning the lawfulness of the decision by the Secretary of State for International Trade to finance a liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique in light of the UK’s commitments under the Paris Agreement.
• R (Akinsanya) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWCA Civ 37 concerning the definition of Zambrano carers in the context of the European Union Settlement Scheme.
• R (Palmer) v Northern Derbyshire Magistrates’ Court [2021] EWHC 3013 (Admin), a judicial review concerning whether an administrator appointed under Part II of the Insolvency Act 1986 is an “officer” of the company so as to fall within s194(3) of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.