The Immediate Futures of EU Health Law in the UK after Brexit

Over a year after the referendum on EU membership, even the broad parameters of the legal arrangements of Brexit remain frustratingly unclear. Details are woefully lacking. The EU insists that a withdrawal agreement must be settled before discussing any future EU/UK (trade) agreement(s). The withdrawal agreement will cover the position of R-EU nationals in the UK and vice versa and the UK’s liabilities to the EU. Both have implications for health law. The UK intends to secure legal continuity and reform through statute and executive action. EU law is deeply entwined in UK health law, albeit often indirectly. No area of health law will remain entirely untouched by Brexit. This article considers the implications of the withdrawal agreement, and the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, on key aspects of UK health law, and argues that the health law community must be attentive to these unfolding processes

“Now I understand what you were trying to do, I see that this was the best module I had at University”: Student Learning Expectations Reviewed Eight Years Later"

The article reflects on a small longitudinal case study of a large compulsory module in a pre-1992 red-brick law school, using a narrative discursive method. It suggests that "alternative" methods of university law school teaching, such as Problem Based Learning, are experienced by students at the time as unsatisfactory. After being in graduate employment for several years, the students' experience has entirely changed. At that stage in their development and careers, students understand the relationships between the skills being fostered in such modules, and employment in the legal or other graduate professions. Processes, such as the Teaching Excellence Framework, that rely too strongly on contemporaneous assessments of the quality of student learning, such as the National Student Survey, create strong individual and institutional incentives to avoid such "risky" teaching. This undermines the stated aim of enhancing "employability" through university education

‘All About That Bass’? Is non-ideal-weight discrimination unlawful in the UK?

People of non-ideal-weight (overweight or severely underweight) are subjected to discrimination, in the workplace and elsewhere, based on attitudinal assumptions and negative inferences from their membership of a group, such as that they are insufficiently self-motivated to make good employees. But is that discrimination unlawful in the UK? The Equality Act 2010 offers only a very tenuous route for protection, because the Act is based largely on a ‘medical model’ of disability. EU law, which embraces a ‘social model’ of disability, drawing from the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, offers more, at least in theory. But the mechanisms for enforcing individual EU law rights mean that entitlements in EU law are likely to be enforceable in practice only against state employers. This situation leaves a gap in the law which is remediable only by legislative reform

How will Brexit affect health and health services in the UK? Evaluating three possible scenarios against the WHO health system building blocks

The process of leaving the European Union (EU) will have profound consequences for health and the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. In this paper, we use the WHO health system building blocks framework to assess the likely effects of three scenarios we term soft Brexit, hard Brexit, and failed Brexit. We conclude that each scenario poses substantial threats. The workforce of the NHS is heavily reliant on EU staff. Financing of health care for UK citizens in the EU and vice versa is threatened, as is access to some capital funds, while Brexit threatens overall economic performance. Access to pharmaceuticals, technology, blood, and organs for transplant is jeopardised. Information used for international comparisons is threatened, as is service delivery, especially in Northern Ireland. Governance concerns relate to public health, competition and trade law, and research. However, we identified a few potential opportunities for improvement in areas such as competition law and flexibility of training, should the UK Government take them. Overall, a soft version of Brexit would minimise health threats whereas failed Brexit would be the riskiest outcome. Effective parliamentary scrutiny of policy and legal changes will be essential, but the scale of the task risks overwhelming parliament and the civil service

Equality Law Obligations in Higher Education: reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010 in assessment of students with unseen disabilities

8% of UK students have an ‘unseen disability’: a specific learning difficulty, autistic spectrum condition, or mental ill health. A department with 1000 students has, on average, 80 students with such unseen disabilities. These students have a variety of potential sources of legal redress if they consider a university has failed properly to accommodate their disability. The most plausible is a claim under the Equality Act 2010. We have experienced a lack of clarity in understanding the nature and extent of those Equality Act entitlements, and the corresponding obligations that fall upon universities, and their staff. These confusions occur in many contexts, but the one that is most important to students is their entitlements where assessments are concerned. We set out to explain the relevant law, and to consider how it applies to some, perhaps typical, unseen disabilities in the context of a range of approaches taken by universities in assessing their students. Our principal and important conclusion is that there is no ‘quick fix’ approach according to which someone may say that they are Equality Act compliant. However, there are several considerations which will increase (or decrease) the likelihood of compliance. In brief, these constitute effective communication; procedures that secure individual decisions, rather than blanket policies or approaches; and what amounts to no more than good inclusive educational practice for all students