Bradshaw and Others v. the United Kingdom

Legal summary

July 2025

Bradshaw and Others v. the United Kingdom - 15653/22

Judgment 22.7.2025 [Section IV]

Article 3 of Protocol No. 1

Free expression of the opinion of the people

Alleged failure to investigate credible allegations of, and provide an effective legal framework to protect the electorate from, hostile interference by Russia in democratic elections in the United Kingdom: no violation

Facts – The applicants are former Members of Parliament. In 2019 and 2020, respectively, reports were published by the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (“DCMS”), entitled “Disinformation and ‘fake news’" and by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (“ISC”), entitled “Russia”. The applicants believed that these reports, together with the Government’s public response to the ISC report, provided credible evidence of interference by Russia in the 2019 general election.

The applicants, together with two life peers and a non-profit organisation, sought permission to challenge, by way of judicial review, the Prime Minister’s decision not to, and/or his ongoing failure to, direct an independent investigation into Russian interference in the United Kingdom’s democratic processes. Their application for permission was refused, twice by the High Court and again on appeal to the Court of Appeal.

The applicants complain under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 that the respondent State breached its positive obligation to investigate hostile State interference in its democratic elections and that it failed to put in place an effective legal framework to secure its obligations under that Article.

According to the applicants, Russia had engaged in widespread and pervasive interference in democratic elections across the Council of Europe and beyond. Its aggressive tactics included weaponising disinformation to undermine democratic institutions, deliberate cyber-attacks against key State entities, including election infrastructure, “hack and leak” operations, and the use of “cyber troops” and “troll farms” to manipulate public discourse and to sow discord between social groups.

Law – Article 1 of Protocol No. 3:

(1) Admissibility –

(a) Applicability – To date, the majority of violations of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 found by the Court fell into one of three broad categories: firstly, direct restrictions by the State on who might stand or vote in an election; secondly, failure by the State to act in accordance with its own electoral law; and thirdly, failure by the State to provide a reasonably fair and effective system of remedies for alleged breaches of electoral law.

Under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 member States had an obligation to adopt positive measures to organise elections “under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature”. That Article also guaranteed the more general right of benefiting from legislative elections in accordance with the above formula. Accordingly, there might be a violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 if the conditions in which applicants’ individual electoral rights were exercised curtailed their rights under that provision to such an extent as to impair their very essence and deprive them of their effectiveness. The scope of the States’ obligation extended beyond the integrity of the result of the election, in the narrow sense, and encompassed the circulation of political opinions and information in the period preceding an election and, more generally, the equality of opportunity afforded to candidates.

So far the Court had only dealt with cases concerning conditions created by (or within) the respondent State which, it had been argued, had thwarted the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of legislature.

In that regard, it was undisputed that State actors and non-State actors had weaponised disinformation to interfere in democratic elections. While new technologies, such as social media platforms, had enabled political parties to disseminate information directly to the electorate, they had also made it possible for hostile actors to spread disinformation and manipulate information at a scale and with a speed never seen before. According to the relevant reports Russia had sought to weaken and divide its adversaries by interfering in elections using mis- and disinformation, cyber-attacks and other methods and had engaged in a systematic, international campaign of media manipulation and distortion of facts to enhance its strategy of destabilisation of its neighbouring countries and of the European Union and its Member States. More specifically, both the United Kingdom and the United States of America had acknowledged that there had been attempts by the Russian Federation to interfere in their democratic elections.

Undoubtedly, the dissemination of disinformation was capable of posing a significant threat to democracy. That had been acknowledged by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Council and the Venice Commission.

Accordingly, the Court accepted that if there was a real risk that as a consequence of interference by a hostile State the rights of electors within a member State would be curtailed to such an extent as to impair their very essence and deprive them of their effectiveness, Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 might require that State to adopt positive measures to protect the integrity of its electoral processes, and to keep those measures under review.

Furthermore, in view of the very different nature of complaints falling under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, the Court did not consider that a freestanding obligation to investigate, analogous to that which existed where there was an arguable breach of, inter alia, Articles 2, 3 and 4 of the Convention or even under Articles 8 and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, could or should now be read into that Article. Cases under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 were of a wholly different order from those falling under the above provisions. At the same time, if a State were to ignore credible allegations of foreign interference in its elections, it would not be able to adopt positive measures to protect the integrity of its electoral processes. Therefore, while States might not have a separate and autonomous obligation to investigate arguable claims of a breach of an individual’s rights under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, a State’s flagrant failure to investigate credible allegations of interference in its elections could raise an issue under that Article if it impeded its ability to take positive measures to protect the electorate from the impairment of the very essence of its right to benefit from elections “under conditions which ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people”.

The purpose of any investigation would principally be to determine the nature and extent of the threat to enable the State to take the measures necessary to protect the integrity of its electoral processes from external interference. The investigation would therefore be antecedent to the State putting in place or updating a legal and regulatory framework to satisfy the positive obligation to protect the integrity of its electoral processes, and any alleged failure to investigate would fall to be considered as part of that positive obligation, and not as a separate violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1.

Conclusion: applicable (unanimously).

(b) Victim status – It was clear from both the DCMS and ISC reports, which had principally focused on interference during the 2016 EU referendum, that Russia had posed a significant and ongoing threat to the United Kingdom’s democratic processes through disinformation campaigns and political influence operations. That threat had not been unique to the United Kingdom; at the time of the reports’ publication the Council of Europe had raised concerns about the threat to democratic elections emanating from influence campaigns by, inter alia, hostile State actors, and there had been a widely publicised report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into Russian interference in the 2016 US election. Furthermore, the respondent Government in its response to the ISC report had acknowledged that it was almost certain that Russian actors had sought to interfere in the 2019 General Election through the online amplification of illicitly acquired and leaked Government documents.

The Court had already acknowledged that influence campaigns could pose a significant threat to democracy, notably, by distorting the communication ecosystem to the point where voters might be seriously encumbered in their decisions by misleading, manipulative and false information designed to influence their votes. In the present case, it accepted there had been evidence of interference in the United Kingdom’ democratic processes of sufficient intensity to be capable of impairing the very essence of the right to benefit from elections held “under conditions which ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people”.

However, whether that interference was in practice capable of impairing the very essence of that right depended not only on the intensity of the interference but also on the measures in place at the national level to minimise the risk of that interference influencing the outcome of an election. As that issue was closely bound up with those to be considered when examining the applicants’ substantive complaints, the Court joined it to its examination on the merits.

Conclusion: preliminary objection joined to the merits (unanimously).

(2) Merits – While the Court did not underestimate the threat posed by the spreading of disinformation and the running of “influence campaigns”, their nature was nevertheless such that, as recognised by the relevant reports by the ISC, Council of Europe Venice Commission, it was difficult to assess accurately their impact on individual voters and by extension, on the outcome of a given election. That, however, should not prevent States from taking measures to defend democratic values; indeed, States were not required to wait, before intervening, until a threat to democracy was sufficiently established and imminent. However, while there was undoubtedly agreement among the international community that election interference through the weaponisation of disinformation and, in some cases, cyber-attacks and “hack and leak” operations, posed a serious threat to democracy, at present there appeared to be no clear consensus as to what specific actions States would need to take to protect their democratic processes against such risks.

There was only clear consensus that this was a complex global problem which could not be addressed without the co-operation of international partners and social media companies. While warning of the dangers of disinformation and foreign election interference, international organisations had been equally vocal in warning against the risk of kneejerk reactions to those dangers. The impact of disinformation and influence campaigns depended on a variety of social, economic, cultural, technological and political dynamics that did not lend themselves to simplistic solutions. Those dynamics needed to be properly understood for the problem to be addressed effectively.

Furthermore, there was a very fine line between addressing the dangers of disinformation and outright censorship. Any actions taken by States to counter the risk of foreign election interference through the dissemination of disinformation and the running of influence campaigns would have to be balanced against the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the Convention. In the context of that Article, the Court had acknowledged that it was particularly important in the period preceding an election that opinions and information of all kinds were permitted to circulate freely. While the circulation of disinformation or misinformation could potentially interfere with the right to receive information inherent in Article 10, so could any measures taken to counter its circulation. Therefore, any such measures would need to be calibrated carefully to ensure that they did not interfere disproportionately with individuals’ right to impart and receive information, especially in the period preceding an election, and take due account of the risk of abuse by Contracting States seeking to interfere in the outcome of their own elections.

Therefore, while States should not remain passive when faced with evidence that their democratic processes were under threat, they had to be accorded a wide margin of appreciation in the choice of means to be adopted to counter such threats; the Court had already held that States enjoyed considerable latitude to establish rules within their constitutional order governing parliamentary elections.

In the Court’s view, the United Kingdom’s response to the threat of Russian election interference had not fallen outside the wide margin of appreciation afforded to it in this area. Although there had undoubtedly been shortcomings in the Government’s initial response, there had been two thorough and independent investigations into Russian interference in the United Kingdom’s democratic processes, leading to the DCMS and ISC reports.

The applicants had not specified what further measures the respondent Government ought to have taken to investigate allegations of Russian interference in its democratic processes. Moreover, as the High Court had noted, a public inquiry did not have investigatory powers of the type that the police and Intelligence Agencies had and, as a consequence, could not fill any investigatory gap, if it existed.

In any event, following the publication of the ISC report, the Government had introduced three new Acts of Parliament:

– the Elections Act 2022 had restricted third-party election spending to United Kingdom-based entities and eligible overseas electors only, and introduced a new requirement for digital campaigning material to display a digital imprint, with the name and address of the promoter of the material or any person on behalf of whom the material was being published (and who was not the promoter);

– the National Security Act 2023 had explicitly criminalised assisting a foreign intelligence service in carrying out activities in the United Kingdom where such conduct was prejudicial to the United Kingdom’s safety and interests; established a new offence of sabotage designed to capture State-linked saboteurs who acted in a way that was prejudicial to the United Kingdom’s safety; established a new offence of foreign interference; increased the maximum custodial penalties for certain election-related offences that were carried out for or on behalf of, or with the intention to benefit, a foreign power; and introduced a Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.

– the Online Safety Act 2023 had established a new regulatory regime holding tech companies accountable to an independent regulator and addressed misinformation and disinformation where it constituted illegal content or content harmful to children.

In addition to those legislative measures, in 2019 the Government had created a Counter Disinformation Unit (now known as the National Security Online Information Team). That led the domestic operational and policy response for countering disinformation across Government and proactively monitored for harmful narratives that threatened the United Kingdom, and co-ordinated with Government departments to deploy the appropriate response to mis/disinformation. Further, in 2022, the “Defending Democracy” Taskforce was launched with the aim of protecting “the democratic integrity of the UK” with “particular focus on foreign interference”. Lastly, the need for further measures to counter threats by hostile State actors appeared to be being kept under review, for example by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation.

The above measures appeared to address the points raised by the applicants in their judicial review application. In any event, the Court held that any failings could not be considered to be sufficiently grave as to have impaired the very essence of the applicants’ right under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to benefit from elections held “under conditions which ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people”.

Conclusion: no violation (unanimously); no need to decide on the Government’s preliminary objection on the applicants’ victim status.

(See Partija “Jaunie Demokrāti” and Partija “Mūsu Zeme v. Latvia (dec.), 10547/07 and 34049/07, 29 November 2007, Legal Summary; Communist Party of Russia and Others v. Russia, 29400/05, 19 June 2012, Legal Summary)

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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