The Legal 500

Position

Alison is a public law practitioner with a wide-ranging claimant practice, including immigration and asylum, prison law, social welfare, and EU law. She also acts in civil claims for damages against public authorities, particularly unlawful detention and discrimination claims. In 2010, she was shortlisted for the Young Legal Aid Barrister of the Year award by the Legal Aid Practitioners Group. She has particular expertise in areas which cross over her different fields of practice, such as community care and social welfare law for migrants, the treatment of foreign national prisoners, and EU asylum law. Alison's recent significant cases include: R (NS) v SSHD [2010] EWCA Civ 990; C-411/10 (as junior to Dinah Rose QC and Mark Henderson), (whether transfer of asylum seekers to another EU state precluded where evidence of a real risk that their EU fundamental rights would be breached; application of EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in the UK); R (Tilianu) v SSWP [2010] EWCA Civ 1397 (as junior to Simon Cox) (whether a formerly self-employed EU national had a right of residence when involuntarily unemployed after a period of hospitalisation); Patmalniece v SSWP [2011] UKSC 11 (as junior to Simon Cox) (whether the application of the "right to reside" test for eligibility to state pension credits to an EU national pensioner was unlawfully discriminatory on grounds of nationality); R (Baybasin) v MOJ (November 2010) (as junior to Paul Bowen), in which the MOJ accepted that it had unlawfully discriminated against the Claimant, a paraplegic wheelchair user detained at HMP Belmarsh, by failing to provide him the means to use the toilet and bathe independently, apologised to him, and paid him compensation for the injury to his feelings.

Career

Called 2007; Middle Temple. Prior to qualifying as a barrister, Alison worked for six years as an asylum-specialist immigration caseworker, advising asylum seekers and other migrants and representing them in their appeals before immigration adjudicators and the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. Current directorships: Management Committee of Asylum Support Appeals Project. Publications of note: Chapter 7: Arrest and Detention (with Ruth Brander) in Colvin & Cooper (Eds), Human Rights in the Investigation and Prosecution of Crime (OUP, 2009); Children in Need: Local Authority Support for Children and Families, Ian Wise QC, Stephen Broach, Caoilfhionn Gallagher, Alison Pickup, Azeem Suterwalla and Ben Silverstone (LAG, 2011, forthcoming).

Languages

French, Hungarian, Slovak.

Member

Administrative Law Bar Association, Immigration Law Practitioners Association, Human Rights Lawyers Association, Association of Prison Lawyers.

Education

University of Cambridge (2000, BA Hons, modern and Medieval languages); Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London (2001, MA, understanding and securing human rights); BPP Law School (2006, Graduate Diploma in Law; 2007, Bar Vocational Course).