In September 2008, the European Court of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECtHR) upheld a breach of Article 13 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), in that the UK failed to provide RK and AK with an effective legal remedy for the removal of their child from their care as a result of medical misdiagnosis. The case throws into focus the approach the domestic UK courts have on the rights of third parties, in particular, the rights of parents where their children are subjected to negligent medical treatment. The judgment followed the consideration of the ECtHR of parental rights in the cases of TP and KM1 in 2001, in which the Court had similarly found that parents should have available to them a means of claiming that the local authority's handling of the procedures was responsible for damage which they suffered and obtaining compensation for that damage. This case is significant in two respects: the Court of Appeal afforded children the right to complain about decisions taking them into care, thus, in essence, overturning the House of Lords decision in X v Bedfordshire.2 Secondly, in the ECtHR, the parents were afforded redress, in confirming that the refusal to allow parents to argue their case in the domestic courts where Article 8 is engaged is a breach of their human rights in contravention of Article 13 of the Convention.
http://medlaw.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/2/282.extract
http://medlaw.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/2/282.extract