John Hemming's Web Log

This was initially entered using a new MDA vario II. My version 1 has slightly worn out and the handsfree set was not working which caused some problems travelling around Birmingham. I, therefore, got an upgrade yesterday. The new version is still a bit slow on the net compared to broadband, but is not at all bad. I don't think I am going to go for that much "blogging on the move", however.

The idea that a Labour Government minister responsible for the policy on maternity services would actually campaign against the outcome of his own policy is quite surreal. There was another symptom of this disconnection between policies of the government and the policies argued for by Labour MPs on Planning during the Xmas adjournment debate. It is no good criticising the planning appeal process if the government is actually trying to reduce the democratic element. The question that Labour need to answer is "who is running the government if you are not". This is an important issue in politics as if those who are in a position to change policy don't support the policy then what is the sense of putting them in that position.

One thing I find interesting to study is how systems change. In theory politics is about "power" and the ability to effect change. However, frequently "politics" is about status and really does not result in that much that changes. Good examples of laws that have not had any real effect is the "banning" of hunting with hounds. The argument about whether it is better for a fox to be shot than torn about by dogs resulted in a law that cannot be seen to have had any real discernable effect. At the same time the law has been recently reinterpreted to substantially open up much of the actions of the Family Courts. There is an interesting question as to what encourages judges such as Mumby J to make such clear shifts in process. There is a public debate in the media, there was also an Early Day Motion that had large numbers of MPs sign it. In a traditional constitutional sense the houses of parliament are actually courts. They were used to change the commo...

They have issued the following statement: The Trust has been in communication with Mr John Hemming MP about his concerns relating to research carried out by Professor David Southall and colleagues. Mr Hemming has made a number of allegations that officers of the Trust have behaved unlawfully and has made repeated statements of his intention to issue Judicial Review proceedings against the Trust. However the Trust, acting on the advice of its solicitors, has explained to Mr Hemming that it cannot lawfully take the steps that the MP has requested in relation to the confidential information in Special Case Files. The Trust has asked to meet Mr Hemming to seek to explain that, as long as the Trust is holding the files, it will abide by all its legal duties regarding the confidential information in the files. The MP has not yet responded to that offer. The Trust has not threatened to sue Mr Hemming but has reserved the right to recover the costs of responding to any legal action so the m...

The Front Page story in the Birmingham Post today as with that yesterday on The Stirrer (Adrian Goldberg's news blog site) report on the threat by North Staffs to sue me. Their lawyers want a meeting with me, but are also suggesting that I should pay the hospitals legal costs. I have made it clear that I will not want to meet up with them if they are going to try to charge me for the time taken in the meeting. In any event although legally they are on shaky ground trying to sue me for the legal costs of writing a letter, more importantly they are really working against the interests of patients. If MPs have to worry about the threat of legal action for the costs of hospitals getting advice when they write to hospitals it would seriously undermine the system of democratic accountability. The Post's article also looks at aspects of the speech I made just before Christmas (in the Christmas adjournment). It is in fact that the first newspaper article I have seen to look genera...

This period before the New Year is always quiet for news. The government appear to have gone for a bit more on the "Respect" Agenda. So now we have "Respect Zones" this is on top of last year's "Respect Action Plan". There is a complex issue relating to how the public sector operates. That is that the politicians are not really executive officers. The work is done by other people. Politicians establish the legislative framework and sometimes end up as ministers defending the decisions of civil servants. That means that it is not really sensible to try to micromanage what goes on. That is why we end up with budgeting systems such as RAB. It also means, however, that we get nonsense such as today. What would be better is a good analysis of the current system followed by a set of proposals for change. The analysis does not have to cover all aspects, but has to look at the systems of feedback. Cautions are a good example of an aspect of the syste...

If you imagine a situation in which the Greek army acting as peacekeepers in the UK allied with the scottish dominationed national government of the UK blew up Scotland Yard you would part understand how risky the attack on the Basra police station is. I don't like second guessing military tactics as you need to know what the situation is on the ground in detail. However, it appears that the UK forces in Basra are now working against the local council. Segmented societies tend to divide into factions. Tribes or clans can switch from faction to faction. However, most feudal disputes are based upon feuds or vendettas which arise from a desire for revenge. There are a number of good books on the motivations for Suicide Missions which basically show that revenge rather than religion is the key motivator. I am concerned that this particular action by the UK forces may be seen in retrospect as something increasing the level of disorder in the south. I may be wrong. I am writing from Birm...

It is quite impressive that the Wii (which was bought about 2 weeks ago) remained under the Christmas Tree until today. I operate a system with my children whereby as soon as they can count sufficiently they get a present budget. My 6 year old decided as part of her budget to buy an electronic kitten that purs and moves its head. I must admit that I much prefer the real kitten that we got via Freecycle about 9 months ago. I also noticed a new kitten eating dinner with our other cats. It is quite interesting how quickly cats find free sources of food. I presume one of our neighbours have a kitten that has wandered a bit. The general feeling is that real cats are far better than robot cats. I did suggest, however, that the next enhancement to gaming might be to develop physical models of the games in the Wii such as getting a real wooden table tennis top and real bats and try that rather waving around the Wii wands. This, however, did not get the same level of support domesti...

With the Weapons of Mass Destruction having been found to be non-existant some time ago Tony Blair has used the argument that it was good to introduce democracy and get rid of Saddam Hussain. The fact is, however, that it was not necessary to invade Iraq to achieve this. What people have now forgotten is that in the Kurdish north there was a no-fly zone which enabled the Kurds to operate independently of the Ba'th government. There was also a no-fly zone in the south. That, however, had rules of engagement that meant that heavy weaponry could be used on any rebellion, but no action would be taken. Had the rules of Engagement been changed in the southern no-fly zone then it would have been possible for the south to rebel against the Ba'th. In fact it was the non intervention policy that caused the south to be recontrolled after the first gulf war. People on the ground in the Middle East could not understand why the USA would not assist the Iraqis to take control of Iraq. The rea...

It is a new one on me. The University Hospital of North Staffordshire have threatened to sue me (or more precisely their lawyers have threatened to sue me) over a letter I wrote to them. I wrote to them asking for them to tell those people who have secret medical files that there are secret medical files. They responded by a) Refusing to write to me and/or talk to me directly and passing the issue to their lawyers b) Threatening to sue me for the cost of their lawyers giving legal advice The best thing the hospital could do is to 'fess up and tell people about whom they have been holding secret medical files that they hold those files. It does, however, raise some quite serious issues that an arm of Government is trying to stop Members of Parliament from raising things with them with the threat of charging them thousands of pounds for the temerity of writing a letter. They should stop squirming and obey the law.

I did a speech on Medical Ethics on Tuesday (see link) which referred substantially to the research managed by Dr David Southall. It included the following section: Furthermore, the lack of action to maintain its integrity makes the national health service institutionally complicit in the destruction of evidence. At least now the NHS is acting at a level other than that of the Hospital. I have raised the issue on numerous occasions over the past few months both nationally and regionally. I also raised it at a meeting with the region on 11th December. It has, however, taken until yesterday for anything of substance to be done. The advice is that the Special Case records actually belong to the Secretary of State. The authorities need to be aware that this issue will not simply go away. The lack of action from senior officials including the Chief Executive of the NHS, Regional Chief Executive of the NHS and Chief Medical Officer is unacceptable.

I need to work out how to handle the procedures, but some time in the new year there should be a hearing in front of a Division Court (three judges) in the Court of Appeal relating to the matter of forcing Ministers to answer questions.

Highly-skilled Migrant Programme To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the likely impact of changes to the highly skilled migrant programme on economic migration within the UK; and if he will make a statement. (John Hemming) A: Migrants currently in the UK under the highly skilled migrant programme (HSMP) can apply to extend their leave. The rules for the highly skilled migrant programme extension applications have recently been amended to ensure that applicants already in the UK under the programme have been making, and can continue to make, a contribution to the UK economy. The changes were based on a thorough analysis of the HSMP criteria. Individuals applying to extend their leave to remain in the UK under the HSMP must now achieve a minimum of 75 points against robust points scoring criteria (qualifications, previous earnings, age and UK experience) and must also meet a mandatory English language requirement. The points scoring struct...

John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley, Liberal Democrat) Hansard source The Secretary of State has admitted that the Government will force sub-post offices that are profitable private businesses to close because they are not profitable for the central Post Office . Will he publish details of the localised costs and the methodology used to calculate them, so that we can be sure that the mistake that was made in the "Counter Revolution" report has not been made in these calculations? Alistair Darling (Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry) Hansard source I did not say anything of the sort. The job of the Post Office is to ensure a coherent national network. As I said at the beginning of my statement and as the hon. Gentleman has to realise, most post offices—apart from Crown ones—are private businesses operated by private individuals, and if they are profitable they will remain profitable.

The link is to a post from a doctor who calls himself Dr Rant. He makes the point that the cuts in ambulance services and hospital services are impacting on care of patients. I have now received the "hospital at night" documents from the government, but not managed to work through them. The real question is one of identifying when the government's cuts have impacted on patients. Dr Rant appears to have identified one.

I have just picked up on this case from Monday. It goes to the nub of one of the legal arguments in child protection. There are fractures that can be diagnosed as Classic Metaphyseal Lesions from X-rays. I have a report from the College of Radiologists that confirms that noone knows what proportion of children who have Metaphyseal fractures have obtained them through abuse. There is a difficulty in that X-raying a child has some risk so you cannot just go around x-raying everyone. However, a high proportion of children who have been abused (particularly fatally) have CMLs. Let us assume for them moment that 90% of children with CMLs have them through abuse. That means that 10% of children diagnosed with abuse haven't actually been abused. They, however, are removed from their parents. Furthermore any other children that the parents have are removed from their parents. There is an additional problem in that the 90% figure could be 40% and 60% of children who are removed from their...

So yet again 2,500 sub-post offices that are mainly profitable will be offered 28 months income to close. 24 months is the usual sale amount. This will pressurise more people into having benefits paid into bank accounts saving the government about £15 per year for each person on benefits. Whether it will pick up and prevent any benefit fraud is unclear. However, as far as offering a service the Government have a clear strategy of chopping off about 3,000 sub-post offices every so often. The fact is that almost all of the sub-post offices are themselves profitable. There is a problem with the finances of the operator of the Network the erstwhile "post office counters ltd". This problem, however, has almost certainly not been properly analysed. I read a report "counter revolutions" some time ago that produced flawed management accounts. To identify the cost of running a sub-post office for the post office itself you cannot simply take the fixed central costs and a...

Litigants in Person To ask the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs pursuant to her answer of 29 November 2006, Official Report, column 764W, on litigants in person, what reasons the Civil Procedure Rule Committee gave for keeping the rate at which litigants in person can claim costs at its 1995 level.(John Hemming) A: There is no record in the minutes of the Committee of the reason for their decision. (Vera Baird, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs)

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Heath has issued its Child Protection Companion. It is a big file that is available on their website. It is a helpful step forwards as it works towards some certainty as to what particular symptoms mean. There remains a failure to recognise the problems that arise from false allegations. I think there is a need to distinguish between situations which have certainty and those which are more vague.

Highly-skilled Migrant Programme To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people in the UK who qualify to work under the highly-skilled migrant programme scheme will fail to have their qualification renewed unless they find a job paying them more money. (John Hemming) A: Information of this kind is not available. In order to qualify for further leave to remain as a highly skilled migrant under the new rules, applicants must now meet robust points criteria based on their qualifications, previous earnings, age and UK experience. It will also be mandatory for applicants to demonstrate a good standard of English language. The salary an applicant needs to reach for their previous earnings in order to qualify for a Highly Skilled Migrant programme extension will depend on the points awarded against the other criteria. I have also announced transitional arrangements to avoid disadvantaging those who fail to meet the new requirements but are making a useful contribution t...