John Hemming's Web Log

I link to today's judgment impressively quickly uploaded onto Bailii. This relates to the question as to whether expenses fraud is covered by parliamentary privilege (readers of this weblog will know that I believe that it is not). The judgment is worth reading for those interested in the law of parliament. There are some interesting precedents that I have not heard of before such as Att-Gen of Ceylon v de Livera [1963] AC 13, which is referred to in paragraph 33. It is interesting that one of the cases referred to involves Scientology in that there has been a more recent case of constraints on the freedom of speech of a councillor who critised scientology.

The link is to an appeal in the court of appeal against care orders. The underlying case is important as it is one of the multiple removal ones. Even though the appeal allowed an ISW this still does not allow ISW assessments as of right. The basis of the appeal was that an initial appeal should have been heard as an appeal rather than a merits review. One paragraph is worth looking at: 11. This is a bizarre procedural history and has led to what seems to me to be a fundamentally unsatisfactory conclusion, namely that two judges in the same court in the same week have reached diametrically opposite conclusions on the same material. Sadly that is the nature of the family courts. It is judge dependent rather than being a form of law that can be understood outwith the judicial process. That isn't good, but that is the way it is. The first step towards getting it right is to recognise when it is wrong.

John O Shea has written about the events of Monday night. It is worth understanding some aspects of this issue. There is a small group of MPs (numbering about 20-25) who don't think the Youth parliament should be allowed to meet once a year in the House of Commons Chamber. There is an interesting question behind this as to whether the reducing respect for institutions is partially affected by the reducing respect for the fabric of the buildings in which the institutions are sited or indeed the obverse. My own personal view, however, is that like having the proceedings in The House reported, on the radio and televised and similar to allowing tours of The House - having the Youth Parliament meet in the chamber (when it is not used) is a good thing not a bad thing. The debate was after 10pm so it needed a vote to allow it to proceed. The decision, however, was a deferred division and would be cast on paper (a pink slip) on wednesday's after Prime Ministers question time. The ...

The link is to a vote buying exercise in China. What happened in Birmingham over the past 10 years involved Labour vote buying in various ways. £500 for a bag of postal votes. £5-15 per postal vote and £5 per personated vote cast by a personator in each polling station. In China at least the corruption is for people's own votes rather than stolen votes, but I am surprised that they will pay up to USD177 over £50 a vote (more than three times the most paid in Birmingham).

I have added the free oil price to my blogroll. That is because it is such an important issue to so many people. We have now recreated the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas which will kick off with a new suite of meetings in September.

I know the details of both of the cases to which he refers in this article and he is right about them.

Anyone who wishes to look at what would happen with Labour's financial strategy need look no further than Greece. They have had to implement greater and greater cuts in an attempt to bring their finances under control. Looking at bond yields today: Country Debt interest rate Germany 10 year 2.64% Greece 10 year 10.447% Ireland 10 year 5.268% UK 10 year 3.373% This shows how greece is paying an interest rate of four times that of Germany on its debt. Having a higher deficit leads not only to a higher debt, but also a higher rate of interest on the debt. Greece is a good comparison to Labour's policy as it was the Socialist party in Greece that pretended that little action was needed and then found itself in a really big mess.

Those who have followed the changes internal to parliament will have noticed the creation of the Back Bench Business Committee. I am pleased to have been elected to this committee and hope that we will be able to use the committee to strengthen parliament and strengthen the ability of back benchers to fight for their constituents in various ways.

The public finances will be a challenge over the next 5 years. Apart from the tax and benefit changes in the budget yesterday there are also the cuts in public spending. All of these arise from the mismanagement of the economy by the previous government. We should have been in the situation of Germany (who went into the recession in surplus) rather than Greece. The situation is straightforward. It compares to a household that has fallen on hard times and needs to bring its income and expenditure into line. You can do this without external intervention. You can do this when you get the court orders and end up paying court fees. Alternatively you can wait until you go bankrupt and the bailiffs are at the door. The bailiff bankruptcy option is like Greece. The court orders and court fees option is like Spain. The DIY approach is what we are doing. The key to all of this is that by controlling public finances in a proper manner there will be less cuts than was otherwise necessary. I...

The link is to a judgment from HHJ Bellamy which in my view starts to look properly at one of the ludicrous cases that many local authorities have rubber stamped by other judges. He recognises in this that the intervention of the local authority has been harmful to the family. This is also another case where older children who are now adult were adopted and have reinstated the relationship with their mother. I wonder if the local authority's motivation in going after the younger children was driven by a need to justify their earlier intervention. It is worth reading through the judgment to see what rubbish Local Authorities come up with at times.

There is a discussion going on about whether or not the limit for blood alcohol should be reduced from 80mg/dl to 50mg/dl. It is argued by some that this would reduce substantially the number of people who die in road accidents. The problem is, however, that this is not generally accepted to be true. There are two aspects to such a change. The first is whether there is a problem with people whose blood alcohol is between 50mg and 80mg causing large numbers of fatalities. The second aspect is whether making such a change would have the effect of reducing drink driving overall - a laudable objective. The other question is whether it is worth introducing a particularly low limit for novice drivers of say 20mg/dl which says basically don't drink at all if you are not an experienced driver. I think there is a good argument for this as it would get new drivers into the habit of not drinking and driving. To me, therefore, the key question for the 50mg/dl change is whether that would sa...

The link is to an Irish article refering to what happened in New South Wales in Australia where the same mistake as being made in England was made. Having more and more references to Child Protection services does not make children safer. All it does is to overwhelm the system.

The link is to a web page on Channel 4's website about their "undercover Social Worker" programme. This is now available on 4 on demand. Surrey is not one of the worse childrens services units. Nothing in the programme is particularly surprising to anyone who knows much about how the system works. In part it is also a reflection of the nature of society. One lesson that needs to be learnt is that there is nothing to be gained by becoming harsher and harsher with individual practitioners. This creates an environment in which people both a) Don't want to do the job b) Act defensively to protect themselves rather than make good judgments. Questions have also got to be asked about how the system responds to deal with situations such as domestic violence. Rather than acting to protect the victim the system acts instead to remove the children. The psychological evidence is that removing children causes themselves psychological harm. Hence this really should not be th...

Lord Myners spoke in the House of Lords Yesterday. Amongst other things he said: There is nothing progressive about a Government who consistently spend more than they can raise in taxation, and certainly nothing progressive that endows generations to come with the liabilities incurred by the current generation. There will need to be significant cuts in public expenditure, but there is considerable waste in public expenditure. I have seen that in my own experience as a government Minister. I hope that the Government will pursue with vigilance their search for waste and efficiencies without making cuts which are injurious to the provision of public service. The difference between the Government and the previous Government was on the issue of timing and when those cuts should take place. There was flawed thinking about job creation in the past. I found it very frustrating to sit in meetings with some of my fellow Ministers talking about creating jobs in the green economy and biotechnology...

The link is to a post by Craig Murray who used to be the UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan. He makes the interesting point that Turkish vessels have been attacked by a non-member of NATO and that Nato's prime function is a military alliance established to defend its members against attack. It raises the question as to what extent NATO is independent of the USA. He also looks at the conflict in Afghanistan from that perspective. The conflict is in essence a tribally based conflict where the NATO forces are aligned with a number of minority tribes. This is dressed up as an ideological conflict. That is an error of analysis.

The attack on the aid convoy to Gaza has to be seen as a job for the international criminal court to investigate as an act of piracy. It does, however, raise the question as to how it becomes possible to move towards peace in the Middle East without greater intervention from international bodies. Somehow there needs to be international peace keeping action to keep the sides to the conflict from attacking each other. At the same time bodies such as the ICC need to get involved in invesigating and prosecuting what are war crimes (that includes bombing the Israelis with rockets - which was some time ago).

Those who have followed the issue of my exile now ex flatmate now ex Senator Stuart Syvret will know about the fact that he left Jersey in protest at the undermining of the rule of law by the authorities in Jersey. He was then disqualified as a Senator, has returned to Jersey and is a candidate in the by-election for the seat he was disqualified from. I am hoping that our new government will take the issue of the Rule of Law in Crown Dependencies more seriously than the previous government.

The link is a story in today's telegraph based on a research project reported in the Lancet. What it finds is that the UK now has the highest child mortality in Western Europe. It is approximately twice the rate of Sweden.

A number of public spending cuts have been announced today. What is absolutely certain is that the UK Government has to cut the deficit reasonably quickly. Germany is paying around 2.633% on its government debt. The UK is paying 3.516 on government bonds and Greece 7.8%. This is all based upon how risky investors perceive the debt. If we don't show a commitment to bringing the deficit really under control then the interest rate we have to pay goes up. This year's forecast deficit is over £150,000,000,000. Just for that borrowing interest of £5,274,000,000 will be due to be paid each year. At the Greek interest rate this would be £11,700,000,000. This has a massive long term effect.