John Hemming's Web Log

I was surprised given the Green Party's opposition to Fracking that Caroline Lucas did not vote against the Infrastructure Bill on Monday evening. The point about the infrastructure bill is that although there was no specific vote as to whether or not to change the laws on trespass for Geothermal Energy and Fracking, there was an opportunity to oppose the bill as a whole. The Bill did include good things like a cycling and walking strategy, but there were also things that one would have expected the Green's to oppose in addition to Fracking. The final 3rd reading question can be seen being put here (7 hours 23 minutes and 56 seconds from the start of the video) . No one was there who shouted no.

The FT have a useful information page which gives the 10 year interest rate on government debt . The rates are particularly low in the Eurozone apart from Greece at the moment.  The UK is also particularly low. I will extract the current figures for future reference: Ten year government bond spreads Country Latest yield Spread vs bund Spread vs T-bonds Australia 2.43% +2.08 +0.70 Austria 0.46% +0.10 -1.28 Belgium 0.66% +0.30 -1.08 Canada 1.36% +1.01 -0.37 Denmark 0.47% +0.12 -1.26 Finland 0.41% +0.05 -1.33 France 0.58% +0.23 -1.15 Germany 0.36% -- -1.38 Greece 10.48% +10.12 +8.74 Ireland 1.15% +0.79 -0.58 Italy 1.64% +1.29 -0.09 Japan 0.28% -0.08 -1.45 Netherlands 0.43% +0.07 -1.31 New Zealand 3.20% +2.84 +1.46 Portugal 2.38% +2.02 +0.65 Spain 1.44% +1.09 -0.29 Sweden 0.71% +0.35 -1.03 Switzerland -0.02% -0.38 -1.75 UK 1.43% +1.07 -0.31 US 1.73% +1.38 -- T...

There has been a growth recently in the number of reports of exploding Manhole Covers.   One in Tyseley exploded yesterday on the Warwick Road close to Tyseley station yesterday.  There are quite a few press reports about this including a video of a little girl who was almost hit by the cover. The detail is in various press reports including this one. I have been down to look into it.   When it exploded the lights went off with a power surge in at least one local shop.  That would imply that the explosion was linked to power supplies in some way.  However, the cover that flew off was actually from the telecoms manhole.  There were three manholes close together.    National Grid (gas) were down to look at the gas supplies and that was not an issue. There has been a growth in such explosions from under 10 a year a few years ago to over 60 last year.  The normal cause is from decaying insulation caused by water on power cables. I have wr...

Well ... that's not what they are presenting it as.   Instead they are talking about banning encryption.   See here . When I say I am a cryptographer I mean that I implemented the second version of the SSL (now TLS) encryption system in the world after Netscape back in 1995.  I have written the software for RSA encryption. What would it mean to ban encryption? Well the most obvious use of encryption is for web interfaces with the https:// type of URL.   http:// is hyper text transfer protocol (without encryption) and https is with encryption. Properly implemented it is secure.  It is used for Hotmail (now outlook.com), facebook, twitters and all electronic communications including online banking. If you want to find out whether you are using encryption or not just look at the url. Hence if they are aiming to ban encryption then they want to stop all e-commerce as well because it all uses encryption.

Questions have been raised as to the modifications In Division 130 as to the basis upon which a decision by a public authority can be quashed by judicial review. The change introduced by the Crime and Court Bill means that apart from a few exceptions if the court is asked to quash a decision because of procedural flaws it is not to do so if the decision if when remade is highly likely to result in a not substantially different outcome.    The few exceptions relate to the "exceptional public interest". The difficulty is that for decisions that are subject to judicial review (which does not apply to primary legislation of course) the simple fact that judicial review has been applied for can introduce a long period of delay.  That delay in itself can harm the public interest.  Hence to apply a filter at the permission stage which means that applications for judicial review that are unlikely to result in a final change to the decision are rejected at that stage then...

There is a lot of confusion about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the NHS. The NHS Confederation has produced a dedicated web page Here relating to TTIP. My own view is that the NHS should be kept out of TTIP. I don't personally believe that it is in TTIP at the moment. On the NHS Confederation Web Page there is a lot more information. I will extract one part of this below, but really people should read the web page (referred to above) if they are interested in more information. Specifically on the web page it says: "Jean-Luc Demarty, Director General for Trade at the European Commission, wrote to Dr Sarah Wollaston, Chair of the House of Commons Health Committee, on 11 December 2014, giving further, more explicit assurances that the EU intends publicly-funded health services to be excluded from the TTIP agreement. Publicly-funded services delivered by private, or third sector organisations will also be protected. EU practice is that ...

I noticed that I have not posted this case to my blog. In  this case it was put to the court that having an expert on a retainer to one of the parties stopped the expert being independent.  The court disagreed.  I disagree with the court. I think most people would disagree with the court.

The Court had the sense to allow Mrs Danby to purge her contempt today and be released.  G4S, however, decided that the court order was not enough and they needed permission from the prison service.  In the mean time her handbag had been left in Derbyshire and her suitcase left in a hotel in Liverpool.  Her tickets had run out to return to Orkney yesterday and she was dumped by the system in Birmingham.  Luckily the Daily Mail have agreed to help her get home. Even if the original court orders on contact had reliable expert evidence and the conclusion of the court on only hearing one side of the argument was right (about both of which issues there are questions). Derbyshire County Council have serious questions to ask as to where the public interest was in spending the money to get her dragged out of a Ken Dodd concert to be taken around the country. It is also obvious that although there is potentially an argument to convict her in her absence there is no argumen...

As we move into the new year most of the complaints received by my team have been about problems with rubbish collection. The new system is far less efficient than the previous system and as a result frailer people who need help moving around the large wheelie bins are finding that their rubbish does not get collected. People who have the temerity to put their weeds unwashed (with too much soil) into the recycling bin are being told to wash their weeds  (which I find to be a rather odd requirement) and there remains large amounts of fly tipped rubbish on the streets - although much less in Yardley than other areas.  To save time the operatives are deciding from time to time to leave rubbish because the bins are not that full and people who would rather not have wheelie bins are forced to have them even though the operatives merely take the black bags out of the bin to save time. This is a real issue to be considered within the context of the debates about how public servi...

I am pleased with the judgment issued today from the court of appeal.  My concern is to stop people being imprisoned in secret.  This judgment is an important step towards that objective.  There are three key things Firstly, it recognises that a lot of people are still locked up without proper public scrutiny. Secondly, it adds to guidance and reinforces guidance to stop this happening. Thirdly, it ensures that there is an authority that can be used to find out who has been imprisoned if someone finds out that a secret jailing has happened. It does not, however, as yet accept that a secret imprisonment in itself is cause for someone to be released.  That is an issue that I will be looking at in more depth.  It is, obviously, difficult to make an application to court for the imprisonment of someone in secret as it it is entirely secret no-one will know.  Hence it is difficult to find authorities for this situation. The problem as I see...

Yesterday's debate demonstrated the relatively counterintuitive nature of parliamentary procedure. We had the movement of the "previous question". This did happen in the last parliament. Once. It wasn't very clever to do this as it merely had the effect of truncating debate. If it gets moved too often we will find that the rules are changed to prevent this. The most important point is that only a limited range of parliamentary motions have an actual effect.  Motions relating to statutory instruments have an effect.  Those on european scrutiny issues have a partial effect, but are in fact not binding as the ministers can make decisions in the European Council before such a motion passes.   Motions that affect the House of Commons (order of debate, suspending or expelling members, standing orders, committees etc) do have an effect.  Those which are in conjunction with a finance bill also have an effect. However, a motion that says "This House instructs the...

I have extracted and uploaded to Youtube the presentation of the Petition about Acocks Green Post Office. There are two ways of presenting petitions. One is the process in this video. The other is to simply put the petition in a bag at the back of the Speaker's chair. Petitions are presented at the "moment of interruption" which is just before the adjournment debate. Often the Moment of Interruption is known in advance, but on Monday it happened a lot earlier than planned.

There is a debate going on about whether the Recall Bill is "Real" or not. As usual there is a lot of confusion about what alternatives are proposed. Zac Goldsmith put forward proposals for a different system.  The government proposal is triggered by one of two options either a criminal conviction or a decision by the Standards Committee.  Zac Goldsmith's is triggered by 5% of constituents signing a petition.  The government proposal then looks for a petition signed by 10% of constituents whereas Zac Goldsmith's then goes to a petition signed by 20% of constituents. The first point is that the government's proposal happens to be what is in the manfesto.  Although I rebel on some issues they are generally not issues which were in the manifesto.  I am making it clear to my constituents that I take a different view to the party on some issues (such as the EU referendum) hence I am not going to be bound by what it says in the manifesto on that. The second po...

The Witchfinder General has written about the case of Re D. I do think the case is important as it highlights the fact that one jurisdiction believes that a child should be cared for by its mother and the other jurisdiction believes that a child should be adopted or at least subject to a special guardianship. The mother is the same, the children are about a year or so apart. The underlying issue is one of risk.  What element of risk requires the complete removal of a child from its wider family?  

The Department for Education are trying to talk away the story about the NAHT producing guidelines as to when term time absence should be allowed. Earlier this year I wrote to the Department suggesting this as way towards a solution.  However, the department refused this as a proposal.  The Minister as I understand it is now signing off on the guidelines. Hence it is a clear U-turn on the department's previous position that "exceptional circumstances" was all that needed to be said. It remains, however, that the underlying argument still needs to be made.  At this stage I do not have a copy of the guidelines and so cannot comment in detail. It is also important to understand the role of Ofsted.  If Ofsted pressurise schools to reduce the number of approved absences regardless of the reasons for the absence then silly decisions will continue to be made. Hence progress is being made. The DfE have made a partial U-turn.  However, more work needs to be do...

This table is from research done by the government in 2011. It demonstrates for KS2 that taking a small amount of holiday in term time does not necessarily harm a child's education (at KS2 of course) and can in fact improve achievement. John Hemming said: "The government's obsessive demand for children to go to school almost regardless of normal family circumstances (such as illness, family bereavement and holidays) is not actually justified by the evidence that the government has in its research. Separate research looking at one primary school concluded that a small break can actually be beneficial to the children's education. We do need to be sensitive to the varied position that families find themselves in. Police Officers, Nurses and many other people often have no choice as to when they take their holidays. We should not effectively ban them from going on holiday particularly as the evidence is that it is beneficial to their children." Obviously ...

Hansard now has Friday's speeches on the parliamentary website.  I spoke in both debates. This is a link to my speech in the EU referendum debate . This is the debate on the Transparency and Accountability bill Both are I think important speeches.   The difficulty on the issue of pan-European institutions (including the Council of Europe and the European Union) is that the heat of the debate tends to obscure the underlying issues.   The underlying issues are, however, real and we should not avoid them.

This chart from the BBC demonstrates clearly the problem with Ebola and the solution. Ebola is, of course, a threat to everyone in the world. However, the chart demonstrates how Nigeria has kept tight control of infection whereas Liberia has been particularly bad at controlling infection (starting in 3rd place, but racing into 1st place). It is important that we recognise that it is possible that an infected person from one of the infected countries (Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria, The USA, Spain and Liberia) could come into the UK without us knowing that this is happening in advance. It is, in fact, likely that an unidentified infected person will go somewhere else in the world. What is important is that we recognise what to do in the event that someone does come to the UK. The key for people in the UK is the following (from the BBC): Symptoms of Ebola include fever, headache, vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding - but these are similar to more common infections like flu...

In one sense I lost a battle in court today (having 13K costs awarded against me).  However, possibly over 500 dumps of green waste have been cleared up as a result of the legal action although not all of the ones I highlighted were removed.   Some long standing ones like in Nooklands Croft have now mainly gone (but not all). I am likely to appeal the case.  However, the clear message of the case is simply to do lots more applications for litter abatement orders, but avoid taking them to final hearing.  I will, of course, consult with my constituents, but the early response is that they would like me to continue to fight the council on this issue.

This statement shows that the Latvians are taking action in respect of a case in England. There is a conference in Prague tomorrow about the problems in England (such a conference would be in contempt of court here because it would talk about cases). Sadly as a result of the Russians pulling out of the Council of Europe the report into English family law has been held back. It remains, however, that international concerns about England continue.