John Hemming's Web Log

John Hemming  (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD):  I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It contains an entry for JHC, which stands for John Hemming & Co., a company I founded in 1983. It currently employs about 260 staff and has a turnover of £20 million. I have declared in the register an income of around £180,000 from that company. I attend a meeting once a month and chair the board meeting. I am a full-time Member of Parliament. I spend five full days during the week and two half days at the weekend on political business. Oddly enough, the motion is so badly drafted that it would not affect me, because the £180,000 I receive is from a partnership, and the motion does not refer to partnerships. Obviously, there is a lot of confusion about equity interest and payment per hour. I spend under four hours a month on the work set out in my declaration of interests. What do I do? Well, today I met the Latvian Justice Minister, who is concern...

Firstly on Labour's proposals for another NHS reorganisation. Secondly on whether there is a role for buying in services.

It appears that the Greeks have decided that they are unwilling to compromise and the rest of the Eurogroup have decided that they won't throw good money after bad. There then comes the technical question of how to establish an economy based upon the "new drachma".  When changes are planned to financial software such as benefits and taxation quite a long period of planning is needed before the systems are in place to cope with this.  It is really not practical to establish the software and systems for a completely new currency overnight.  That would imply the greek government trying to cope with making payments in a situation where those banks holding a lot of greek debt are unable to operate. I am not quite sure how this actually works. It does seem, however, that after today the ball is in the Greek government court.  They can come back to the EuroGroup suggesting that they agree to something akin to the deal. However, the timescale to avoid chaos is this wee...

Some of you may be aware that Central England Co-op have sadly resigned as agents of the branch which is situated at The Poolway. The last day of service will be in January 2016. The Post Office maintain that they are committed to continue a Post Office service in the vicinity and are currently advertising the business opportunity on their website. They have already been approached by existing retailers in the Poolway Shopping Precinct, who may be suitable new operators. Your Liberal Democrat team will work to ensure that you do not lose your Post Office service as we have successfully done so recently with the Post Office at the Wheatsheaf in Sheldon. We will keep you updated with regards to any further developments with regards to this matter.  

Having not had hustings in 2010, the candidates (or at least the Lib Dem, Labour and Conservative) candidates have arranged a hustings event between 2 and 4 pm at South Yardley Library on 21st March 2015. The Respect and UKIP candidates have been told of the event, but neither have confirmed attendance.

It is not that easy to predict what will happen with Greece. The arguments of the Greek government are absurd. They cannot revisit the Second World War when the country agreed a settlement many years ago. The argument about profits on Greek bonds is a nonsense given the amount that has already been written off. Now we have, "if we go it falls apart". If they renege on their contractual commitments "if falls apart".  Which is why the other EU countries won't just let them off their treaty obligations. My personal view is that the elected representatives for Syriza are not going to compromise enough and will push it to the limits.  That is likely to lead to Greece being in default and short of cash.  In the end this is actually enough to drive them out of the EU.  They are unlikely to agree to enforce any ECJ judgments in respect of paying debt.  Hence I think they are on the way out of the EU itself - not just the Eurozone. The fact that they have star...

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?