John Hemming's Web Log

What the secret imprisonment of Wanda Maddocks has shown is that an anonymous judgment does not tell you everything about a case. The Daily Mail wrote more about the case today. I do think the wider issue will also have more attention in the future.

This is a recording of yesterday's procedure committee. I make some comments relevant to secret prisoners at 15:42.

This is a story about a woman who was initially tried in absentia and then imprisoned in secret for the "crime" of taking her father to see a lawyer in Birmingham. This really is not on. There is complacency in government about this sort of thing.

I suppose I have a disadvantage when considering legislation relating to the internet. Perhaps I know too much about how things work. There are still traces on the internet of work I did on https in 1995. Although the allocation of the port 465 for an SSL implementation of SMTP was provided by IANA at my request as you can see from This page this was made defunct later by the introduction of STARTTLS which is to be fair a much more port efficient way of dealing with encryption for email. The Joint Committee on the Draft Bill produced a report. I have now read the report. In that report it says: 297. The Home Office knows that not all overseas CSPs will comply with retention notices. It is for this reason that the notices issued under clause 1 may require United Kingdom CSPs to keep third party data traversing their networks. United Kingdom CSPs are rightly very nervous about these provisions. The Home Office has given an oral commitment to United Kingdom CSPs that the Home ...

This week my constituency office has been in contact with Robin Bryan, BCC’s Constituency Parks & Customer Liaison Manager for the Department of Parks & Nature Conservation. Works which were undertaken on 5 oak trees included; 2 x storm damaged, and pollarded to seek regeneration 2 x dead wood removal, and; 1 x felled due to level of decay and consequential risk The two trees that have been pruned back hard were storm damaged. The hard pruning was done to give the trees a good chance to regrow better and stronger. This particular action was chosen as the alternative would have been to remove them altogether as there was the worry that they were too top heavy and may collapse. The Sycamores, along the fence on Broughton Road, were growing through the fence and starting to obstruct the footpath for pedestrians etc. They would eventually start damaging the fence and it is easier and cheaper to remove when they are small. They were self-set trees anyway. Oaks have been pol...

In the end the government offered an improved position on the issue of corporate defamation and permitted development. Hence I actively abstained on both of those votes (voting both ways). I also opposed the government on the issue as to whether the ECHR has a duty to monitor whether society is getting better. The government took the view that it should only monitor its detailed functions and not have a general duty to improve things and monitor that. I also voted for the status quo on Health and Safety. (interestingly I was the only rebel in parliament on this).

I thought it was worth putting together a summary of the problems in the family division. Some of these problems also occur in other areas of the judiciary, but they are commonplace in the family division. The underlying problem is evidence. Because much of the evidence is opinion unreliable opinion from "experts" gives rise to unreliable conclusions. Professor Jane Ireland's report which is available here . concluded (inter alia): "Two thirds of the reports reviewed were rated as below the expected standard, with one third between good and excellent." . What this means is that 2/3rds of the decisions in the care proceedings are unreliable because the evidence was unreliable. An additional difficulty is that the experts (which include social workers) who are giving their opinions are often subject to conflicts of interest. For example in the Court of Protection a social worker can conclude that someone "does not have the mental capacity to decide w...

This story should cause concern. If a barrister who was on the verge of becoming a judge believes that the best thing to do is to leave the country what should others do. Given that Ireland, with its financial problems, has been trying to drive family court refugees back to England I have been talking to other countries to find out if they will simply apply the law to protect people from the abuses of power in England. I did speak to one country today who I think will help. There is also enthusiasm amongst foreign embassies for a conference in parliament to look at how to fight corruption in the family courts in England.

This is a link to the report. Interestingly in 2.1 it says: "The MCA legislation is not well understood or implemented. Because of this, staff may be too quick to assume that people lack the capacity to make any decisions. Also staff may not try to maximise people’s capacity, or carry out decisions within the best interests framework of the MCA, because they don’t understand the legislation." I have sent the RP case which is a key one relating to mental capacity to the grand chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. Far too many people have their capacity removed wrongly. The system remains chocabloc with conflicts of interests and rubbishy assessments and the route to challenge is overly bureaucratic (a legal appeal rather than a merits appeal).

The debate about how far £53 goes is really not a sensible debate. It is possible to feed yourself reasonably cheaply, but there are other costs of course. One issue which concerns me, for example, is bus fares for young unemployed people. Young people in Yardley now have go to Solihull Job Centre. From April 2013 the applicable amount for a young single person is in fact £56.80. (It was 56.25 so I am not sure where the sum of £53 comes from). For someone on £56.80 per week the bus fares to Solihull and back are £3.90 per day. That does allow travel anywhere. However, this is a material amount of the cash they get each week. I have raised this with the Job Centre authorities, but it appears that they did not take this into account when shifting the signing location.

This is a good article about how the inherent jursidiction of the court is overreaching itself in secret. If it was not subject to contempt of court secrecy this would not be tolerated.

This is a link to yesterday's speech. The text is here. John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD): I refer the House to my declaration of interest as the chairman of the Justice for Families campaign. I remain concerned about cases in all the secret courts in the UK. The more secret the court, the more the system acts against the rule of law. Narrow freedoms of speech are at least as important as broad access to publicity—reporting wrongdoing to regulators and asking for advice are important narrow freedoms. Without academic scrutiny, nonsense can be spouted and experts can lie for money with impunity. Care proceedings are an area of difficulty. I remain of the view that around 1,000 children a year are wrongly forcibly adopted in the UK. Gradually, I am getting more Government support in this area—sadly, still not from the UK Government. Last week I spoke at the Polish embassy, at a conference about care proceedings. Concerns have now also been raised by Nigeria, the Czech R...

There has been some confusion about the issue of statute and press regulation. To me it is important not to have in statute the details of any press regulation. However, if you look at Section 12 of the 1998 Human Rights Act you will find: (4)The court must have particular regard to the importance of the Convention right to freedom of expression and, where the proceedings relate to material which the respondent claims, or which appears to the court, to be journalistic, literary or artistic material (or to conduct connected with such material), to— (a)the extent to which— (i)the material has, or is about to, become available to the public; or (ii)it is, or would be, in the public interest for the material to be published; (b)any relevant privacy code. This, which was introduced at the request of the newspapers, makes clear reference to press regulation in (b)any relevant privacy code. . None of the statute that has been produced as part of the process of establishing a royal ...

This is a link to an article written by Allan Norman that goes into the Haringey case. It is worth reading.

There is some confusion about the Royal Charter rules as agreed yesterday. My primary concern is to stop politicians controlling the media. The underlying problem with a Royal Charter is that normally this would be subject to modification by the government. The changes in the House of Lords to the Enterprise Bill mean that any industrial royal charter can only be modified in accordance with its terms. Hence the Royal Charter is no longer the creature of government nor it it a creature of parliament. It will be difficult to make any contentious changes because it has essentially been frozen, but that has the advantage that it keeps the politicians away from controlling what happens. There are then the questions as to the pressures on the newspapers to join such a scheme. The final draft of the clause about exemplary damages (21a) to my reading of it merely made it less likely that scheme members would face exemplary damages. It does not to my reading increase the likelihood of ...

Every so often I get a lobbying email from the Hacked Off campaign. At the end of those emails they offer to respond to questions. I have on a number of occasions. sent them questions or comments in response, but they don't respond - even though they claim that they will. I have also spoken to Evan Harris who has said they will respond, but nothing ever happens. This particular campaign are using a valid grievance (the hacking of phones) as a mechanism to bring in a substantial restraint on the investigation and reporting of issues involving powerful people and the establishment. The least they could do is to answer questions. Notes: Letter to Chris Jeffries 3rd December 2012 - no response, Email to John Dickinson-Lilley 18th January 2013 - no response, Email to John Dickinson-Lilley 17th March 2013 (no response, but to be fair this is only today). Also an email to the Media Standards Trust Gordon Ramsay 11th February 2013 - no response. (The Media Standards Trust used to ...

The party conference being last weekend (in Brighton) I was able to attend the Birmingham St Patrick's Day Parade today. Last year the Lib Dem conference was at Gateshead. That made it impossible for me to attend the St Patrick's day festival (particularly as I was up until 2am playing piano at the Glee Club). I have stopped taking around a camera as I think the camera in my mobile phone is good enough for most purposes. I have uploaded a number of stills to my account at flickr. The set is here . I also took a few short videos, but have not uploaded those as yet. I will try to collect links to other sets of photos from the parade as I have done in previous years. Early today I visited the Ackers Trust in support of their fundraising and to highlight the success they have had with Sport England. Adam Yosef's set on Flickr is here @traceythorne has some here , but I cannot link to a set. Youreviewuk has a set here

This is a link a debate by the family justice council about cases where mothers have 10+ children removed from them in sequence. Often the response to a removal is the bereavement response of getting pregnant which means that the strategy is very damaging.

Guest Article written by Alison Crane It’s important for everyone’s health and wellbeing that their home is warm enough and that fuel bills aren’t too high. With this in mind, and to reduce carbon emissions, Birmingham City Council has introduced a scheme for all residents of the city to benefit from grant aided and subsidised insulation and heating improvements. Birmingham Energy Savers can arrange the installation of new boilers, improved heating controls, wall insulation for solid walls or cavity walls, and loft insulation, at no cost for people on certain benefits, and with subsidies and no upfront cost for everyone else. Whether you are a homeowner, tenant or landlord, we can help you. This pilot scheme is for a limited time only and subject to availability. In Acocks Green, Energywise, a local co-operative of energy professionals is working with organisations, local businesses and neighbourhood groups to promote Birmingham Energy Savers, answer questions, give talks, and reg...

Monday was the day on which I voted most against the government so far in this parliament. Public Whip provide a list of rebellions (which has not been updated yet). It is inaccurate in that not all votes are whipped votes - in particular house business is generally not whipped. The list is here . On 29th January was a 10 minute rule bill. This was not whipped. I voted for the concept of protection of freedom of speech for those people who don't agree with marriage being redefined to include a relationship between two people of the same sex. On 28th January I voted to allow a regent to be appointed to be the head of the church of England. That was a whipped vote. On 18th December I voted against the second reading of the Justice and Security Bill. On 11th July there were a number of house sittings votes which were not whipped. On 12th March I voted for the retention of full house elections for the Back Bench Business committee. This was a sort of whipped vote. (P...