John Hemming's Web Log

I did an analysis of the Labour leaflets in 2015 which can be seen here . It is clear that there are going to be questions about Labour's leaflets in the 2017 campaign. For example we have this in the 2017 Labour Leafet: Here is the leaflet we put out in 2014 once the work had gone into the autumn statement Another Labour Leaflet There are a number of things that can be argued about in a later Labour leaflet as to whether taxes on wealthy people were increased (which is true overall according to HM Treasury) or reduced in the last parliament (which Labour falsely claim) or whether the graduate finance system is fairer (because the subsidy goes to the poorer graduates) or not. However, there are other things which really are stretching the truth: At least the Lib Dem and Labour Campaigns can agree that the Yardley election is between Lib Dem and Labour. That, unusually, is a point of agreement. However, as John Hemming voted against his party 39 times in the last parliam...

The government is 'relaxed' about the crisis in general practice because it thinks Labour can't win the general election, Dr Phil Hammond  a former GP and health commentator has said. Commenting on the news, Shadow Health Secretary Norman Lamb said: “The Tories have acted with outrageous complacency by repeatedly failing to take action to tackle the crisis in our NHS and care services. Time and again, I have called on Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt to give the NHS and social care the extra funding they desperately need to keep pace with growing demand, but this has fallen on deaf ears. “This election is a chance to show the Conservatives that they cannot continue to put the future of our most essential public services in jeopardy. A vote for the Liberal Democrats will be a vote to give our health and care services t...

Today, the Lords Select Committee on International Relations has published a report on UK policy in the Middle East which argues that UK should distance itself from Trump; recognise Palestine as a state and support the Iran Nuclear deal. Responding Shadow Foreign Secretary, Tom Brake MP said: " The Conservatives have shown a willingness to pander to Donald Trump, turn their back s on international commitments and give little thought to international security.  "This report is damning of the Tory government's record, but also makes clear recommendations that PM Theresa May must now heed.  "The British people deserve a government that stands up for what is right, while seeking to create a more stable and united international community. Only the Liberal D emocrats are fighting for a UK which is open, tolerant and united." John Hemming said: "I agree entirely with my colleague on this. It is interesting that a Lords Select Committee which h...

The Labour Party spent most of the last election criticising me for being a successful businessman (aka millionaire). That is business in the private sector employing over 250 people. It is worth looking at the situation for the Labour Candidate now: For the year 2016-7 Annual Income from Parliament 74,962 Specifically for her book 51,250 Other media income etc 5,322.82 Total declared income 131,534.82 Traditionally anyone with an annual income of over £100,000 has been considered to be a millionaire. I did not use my position in parliament to increase my income. I have been asked for sources for this. This BBC piece looks at how one should define rich. It was written in 2011 so the figures will be slightly out of date. There are perhaps 2 relevant pieces: "In 1880 a rich person would have had £100,000 in assets or an income of £10,000 a year, he says. About a hundred people a year died leaving £100,000 and by 1910 this was 250 - "a microscopic fraction of ...

I have been concerned about the impact of technological disruption for some time as you can see if you click on the link.  More recently the Bank of England have started to share my concerns Technological developments enable human societies to run with much less human work.  However, they have a number of hazards.   Although we cannot change things over night to deal with this we must make some progress working out how to respond. As I see it the issues are 1.   Finance and Equality One of the reasons why we are developing a more unequal society is the impact of technology.  There are low paid jobs essentially boosted by the living or minimum wage and then there are jobs that require rarer skills that don't.   We do need to work to avoid growing inequality here. 2.   Security Peoples lives were much more secure after the second world war and moving into the 1990s.  However, with technological change lives have become less secure.  ...

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has made an audacious bid to replace Labour as the main opposition, in an interview with the i newspaper. Tim Farron said: “I want to be the leader of the opposition. Jeremy Corbyn is a perfectly nice man, but is demonstrably the worst leader in British political history in terms of effectiveness. “As things stand, a feeble Labour opposition will mean the Conservatives will have untrammelled power. "Britain needs a decent strong opposition and I'm asking the British people to give that job to me."

I am often ridiculed by the Labour Party for my concern about rubbish and fly tipping. It is, however, important to note that research performed by the university of Groningen has proven that the presence of litter, graffiti and fly tipping has wider effects. They did research by testing whether or not people committed crimes when an area was tidy and graffiti free against when it was very messy.  One of the tests, for example, was to leave a 5 euro note in an envelope sticking out of a letterbox. They discovered that when the area is messy more people stole the letter.  This obvious has wider ramifications.   My campaign to make sure that ordinary people have the facilities to force local authorities to follow the law has continued now until the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee of the UN.  They have agreed that the UK has a case to answer. If you are interested in more information about this best look at their website where all the case papers can b...

There will be a debate about how MPs operate during this election. Because both of the candidates that can win have been MP for the same seat it is possible to compare how they operate. I, for example, ran a weekly advice bureau in the same place every Saturday (apart from bank holidays).  That took 1/2 hours and I saw at a peak 35 people or groups of people.  When people visit the bureau they normally come either on their own or with someone.  It was normally 20-25 groups.   That enables identifying what their issue was about and potentially enough to resolve it. More complex issues then were given an appointment on Fridays (note that is is a Friday when my labour opponent planned to go to Bristol to promote  her book). I also used my own finances to ensure that there was a specialist welfare rights advisor.  My office was good at handling such issues, but some require specialist support.  Although I myself have a lot of experience in this area...

John Hemming believes that an MP should represent everyone in their constituency.  This should be regardless of their race, religion, gender, abledness, sexual orientation or anything else.  It should be everyone. When he was an MP he worked on issues relating to men, those relating to women and those relating to non-binary people. Everyone. For example here is John Hemming on a demonstration outside the courts with the campaign group Women Against Rape (it related to the case of a mother who had her child removed from her because the mother was raped). Jess Phillips, who campaigns on women's issues, notwithstanding the questions asked about her appointments in her parliamentary office, had the following response when asked for a debate on issues specifically relating to men:

Responding to Theresa May's refusal today at PMQs to guarantee the triple lock for pensioners, introduced by the Liberal Democrats in coalition, Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor Susan Kramer said: "Theresa May is preparing to raid pensions to pay for her hard Brexit. "The Conservatives must clarify their position now to pensioners across the country. "The triple lock was one of the Liberal Democrats' biggest achievements in government, lifting many pensioners out of poverty. Now this progress risks being undone.

It is important that people are paid fairly for the work that they do.  It is, of course, possible to compare the appointments to the Labour Candidate's Office and my parliamentary office. Extract from another blog: By comparison my office manager was a woman that I did not know before she was appointed to her initial role working for me - she applied directly from university and was not actually a member of the party when she applied.  She was the highest paid member of parliamentary staff. My view is that people should be treated equally regardless of their gender.  However, when it comes to walking the walk on equal pay Ms Phillips seems to have appointed men to the senior high paid roles and women to the junior low paid roles. Update Ms Phillips has responded it appears: Sadly this is a sort of Donald Trump style response "fake news". What is Fake? Is John O Shea really not working for her office. Is her husband really not working in the office. Who is t...

There is quite a bit of confusion about the UK constitution.  The last revolution was in 1688.  It was a popular revolution and the new constitutional document (the Bill of Rights) was created as a document outside parliament. Hence there was not really any legal continuity between the previous parliaments and that parliament.  It was key because it created a constitutional monarchy. Other constitutional statutes such as Magna Carta 1297 and other statutes were adopted, but the Bill of Rights underpins all of that.  That all comprised the constitutional settlement of 1688. That is why it is my view that referenda are not alien to the UK constitution and that there is a role for referenda particularly in dealing with constitutional issues. We do not have a parliamentary system which has direct continuity from 1251 not least because of the revolution of 1688, but also previously. Where, therefore, there is a poplar demand for a referendum on a constitutional ma...

"800 young people face losing housing benefit under government plans.   We oppose this cut.  There are already people living in tents in this city and I believe that the estimate of 55 rough sleepers is an underestimate." "The government don't understand that not all 18-21 year olds can stay with mummy and daddy.  Sometimes they fall out with their parents or end up without parents.  Sometimes they are leaving care.   If the governments plans continue we could end up having hundreds more rough sleepers.  The government don't seem to understand that not everyone's life is that easy. " "I dealt with rehousing a young person who was 18 a couple of weeks ago where he faced living on the streets.  Under the governments plan he would end up on the streets." "I did not, however, photograph him unlike my Labour opponent - who photographed homeless...

An interesting press release from the Lib Dems The Communist Party are fielding no candidates for the first time since 1920. The party has said members will be 'campaigning for a Labour victory', commenting on the news, Alistair Carmichael MP said: “From 1920 to 2017 the Communist Party of Great Britain elected 5 MPs. They have obviously concluded they can continue in that tradition by backing Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. I think that they are probably right about that.” Ends Notes to Editors - Communist Party MP’s elected are as follows: 1946 - Willie Gallacher (West Fife) and Phil Piratin (Mile End)  1935 - Willie Gallacher (West Fife) 1924 - Shapurji Saklatvala (Battersea North) 1922 - Walton Newbold (Motherwell)

Over the past few months I have been working on bringing the software I used to run my parliamentary office up to date. As part of this I have been putting in real time communication systems. I am pleased that I now have a test system that links Web Browsers (only really Chrome at the moment) to the phone system. If this is the sort of thing that interests you you are welcome to try the test system here . It only really works with Chrome on a desktop at the moment and is not really even in beta test. However, people who are interested in WebRtc and SIP will perhaps find it interesting. Because it is on a test server the server is often switched off so don't be surprised if it doesn't work when you try.

Iraq - enough said. Europe - he agreed to the widening of the EU without any attempt to limit economic migration from the poorer areas of the EU to the richer areas. This failure to think about the impact on the living conditions of skilled workers is the main cause of the Brexit vote. Forced Adoption - this was another of his failures. This may not have been fully recognised yet, but I expect it soon will be. Increasing spending at a rate faster than the economy was growing - Gordon Brown shares some of the blame for this, but Tony Blair was PM. This is why we have a more difficult problem today than Germany.

The Transparency Project have today produced a blog English councils confirm they set targets for the number of children to be adopted . That in itself is not news. Councils have prioritised adoption for many many years. What is new is that they recognise that when I say rather than being used to get children out of the care system, such ‘targets’ instead risk impacting on decision making at the stage where people are deciding if children should enter the care system i.e. when a decision is made to apply to the courts for a care order, and whether they should be adopted as opposed to some other care arrangement being chosen. I may be right. I would like to thank them for this. BASW warned that the effect of adoption targets would be to stop children being with their birth families. That warning was ignored by government. I have seen a number of cases where local authorities have delayed telling pregnant mothers of their intentions until after the date for a legal termination....

There is no sense me sending this question to the Official Solicitor himself because his view is that he is not accountable to anyone other than the secret courts. The question is why did his representative on behalf of MM (the protected person) argue that Teresa Kirk should be kept in prison? If people remember the case of the Italian woman forced to have a C section when she visited the UK, there the Official Solicitor was acting and did not really defend her against the forced medical treatment - which various expert commentators at the time the judgment was published decided was unnecessary. There is also the case of Lee Gilliland who was evicted from his house without notice because the OS was appointed to represent him and did not tell him what had happened. Obviously the RP case where RP's case was conceded against her by the Official Solicitor on the papers without a hearing is another example of something where questions need to be answered. There is also the questio...

This is a link to the agenda of the 17th national conference of French family lawyers. Here is part of the agenda: Vendredi 4 novembre 2016 9 h – Accueil 9 h 30 à 12 h 45 Jean-Marc ANDRE, bâtonnier Versailles Dominique ATTIAS, vice-bâtonnier Paris, présidente groupe de travail mineurs du CNB Geneviève AVENARD, défenseure des enfants auprès du défenseur des droits (sous réserve) Les maîtres du temps : Martine PERON et Josiane OLEOTTO-GUEY 30 ans d’application de la CIDE par les pays européens : Renate WINTER, vice-présidente du Comité des droits de l’enfant de l’ONU, ex-présidente du tribunal spécial pour la Sierra Leone et juge internationale au Kosovo Pause Angleterre : John HEMMING, ancien député, avec Florence BELLONE, correspondante RTBF au Royaume-Uni Suède : Ruby HARROLD-CLAESSON, avocate, présidente du Comité nordique des droits humains It is interesting how lawyers across Europe are unhappy with what is being done in England (and Wales). There is also a group of ...

This case has been reported in the media today. I have linked to the judgment for the case. To give a summary of the recent timescales: On 18th August 2016 Mrs Teresa Kirk was sentenced to a 6 month suspended sentence for not signing over a man in his 80s to an anonymous council (one presumes in England or Wales given the jurisdiction of the court). She was arrested on Sunday 25th September at around 10am and taken to prison. This week the Daily Mail started asking questions as to where the public judgment was for this process and surprise, surprise, one popped out of the system. On Monday this week Mrs Kirk was lost somewhere in the prison system, but she managed to get a note passed out with another prisoner who told people where she was. The judgment makes it potentially contempt of court to Name MM's cat. More importantly the judgment makes it potentially contempt of court to name the local authority. If I were still involved in running a council (as I was for 22 yea...