Tag Archives: legal

UK records record migration – but are the Tories jumping to the wrong conclusions?

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Migration successes: these legal migrants were carrying out vital work in the UK because the UK needed them (the image is from 2016). Migrants are still needed here but it seems the Tories have their priorities wrong.

The Conservative government’s policy to reduce legal migration into the UK has failed dramatically, ONS figures show.

These figures estimate that net migration – the difference between the number of people coming to live in the UK and those leaving – was a record 745,000 last year.

Some – like ex-Home Secretary Suella Braverman – have demanded new restrictions on the reasons people are allowed in:

But this would restrict the number of skilled people coming to work in the NHS, and deprive schools and universities of vital funding from foreign students, among other drawbacks that This Writer is probably not knowledgeable enough to see.

The reality, it seems, is not that migration is out of control – because businesses are screaming for people who are capable of carrying out skilled work for them, and are in fact finding their effectiveness restricted by the lack of these people.

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This is especially true when it comes to farming. Here’s a video clip by Professor Tim Wilson, explaining the situation:

And what are the Tories suggesting to solve the problem? Here’s Maximilien Robespierre:

So the solution is to import crops that can’t be raised economically – in direct contradiction of one of the main arguments for Brexit: that we could create goods more economically here than get them from abroad.

For This Writer, there’s only one conclusion: the Tories are changing their story to confuse us.

I don’t think there is even a hidden plan behind this; they’re just trying to cover up one blunder after another over the last seven years since the EU referendum, if not the whole 13 years since the Coalition government slithered into office in 2010.

Nothing these clowns are saying is making any sense at all.

We need a rational analysis of the kind of people the UK needs to bring in from abroad, that recommends the most economical ways of getting them. Without that, this “hit and hope” Tory shambles is going to keep getting it wrong and continue failing to hit its targets.

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Rishi Sunak’s costly Covid Inquiry legal challenge has failed – as expected

The High Court in London: once again, judges here have overruled the government, meaning Rishi Sunak and his followers were trying to break the law.

Well, it’s only money, isn’t it? And the behaviour of Rishi Sunak and the Cabinet Office shows that the UK clearly has oodles and boodles of long green to splash about.

Sunak’s government was warned before it launched its court bid to legalise its decision to withhold Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages, notebooks and diaries from the Covid Inquiry, that it was doomed to failure.

And now that failure has come to pass – at a huge cost to the public purse.

It turns out that one of the judges of this case, Lord Justice Dingemanns, is a rugby fanatic – so the media are full of comments that he has firmly kicked the government’s attempt at a Covid cover-up into touch.

He and co-judge Mr Justice Garnham have also applied common sense to the affair

and told the two sides to get together and work out what’s relevant to the COVID Inquiry and what’s not… The judges sensibly suggested that the Cabinet Office should appeal to Baroness Hallett about what’s relevant and let her decide.

Sunak and his civil servants have now backed down – a decision for which we should all be grateful as otherwise this could have gone all the way up to the Supreme Court.

But the whole affair has incensed campaigners including the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice

who not surprisingly have condemned the legal fight as “a desperate waste of time and money”.

Watch this develop into a swingeing attack on Sunak and his lackeys as the Covid Inquiry progresses – whenever any information that the Cabinet Office tried to censor comes to light.

Source: Rishi Sunak’s costly COVID Inquiry legal challenge was doomed to failure – and has now been kicked into touch | Politics News | Sky News

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Now MPs want Boris Johnson to pay back public funding for his Partygate lawyers

Payment: if Tory backbenchers block a motion for Boris Johnson to repay the public money used to fund his Partygate Inquiry lawyers, they’ll make second-class citizens of themselves. If they don’t, they’ll be admitting that more than a decade of Tory policies letting the rich siphon cash from the poor for no good reason are wrong.

Is this sour grapes from MPs who fear … second-class treatment (gosh)?

Opposition MPs led by Labour’s Karl Turner have demanded that Boris Johnson pay back £245,000 of public money the government provided to pay lawyers acting for him in the Partygate Inquiry.

The Cabinet Office decided to cover Johnson’s legal costs for the inquiry last year, when he was still prime minister, and has tried to justify the decision by claiming there is a precedent for supporting former ministers with legal representation.

There’s just one snag: the government has not been able to name a single example of a former minister receiving taxpayer-funded legal support for a parliamentary inquiry.

On the other hand…

The BBC has spoken to two former ministers who were investigated by MPs for misleading Parliament and were not given legal support.

The former Labour MP and transport secretary, Stephen Byers, was not offered legal support when he faced a four-month inquiry in 2005.

Nor was the former Labour MP and paymaster general, Geoffrey Robinson, who was found to have “inadvertently” misled MPs in 2001.

So it seems Johnson has been given preferential treatment – and this has created a precedent.

Mr Turner reckons it means there is now a two-tier system: ministers and former ministers receive legal support to fight parliamentary inquiries, and backbench MPs do not.

He said it created a system that unfairly advantages ministers and former ministers who get their excessively large bills paid using public money, while backbenchers have to pay their own way.

The unfairness is heightened by the fact that Johnson is a multi-millionaire who is perfectly capable of paying his own legal bills – even when employing top public lawyers. Many backbenchers have fewer resources and such bills would put the same kind of legal help beyond their means.

You’d think this would remind some MPs of the way things are outside Westminster, wouldn’t you?

The UK has millions of people who can’t afford to eat a decent meal every day. The government could change that… but instead the only major changes to the system have provided the already-rich with more, and made it possible for them to suck money out of the masses.

So Tory MPs in particular are between a rock and a hard place here.

They can block the motion – showing they believe a small elite deserve the best, most expensive support they can get, all at the expense of the general public, just as is true in the country at large, with the poverty-stricken masses supporting the rich.

Or they can support it and make hypocrites of themselves, because they would be supporting the principle that everybody deserves the same chance and the rich don’t deserve more advantages than they already have.

Let’s hear them talk their way out of that one!

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Liberty launches lawsuit against Suella Braverman for overriding Parliament on protest powers

Suella Braverman: it seems she’ll be bringing that glower to a judge in the High Court, sometime in the near future.

The organisation Liberty, that challenges injustice, defends freedom and campaigns to make sure everyone in the UK is treated fairly, is taking Home Secretary Suella Braverman to court.

The action comes after Braverman overrode Parliament to change the Public Order Act in order to give police a free hand to arrest anybody carrying out an act of protest, depending on how disruptive officers think it is.

Here’s what Liberty has to say about it:

Human rights organisation Liberty has started legal action against the Home Secretary Suella Braverman over new anti-protest legislation which it says that she is unlawfully bringing in by the back door despite not having been given the powers to do so by Parliament.

In a pre-action letter sent to the Home Secretary, Liberty said that plans to give the police more powers to impose restrictions on protests that cause ‘more than minor’ disruption are unlawful.

The move – which uses secondary legislation to bring the powers into force – violates the constitutional principle of the separation of powers because the measures have already been rejected by Parliament.

By bringing in these powers, the Government has been accused of breaking the law to give the police ‘almost unlimited’ powers to shut down protests due to the vagueness of the new language.

The Government’s plans to lower the threshold of what constitutes ‘serious disruption’ at a protest were previously voted out of the Public Order Act by Parliament earlier this year (30 January).

Liberty says the Home Secretary has now changed the law entirely in a way that is an overreach of her power – defining ‘serious disruption’ as anything that causes ‘more than minor’ disruption.

A cross party parliamentary group committee has recently said this is the first time the Government has sought to makes changes to the law through secondary legislation that have already been rejected by Parliament when introduced in primary legislation.

Liberty’s letter to the Home Secretary says:  

  • The Secretary of State is seeking to amend the threshold on protest powers set by Parliament by the back door in ways that expand the powers of the police to restrict protest activity.
  • Parliament only gave powers to clarify the law, and not change it entirely. Therefore, Parliament cannot have intended to give the Secretary of State power to amend primary legislation in a way which circumvents the will of Parliament because this would incur on the constitutional principle of the separation of powers.
  • The making of the Serious Disruption Regulations would be unlawful for being an unjustified interference with the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty.
  • The new legislation was not consulted on fairly, as is required by law. The Government only invited in parties it knew would agree with the proposals, such as the police, but did not ask groups who might have had reasonable concerns.

Katy Watts, Lawyer at Liberty, said:  

“We all want to live in a society where our Government is open, transparent and respects the rules. But, as we’ve seen today, the Home Secretary has not abided by any of these.

“The Home Secretary has side-lined Parliament to sneak in new legislation via the back door, despite not having the powers to do so.

“This has been done deliberately in a way which enables the Government to circumvent Parliament – who voted these same proposals down just a few months ago – and is a flagrant breach of the separation of powers that exist in our constitution.

“This is yet another power grab from the Government, as well as the latest in a long line of attacks on our right to protest, making it harder for the public to stand up for what they believe in.

“The wording of the Government’s new law is so vague that anything deemed ‘more than a minor’ disturbance could have restrictions imposed upon it.

“In essence, this gives the police almost unlimited powers to stop any protest the Government doesn’t agree with.

“This not only violates our rights, but the way it’s been done is simply unlawful. This same rule was democratically rejected earlier this year, yet the Home Secretary has gone ahead and introduced it through other means regardless.

“We’ve launched this legal action to ensure this overreach is checked and that the Government is not allowed to put itself above the law to do whatever it wants. It’s really important that the Government respects the law and that today’s decision is reversed immediately.”

Source: LIBERTY LAUNCHES LEGAL ACTION AGAINST HOME SECRETARY FOR OVERRIDING PARLIAMENT ON PROTEST POWERS – Liberty

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Covid inquiry’s WhatsApp demand skewers Johnson

Loser: Boris Johnson.

This is awkward for Boris Johnson.

On the same day he threatened to sue the Cabinet Office for handing to the police evidence suggesting he had broken Covid-19 no-contact rules during lockdown, the official Covid inquiry has threatened legal action against the government if it does not release his unredacted WhatsApp messages and diary entries.

The Cabinet Office apparently doesn’t want to do that.

This puts the Cabinet Office in an awkward position too, as it may seem hypocritical for it to provide Johnson’s diaries to the police while refusing to provide other information to the Covid inquiry.

According to the Cabinet Office, some of the material demanded is “unambiguously irrelevant” to the inquiry – but the inquiry’s chairwoman, Baroness Hallett, has responded by pointing out that passages initially assessed by the Cabinet Office to be irrelevant included discussions between the prime minister and his advisers about the enforcement of Covid regulations by the Metropolitan Police during protests following the murder of Sarah Everard.

This is clearly relevant to the inquiry. Baroness Hallett is quoted by the BBC as having said this was “not a promising start”.

And it undermines Boris Johnson because it demonstrates that documents he has provided to the Cabinet Office contain information that should rightly be divulged to those involved in the various investigations into his activities while he was prime minister.

If he does take legal action he will probably lose, based on the facts that have already become available.

If the Covid inquiry takes legal action it will probably win, on the same basis.

Maybe This Writer has been watching too many old episodes of Yes, Minister, but it seems to me that this sequence of events is fortuitous for the Cabinet Office.

It justifies the release of the diaries to the police, and make possible the release of the other material to the Covid inquiry, no matter what the decision on its relevance was – or who made it.

Yes, the Cabinet Office may lose face to a small degree.

But Boris Johnson is the real loser here. Or so it seems to me.

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Barclay’s lawsuit against striking nurses is just one example of his contempt for the NHS

Steve Barclay: he holds NHS staff in contempt, even though he’s surrounded by kit that he can’t make work – and they can.

It’s as though NHS employees – doctors, nurses or whoever – are the children of an abusive parent.

And Health Secretary Steve Barclay’s mistreatment of (among others) nurses has not gone unnoticed.

So the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing has condemned as “disgraceful” his decision to “bully” nurses into submission with legal action against their next two-day strike.

Her response echoes that of an abused family member who has taken too much and refuses to accept any more…

The leader of the Royal College of Nursing has said a legal attempt by the health secretary to block next weekend’s strike in England is “frightening for democracy and very frightening for trade unionism”.

Pat Cullen, general secretary of the RCN, said it was “disgraceful” that Steve Barclay was attempting to thwart the strike via the courts, and said nurses would “not be bullied into silence”.

“We have instructed our legal counsel and we will stand up for nursing. This is about standing up not just for nursing but for trade unionism and for democracy,” she told the Observer.

“It’s utterly disgraceful that he [Barclay] would prefer to use money to challenge nurses than to pay them, at a time when those nurses are struggling to pay their bills. He is using public funding, patients’ money, to challenge nurses through the court.”

She added that a claim by Barclay that the government’s legal action sought to protect nurses who could “otherwise be asked to take part in unlawful activity that could in turn put their professional registration at risk” was a “blatant threat”. “He is trying to frighten nursing staff. That registration is their livelihood,” she said.

It’s actually insulting. Barclay is playing the ‘kindly uncle’ character, who fakes concern for youngsters in his charge while actually subjecting them to harm.

Sadly, his attitude is rubbing off on members of the general public, who are also starting to treat NHS staff as government property, in the same way some children have to comply with parental wishes (whether they are benign or not – and in this case they’re malign).

And what’s the upshot of all this abuse?

Let’s skip across to see what’s happening to doctors:

Like a child suffering mental health problems as a result of living in an abusive household?

You may be thinking that the comparison is false. Doctors and nurses are, after all, highly-trained professionals who could merrily move out to any other health organisation in this or other countries.

But the UK’s National Health Service has an emotional hold over almost everybody in the UK (Tory MPs and private health executives/shareholders excepted). It inspires almost familial loyalty in that respect.

That is a great strength in retaining staff – but also part of the problem because it gives Tories carte blanche to cut pay and otherwise abuse staff, which leads to the mental health problems that we’re seeing too.

It is vital to point out how this demonstrates the contempt in which the Tories in general – and Barclay in particular – hold NHS staff.

Without that understanding, it would be hard to understand why the Tories are obstructing pay negotiations the way they are.

Source: Nurses’ leader blasts Steve Barclay over ‘disgraceful’ use of legal action to stop strike | Nursing | The Guardian

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Why is Steve Barclay taking legal action against nurse strike – on a technicality?

Did you understand that Health Secretary Steve Barclay is taking legal action against the Royal College of Nursing, not because its strike from April 30 to May 2 is illegal in itself, but because he disagrees with its timing?

When the RCN balloted its members for strike action on November 2 last year, the mandate was to last six months.

Barclay reckons that means the mandate ends on May 1 and therefore most of the second day of the 48-hour strike (it ends at 8pm BST on May 2) falls outside the RCN’s mandate to strike.

The RCN disagrees (obviously) – and This Writer tends to agree. If the ballot takes place on a particular day – it seems to me – any mandate must begin on a subsequent day; the following day seems the logical choice.

The RCN’s argument seems to corroborate this, as it quotes a precedent from a miner’s strike from 1995 that gives it until midnight on May 2.

Here’s Taj Ali to provide some background:

The threat of an interim order to stop the strike has been considered offensive by many:

The request for an order that stops strike action until a court has decided whether it is legal could be a double-edged sword for the government.

If the court rules in the government’s favour, then the RCN has said it will abide by the decision.

But if it rules against Barclay, then he will have hindered a legal strike for no good reason at all. That would be a public-relations disaster for him and his government.

They would have force-halted a legal and reasonable strike for no good reason.

They would have demonstrated that they are not to be trusted on any level in negotiations over pay.

They would have shown that they are unfit to serve the UK as its government.

Right?

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Boris Johnson earns £1m in six weeks, but taxpayer gets his bill for legal fees | The Times

Money, money, money: but Boris Johnson never seems to use any of his own – it’s always yours.

This is the story – and I should have got to it before The Times, of all places:

Boris Johnson has earned nearly a million pounds in just over six weeks – but is claiming public money for legal representation at the Partygate inquiry – and the amount seems to be limitless.

Sadly, the story is behind a paywall, so this is all I can show you –

Boris Johnson has earned nearly a million pounds in just over six weeks, it has been revealed. The former prime minister registered more than half a million po

– plus the link below.

His earnings were mentioned in a previous Vox Political piece, here.

And his public-money funding for Partygate is the subject of this article in the Graun, although it’s covered by many other media outlets if that one isn’t your cup of tea.

Entitled arseheads like Johnson really take the biscuit, don’t they?

He’s taken a million quid on the side – that’s additional to his MP salary, and has anybody actually seen him in the House of Commons lately? – but he wouldn’t dream of using any of it to fight the Partygate allegations.

He’ll happily take it from you and me instead.

That’s how they stay rich and you stay poor.

Source: Boris Johnson earns £1m in six weeks, but taxpayer gets his bill for legal fees | News | The Times

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Online Safety Bill is watered-down – but should it really legislate for ‘hurt feelings’?

Social media demon: it seems the new Online Safety Bill won’t protect anybody from abusive other users. So what good will it do?

Parts of a planned law to protect people using the Internet from seeing illegal material have been watered down – to protect free speech, it seems.

The government has removed a section of the Online Safety Bill that refers to “legal but harmful material”.

This means the largest, high-risk online platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, that would have been tasked with preventing adults from being exposed to content like self-harm, eating disorder and misogynistic posts will no longer have to.

Children will still be protected from such material, if the Bill is passed into law as planned before Parliament dissolves for the summer recess next year.

The change has been prompted by critics like Tory Kemi Badenoch who said the section on legal but harmful material was “legislating for hurt feelings” by demanding a crackdown on free speech.

In July, nine senior Conservatives, including former ministers Lord Frost, David Davis and Steve Baker, who has since returned to the government, wrote a letter to then Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, saying provision could be used to clamp down on free speech by a future Labour government.

Mr Davis has gone on to urge the government to axe other measures that could “undermine end-to-end encryption” that he said we all rely on to keep safe online.

He said measures permitting the government to direct firms to use technology to examine private messages were a threat to privacy and freedom of expression.

Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan said the revised Bill still offers “a triple shield of protection – so it’s certainly not weaker in any sense”.

This requires platforms to:

  • remove illegal content
  • remove material that violates their terms and conditions
  • give users controls to help them avoid seeing certain types of content to be specified by the bill

This could include content promoting eating disorders or inciting hate on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender reassignment- although there will be exemptions to allow legitimate debate.

But Labour’s Lucy Powell said removing obligations over “legal but harmful” material gives a “free pass to abusers and takes the public for a ride”.

This Writer tends to agree – to a certain extent.

It seems the changes mean users would be able to control what they see, rather than tech companies being given active duties to tackle “bad actors and dangerous content”.

So – it seems to me – abusers will still have carte blanche to use social media platforms to attack anybody they like, with the onus on the abused to put measures in place to stop themselves seeing such material.

Won’t that mean other users – on platforms like Twitter, for example – will still be able to see the abusive material and form their own conclusions about the people for whom it is intended?

The problem is partially that the UK’s legal system simply doesn’t understand how online abuse works. I tried to explain it to a High Court judge in July but her recent judgment shows that my words flew over her head.

Either she did not understand how abusive techniques are employed on social media platforms, or she didn’t care. That’s how it seemed to me.

We need legislation to prevent online abuse and harassment by criminalising the abusers – or we risk huge harm, both psychological and physical – being inflicted on our children, in spite of what this Bill pretends to be.

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Celebrities sue Daily Mail publisher for ‘appalling breaches of privacy’

I spotted this on a BBC News tickertape last night (October 6) but couldn’t find the story.

Fortunately I have now discovered this Twitter thread which lays it all out:

The newspaper company’s representatives can say what they like, but members of the public already have an opinion about this:

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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