Don't believe a word Gordon Brown says.

He defence in the court case brought by Stuart Wheeler of IG Group for breach of contract is that you can't trust what politicians say in manifesto promises.

"manifesto pledges are not subject to legitimate expectation" — Brown's personal barrister

Story from Trixy

Free as in speech

Ed Husain has just said on the PM programme that one of the key reasons that the UK has still got a terrorism problem was "irresponsible unlimited liberalism" that was insistent on giving everyone a voice.
If I was having problems before identifying myself as a liberal then now I stand here holding my hand aloft to say "Aye count me in with the irresponsible unlimited liberals." Of the many freedoms the people of this country have lost or is threatened with loosing, free speech has to be pretty close to the top of the list of those important to defend.
It is a subject that is already lighting up the British blogging community given how strong a position a Libel plaintiff is in under English law and how quickly UK ISPs have to roll over when the lawyers knock on their door to protect their business.
In all this talk about how the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor will implement their review on Governance, with any options like a written constitution or a bill of rights are brought up, free speech must be a key plank of the rules about how our society operates.
I leave you with something that summarises my position wonderfully Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire:

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it

Human Rights

The decision to allow Learco Chindamo to stay in this country upon release is generating a lot of heated comment. While I can see that people, especially Philip Lawrence's family are upset about this, the usual woolly thinking is being bandied about by many of those commenting on the story.

This is the fault of the Human Rights Act

No it isn't, all that act does is short circuit legal proceedings so that cases don't need to be taken to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg if they deal with matters where the UK is bound under the European Convention on Human Rights. Scrapping the act won't release us from the provisions of the convention, it will just mean more time and money (mostly from the public purse) for these cases as they all then have to go to Strasbourg. No serious politician wants us to withdraw from the convention itself.

This puts his rights above the rights of the rest of society

Well no, it isn't a case of deport him or deport the rest of society, his whole life and family are here. Can anyone seriously say that sending him to what to all intents and purposes, passport aside, is a foreign country will help his rehabilitation? The issue is nothing to do with human rights or deportation if he is released and he is still a danger to society, it is to do with sentencing and parole policy. We don't deport all ex-prisoners in case they are dangerous, where would we put them? Why, if he is a danger, should the Italian public have to put up with him any more than we should?

After committing such a crime he should forfeit his human rights

There is only one real logical conclusion to that train of thought and that is the death penalty. Some might say that I am engaging in hyperbole here, but think about it, if you become part of an underclass without even the most basic of rights (that is what the convention is designed to give everyone, just the basic rights all human should have) then we are effectively nulling their existence and might as well line them up against the wall. Feel free to argue about whether the rest of this post is objective but here I can't be, the death penalty is a great work of evil and we are much better of for not having it.

And finally, well almost nothing

The last section of The Governance of Britain is on "Britain's future: the citizen and the state" and as far as I am concerned they might as well have left it out as it suffers most of all from waffle and complete lack of any significant proposals on the way forward. After a huge section that basically says "nobody seams to be sure at all about what Britishness is" it moves on to talking about teaching "citizenship" whatever that is. I am serious about this point, if the government cannot put down what it means to be a British Citizen in a chunk of green paper titled "Citizenship and national identity" then what are they teaching to children in schools? Apparently Citizenship Studies is the fastest growing GCSE subject, so what is on the syllabus that is used for this short course GCSE? I expected to find points in this document that made me angry, but I always thought that it would be a point of principle rather than just sloppy thinking. While I accept this is a document to let discussion prosper, it is always easier to start such a discussion when there is a starting point.
Even more woolly is the subsection on "common British values" but it at least has a concrete proposal, allow the flag to be flown above government buildings on more than the current fixed 18 days, that will make a huge difference!
Then it gets really bad, the item on a "British Bill of Rights and Duties" is actually mostly a defence of the Human Rights Act. I can see that this piece of legislation has been attacked recently and support it being upheld, but to define one possible future set of laws in terms on holding on like grim death to another is bordering on pathetic.
Lastly you might be fooled by a heading "Constitution" that there would be proposals contained within about bringing the various parts of our constitution into one ordered document, instead we get this:

"It is clear that neither a Bill of Rights and Duties nor a written constitution could come into being except over an extended period of time,"

Which really gets my goat, firstly because we have a written constitution; it may be written in thousands of places, but given the way Britain works, the land of the Civil Service, the home of following the rules (even if we occasionally do so in a way that could be counted as playing the system). Secondly what does extended period of time mean is it going to be reviewed over months years, decades. You can call me cynical if you like, but for someone brought up watching Yes (Prime) Minister that phrasing makes it simply sound like neither document will ever happen.

Re-invigorating our democracy

In the third section of "The Governance of Britain" we are treated to the governments ideas about "Re-invigorating our democracy" with Parliament "at the core of this effort."
First up is accountability and strait out of the trap we are onto the House of Lords, for openers they try and contrive to convince us that the messing about with the upper house has been a step forward. Worry not I am not about to defend the hereditary house, but I don't understand how anyone can suggest that the current make up is any better. The green paper says very little about what is planned, merely acknowledging the report of the Joint Committee and the free vote in the House of Commons. Personally I feel the country needs something radical that gives us at least a simulacrum if not a full analogue of the stability that the old House gave us. How can this be achieved? Well perhaps we could have a system of election by thirds like we use in a number of our council elections, or a similar system to the United States Senate with 2 people per "constituency" each being up for re-election every 6 years. Obviously that kind of system has inherent fixed terms; personally I would support the idea of fixed terms for both houses of Parliament.
The equivalent section for the Commons, pretty much in its entirety, refers the reader to another committee report, I will try and get to reading it and if it has interesting points their may well be another blog post on this subject.
Sadly the section on "Westminster and devolution" doesn't even bother to mention the West Lothian question; I obviously wasn't expecting anything substantial on the matter the government has stated that it won't be addressing this issue, but acknowledging the issue would have been a nice touch. As expected the document then goes on to quote the Phillips review which effectively supports All Women Shortlists and then questions whether similar measures could be used to improve the number of members from minority ethnic communities.
Frustratingly we then get three times as much coverage on whether election day should be a week day or on the weekend or a public holiday (given we get so few of these I would support declaring an election day bank holiday, this of course dovetails with my support of fixed term Parliaments) than we do on voting systems. Given the various and on occasion confusing, see the last set of elections to the Scottish Parliament for example, electoral systems in use in the UK today, we should try and come to a consensus on this issue. All we get in this document is a review of the various systems in use.
The success of the ultimately futile 10 Downing Street website petition system leads to suggestions on making it as easy to petition Parliament on similar matters. What practical formal effect such a system would have is glossed over somewhat.
Many commentators have welcomed the next provision, which puts forward a review of the current restrictions on protests in the environs of Parliament that were widely seen as a vindictive effort against on man that has ultimately proved futile.
The next three paragraphs simply put out a sensible point that could lead to a potential minefield. How can charitable organisations be allowed to operate in the political campaigning arena without risk to their charitable status. While I can see the point that change needs to happen so that specialist organisations can influence legislation in there area, it is true that measures are needed to protect against charities which are simply political animals.
The last part of section three is a disappointing collection of waffle and buzzwords, that reads more like something we would have got from John Major's government than anything. While I am a firm believer in interaction between the people and their elected representatives; the fact is the councillors have far less time and resource to deal with correspondence than MPs. Any attempt to meaningfully increase involvement in local politics by the wider populous would require major investment in support for the council members and therefore increases in local taxation. On top of this the suggestions for local charters, citizens' juries and other consultancy bodies the suggestion is made that local democracy can be improved by providing more real time data. What providing real time statistics at tremendous expense to one or two interested people will do apart from foster comedy fantasy leagues I don't know, but I don't see it improving community involvement in democracy.

Making the executive more accountable

Section two of The Governance of Britain is introduced saying it is fundamentally based upon the re-evaluation of the balance of powers in the UK at the moment compared with the ideals of a Montesquieu tripartite system. The assumptions used are that Parliament's role in holding the executive to account needs strengthening and that the whole system needs more local accountability to communities. The introduction holds that devolution and regional ministers has indeed put this power closer to the people, I don't think the former has proved itself even yet and the latter is still very much in its infancy.

Item one is National security, which opens with the suggestion that the Intelligence and Security Committee will have its statutory basis reviewed, the document praises its work but points out the argument that as it meets in private, it cannot be said to be transparent. This is obviously a tightrope situation, the committee will never be a open forum to discuss matters so there are a number of suggestions to increase perceived trust of the committee and its reports. These options included opening up the selection process for members to greater scrutiny, giving the committee the option to meet in public when appropriate, and two moves to give it greater independence, having its reports debated in both houses and led by the committee rather than a Minister, and separating its secretariat form the Cabinet Office (tradition home of "security" in government); including the possibility of an established independent investigator.

The other National Security point is that the government wish to convene a National Security committee bringing "Defence and Overseas Policy", "Security and Terrorism" and "Europe" under one banner. I worried that I was not as up on the system as I thought, as I would at first thought had the Ministerial Committee on Europe looking into far more things than would be taken up by a National Security committee, then I re-read the document and saw that the body would be looking into "the Government's wider international, European and international development policies" as well as the National Security Strategy. Now I worry that there really isn't enough focus there to do any significant good.

Recently their has been lots of grumbling in the media about one of Gordon Brown's key commitments to Parliament that he has already implemented, that statements and policy announcements to Parliament really are that and not rehashes of items already leaked or "briefed" to the media. In a key, but I think welcome (I also welcome the announce it to the house policy by the way) counterpoint, the list of legislation that will be put forward in the Queen's speech will be presented beforehand. This will allow for debate and public consultation and even provides for there to be change before the final speech formally sets out the timetable.
Departmental accountability is tackled next, this is another of the frustrating sections of the document where the authors lay out how it is now, suggest its shortcomings and then sign off with "We will ask someone else what to do about it." In this case, the fact that the whole house rarely gets to formally scrutinise departments effectively outside of debating specific items of legislation. The current arrangements of select committees that have very little in the way of formal powers to push for their reported recommendations to be pursued and adjournment debates in Westminster Hall is highlighted as not cutting the mustard. An interesting point is that while the Treasury and the MOD are closely examined as part of the budget and defence estimates debates the only other ministry with a fixed slot for House of Commons scrutiny is the department for Welsh affairs during the St David's Day debate.

After a brief section simplifying the reporting of budgets, estimates and actual expenditure to Parliament and another about the independence of the ONS, which is already going ahead, it is on to the regions. Again as with the ONS this section is about reform that is already under way; the ministers for the English regions were appointed as part of the reshuffle Gordon Brown conducted when he took office. Their remit seams to mostly be "Minister for the Regional Development Agency" and responsibility for championing the region. I am having real problems believing that this will work; I am however willing to wait and see.

The last point in this section is reforming the Ministerial code, which reads as a "we don't want another Blunkett or Mandelson style scandal, that we can be accused of not dealing with, please." including independent investigatory powers, annual reports on Minister's interests, scrutiny before parliament and changing the emphasis on the recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointment Rules, from voluntary advise to a requirement Ministers are expected to follow.

The Governance of Britain - part one.

This is the first of four posts I will make on my reading of the green paper on The Governance of Britain issued earlier this month by the new Ministry for Justice.

I was originally going to produce a summary and then a commentary however as it all got mixed in together I am splitting it based on the sections the report is itself in (I have included the introduction in with section one "limiting the powers of the executive." if you want a pure summary, I would recommend reading the executive summary in the document itself.

Well the introduction is fairly innocuous, apart from the possibly controversial use of the term Universal Suffrage, which the United Kingdom doesn’t have and the claim that they have modernised the House of Lords, as opposed to the half baked, half finished efforts actually enacted. It only takes until point 12 to get to the West Lothian question, as the authors have to “hope” that the devolved administrations will implement any reforms that fall under their purview, while MPs from those territories will undoubtedly be part of pushing through any points that don’t quite get the consensus Gordon Brown wants. After Box 1’s potted history of the UK constitution, which serves to highlight the perversity of not celebrating the act of union this year, we get to the first section, limiting the powers of the executive.

Right off the bat the intent of the process is stated as ensuring that these proposals reinforce the flow of power from the people to the executive arm of government is through Parliament. As expected they are taking the opportunity while going through this process to try and clear out any prerogative powers that at archaic or otherwise no longer in use, like the right to impress into the Royal Navy. After a brief mention of improved insight of intelligence and security activities, the Green Paper moves on to the specific powers that will be transferred to Parliament. I will gloss over the explanations of the technical differences between the several types of “Royal prerogative powers” as the next section is the first that has got people excited, the restriction of the executive’s ability to deploy the Armed Forces into armed conflict to a narrowly defined set of national security and operational effectiveness criteria that require swift action. Outside of these specific circumstances it will be Parliament’s responsibility to “send a gunboat” or some such and the paper even proposes that Parliament itself develops the convention that these resolutions will be based on. The wording is also important in that the word “war” is not mentioned at any point in the section, for as other commentators have pointed out, it is a rare event these days for their to be a formal declaration of war. I would very like to see what the Chiefs of the Defence Staff or other forces based expert body propose for the “emergency” powers and how closely the MOD and then the government as a whole follow them.

The next item is formalising the procedures for Parliament to scrutinise and ratify treaties, hopefully this will, as well as the face value improvements in accountability lead to better handling of bilateral treaties that other countries don’t ratify but take full advantage off, such as the USA with respect to the Extradition Treaty of 2003.

Next up is dissolving Parliament, no mention of the possibility of introducing full and fixed terms, but instead just requiring that the Prime Minister seeks the approval of Parliament before going to ask the Monarch. Now, there is mention of protections against Parliament refusing to support the formation of a government yet not allowing dissolution. I think there is another situation where this could cause an issue, in the case of a coalition government based round a part with no overall majority; it could be prevented from dissolving by the MPs of its coalition partners if they believe that after fresh elections they wouldn’t be required. Now our system makes this quite unlikely and obviously such tactics could lead to the breakdown of the coalition anyway, it just seams like a possibility for continuing chaos.

The section on recalling Parliament suggest that the powers will just be an extension of the Speaker’s current ability to do so, the issue is the wording which says that the Speaker should consider it and it would be in the Speaker's discretion. I would be happier that this would be a worthwhile reform if there were specific triggers that enforced the recall so that overly politicised Speakers couldn’t block the recall. Another section I’ll gloss over at this stage, I am little qualified to comment on the operation of the civil service and a great deal of it is “wait and see”. One really good point in there however is that confirmation that the Order in Council that allowed three of the Prime Minister’s Special Advisors to step out of the restrictions on their role and give orders to civil servants. Similarly the section on the Attorney General basically says that the government can see the problems with the role, but there is already a select committee report in the pipeline so let us wait and see what that says.

On ecclesiastical, judicial and public appointments, there is the simple desire to reduce the involvement of the Prime Minister’s office in appointing the various flavours of churchmen required, while maintaining a full commitment to the church being established. So henceforth the appointments based on the Crown Nominations Commission will be altered so that the commission will be only putting forward one name for the Prime Minister to recommend to the Crown. No mention is made about any possibility of rejecting the single name if the commission goes overboard and starts nominating Robert Mugabe or some such. For appointments made in other ways the General Synod is due to make recommendations and there isn’t likely to be any alteration of the arrangements for Royal Peculiars. In a similar vein the consultation process will look at increasing the role of the Judicial Appointments Commission and adjusting the oversight of that body, perhaps making it directly responsible to Parliament.

The green paper states that there are 21,000 posts in “arms length” organisations such as Quangos, NDPBs and executive agencies that are in the patronage of ministers. The government and the House of Commons Liaison Committee will draw up a list of appointments that will be subject to pre-appointment hearings within the existing select committee system, the document includes some examples of posts that should be included. This is a section I expect to have more to say on when this process goes forward and we are close to or get a white paper.

The last subsection is about the honours system and does little but set out the current committee based system and reiterates that the Prime Minister and the Secretaries of State for Defence and Foreign Affairs accept the output of those committees without any additions or deletions. There are no recommendations for change here, whether this will change during the consultation process remains to be seen.