The scandalous behaviour of lobbyists highlighted by the Sunday Times shows the need for action to regulate lobbysists and protect openness and transparency in our democracy.
A comprehensive register of lobbyists is called for in both London and Brussels.
Commenting on Unlock Democracy’s campaign for a full register of lobbyists, Antony Hook said:
“The public are entitled to know when paid lobbyists are seeking to influence are elected leaders. We should know who they are and who their clients are, whether it is big tobacco, big oil, private healthcare corporations or anyone else.”
“I strongly support Unlock Democracy’s campaign. I urge everyone in the South East to sign their letter to the Minister.”
http://action.unlockdemocracy.org.uk/page/s/demand-an-robust-lobbying-register
It is truly shocking that in 2012 a senior official of the Conservative Party should be recorded apparently offering a reward, namely access to the Prime Minister and influence over public policy, in exchange for party donations.
This is the sort of corruption that Lord Nolan’s Committee for Standards in Public Life sought to stamp out 20 years ago. The recordings, in my personal view as a lawyer specialising in economic crime, might raise a prima facie case of offences under Bribery Act 2010.
It is only months after Tory MP Mark Pritchard alleged in Parliament that the Prime Minister’s Office offered to bestow a public position on him or victimise him depending on how he voted as an MP on a certain issue. The man in the street would call that bribery too.
An internal Tory inquiry is insufficient. Not least for public confidence in the Coalition, there must be an independent investigation. The official in question should be asked on oath who told him to offer access, which Downing Street staff he thought pay special regard to the views of high-value party donors and what is his basis for thinking that they do. The investigator should examine records of access to Downing Street officials and records of donations to see whether they coincide in a way that calls out for an explanation.
If these matters are not fully and independently investigated the Prime Minister risks having an air not of his hero Disraeli but more like Richard Nixon.
David Cameron’s renunciation of a Treaty not even yet fully negotiated was the culmination of a process that began around 1992.
In 1992 a small group of Tory ultras, “the Maastricht Rebels”, began fighting their party’s traditional pro-Europeanism. It has taken 19 years to make their fringe views a normal Conservative Party and conservative press position. 1992 has led to 2011 like a river flows to the sea.
Anti-Europeanism’s hold on a major political movement has caused a poorly informed anti-Europeanism to take hold among many of our fellow citizens in the UK, as it has among some of our fellow citizens in other European states. Nationalism germinates during economic distress. The early 1980s are an example in my own lifetime: would Labour have had its anti-European phase, or the response to the Falklands have been the same, if the economic life of the country was not so hard at the time?
By pro-European, I mean:
a) In favour of Britain’s membership of the EU, and
b) Generally positive and ambitious for the good that could be done by action at a European level.
Consider House of Commons debates on the Consumer Protection Act 1987. The 1987 Act implements a European Directive. One Tory MP attacked this. The response of all his fellow Conservatives was almost vitriolic. They saw the benefits of the Act and in the basic policy it implemented being universal across Europe – benefits for the consumer and for business who would not have to deal with totally different requirements in every state.
Now, a Tory MP speaking out for the benefits of shared solutions to common problems in Europe is rare and would be heckled by his own side. The euro-scepticism of Tory activists, who accept what they read in the Daily Mail, means pro-Europeans who were Tory Ministers and MPs in 1987 are unlikely to be selected even as candidates now.
Liberal Democrats and Labour must take some blame for changes in public sentiment. When the Conservatives talked about “Saving the Pound” it was expedient for us to concentrate on schools and hospitals, which delivered record numbers of Liberal Democrat and Labour MPs in 1997, 2001 and 2005. While Britain reaped the benefits of putting Tories out of power, it now suffers the effect of anti-Europeanism going unchallenged for too long.
Now is the time to start winning the argument. As we face the challenges of the 21st century we need the states of Europe to bind themselves closely together to ensure the survival and success of European values: like the values set out in the Oxford Manifesto of 1947.
Europe is not just a place or a political entity. Europe is a set of values.
The threats to these values are economic, social, environmental and military. They come from more than one point of the compass. Our best chance in answering each challenge lies in co-operation rather than isolation.
European co-operation remains the brave new frontier. The place where exciting things can happen. Where our fate does not rest solely on decisions of the G2 (America and China). Together we have the largest economy in the world and unrivalled combined diplomatic potential. We have huge combined military spending that should be able to see off any threat to our peace and security. By working together we can do more to conquer cancer, HIV and use science for the common good. We can reform our legal systems to protect the cross-border lives and businesses we enjoy today. We share a cultural heritage of Shakespeare and Mozart.
30% to 40% of British citizens still define themselves as pro-Europeans. We should aim to win every one of their votes. We are told that only 19% yet disapprove of the Prime Minister’s recent action. If all 19% vote Liberal Democrat in 2014 we will gain several more MEPs.
I am British and European. I am really proud of it. If you feel the same then let’s start telling everyone. To borrow the closing sentence of Barak Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope, “my heart is full of love for this country”.
On 19 May, the summit of European-Africa-Caribbean-Pacific parliamentarians (the ACP-EU Assembly) at Budapest called for action to alleviate the global crisis in clean water supply.
One in six people in the world have no access to clean water. 2.5 billion are without clean sanitation and 1.5 million die every year from water contamination.
The report presented to the summit found that there are three main causes of water pollution: industry, agriculture and sewage. In developing countries 70% of industrial waste is dumped untreated into water. The most common source of water pollution, however, is faecal matter.
One of the Millennium Development Goals is to halve the number of people without access to clean water by 2015.
If, like the Defence Secretary Liam Fox, you think that the government should worry less about aid; if you think that the beginning and end of political priorities should be our own domestic self interest then these facts probably don’t interest you.
But for anyone who hates suffering and believes we should care about others then this situation demands urgent action.
The joint Assembly called for:
There is no way around a financial cost to the first two action points. They are good examples of how aid spending can do real good. The third bullet point requires us to place restrictions and costs on the activities of companies that are usually western, large and influential in our own countries as well as the developing world. Shareholders of a western mining company may well kick back if we support regulations that curtail how they pursue projects. But we should simply require that they observe the similar standards abroad as we would expect in our own country. A company dumping waste into the water supply here would be prosecuted. The same should happen in the developing world. We ask this not because we are against companies making profits but because the lives of children matter and more than justify a marginal curtailing of profit.
The EU has pledged 200 million euros (equivalent to less than 40 cents from each European citizen) for action on clean water by 2013. These funds will be used to develop clean water supply and sanitation and help establish strong water governance in the countries where these problems are most urgent. That kind of action should make us all proud to be Europeans.
There are of course numerous arguments that this kind of action serves our enlightened self-interest: spreading our influence, creating opportunities for some of our companies and so on. But you would have to have no soul to need those arguments to persuade you that saving lives of people who lack water was a good thing to do.
This issue, and the summit in particular, received no coverage in the mainstream UK media. At the time of the ACP summit our airwaves were filled with more hacking revelations, and the NHS bill. Those issues are important but it is disappointing that the issue of so many preventable deaths and action about it could not receive some attention.
There is the Jean-Jacques Rousseau tradition of political philosophy (“man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains”) that holds that naturally we have what we need to live and it is the way we have constructed our societies that deprives some people of their basic needs. In relation to clean water, that must be right. Likewise the Judaeo-Christian religions hold that we have been provided by the world’s Creator with everything we need to live and if we lack a resource like water it is because men have deprived each other of it.
An important debate for the twenty-first century is whether the idea of fundamental inalienable rights applies only to legal and political rights (free speech, fair trials, elected legislatures, etc) or whether it should also apply to some social and economic values such as a right to education or to basic medical care. It seems to me that clean drinking water should be regarded as an absolute entitlement of every human being.
There are serious cross-border criminals at large in Europe damaging the lives of innocent people. A certain numbers of them are more likely to be dealt with when a European Public Prosecutor is created. The British Government needs to escape the defensive dug-out epitomised by Blair’s “red lines” and fight for the good that co-operation in Europe can bring for all our people. This is a time for leadership.
A federal public prosecutor is provided for in the Treaty of Lisbon with a distinct emphasis on financial crime. I use the f-word, federal, because while it has been excluded from European documents at the insistence of Tory and Labour governments, there really is nothing to fear in a word the dictionary defines as “pertaining to a union between states… with individual state governments”.
It is obvious to most people that the integration of 27 member states’ economies involving free movement of goods, services, information, ideas, skills, people, and capital has and will unfortunately result in a freer movement of crime and criminals. That is not to say that the single market is a bad thing. It has created greater peace and prosperity. But wherever economic activity takes places there is always a risk of crime. A small number of people will seek to enrich themselves by cheating, stealing or smuggling at the expense of the law-abiding majority.
Co-operation to beat crime is growing. As of this year, our police and courts can now obtain the history of anyone’s previous convictions in any European state and our judges and magistrates take them into account as they would convictions in this country. There are new systems of mutual assistance that enable our police to more easily reach witnesses and evidence located in another part of Europe. The European Arrest Warrant has enabled a return to this country of hundreds of fugitives from justice. A charter of basic rights for defendants has been proposed to protect every European wherever they might be arrested. This should reassure those concerned for Britons arrested in other European states but was, disappointingly, resisted by the Labour government
Lisbon limits the Prosecutor’s role to cases involving the EU’s financial interests. Generally, this will mean prosecuting any fraud on the EU budget such as bogus claims on the CAP, misappropriation by any official with access to EU funds or bribery of an EU official. At some future point, the Council can expand the Prosecutor’s jurisdiction to certain types of cross-border crime. The tabloid fear that the Prosecutor will ride spectre-like across Europe arresting all manner of Europeans for any kind of offence is wrong. Lisbon strictly limits the Prosecutor’s powers. The Prosecutor’s existence will not affect the jurisdiction of other prosecutors like the CPS in England & Wales or the Procurator-Fiscal in Scotland.
The advantage of having a European Prosecutor is better and more systematic protection of the EU budget from fraud than is afforded by member state public prosecutors who have, very understandably, more local priorities. At present it is entirely possible that a member state’s prosecutor may decide that their own state’s interest is against prosecuting, for example, a large company in their state that has been making fraudulent claims for EU funds. A European Prosecutor can ensure the wider interests of the people of the Union are upheld by the crime being prosecuted in the national courts. The EU budget is about 160 billion euros (or 320 euros per person). That is extremely small compared to any of the member states own budgets but the public deserve protection from fraudsters.
When the Council expands, as Lisbon permits, the Prosecutor’s role to cross-border crime that will be a really exciting development. At present, criminals operate freely across borders against member state prosecutors whose powers to act do not cross the same borders. A European Prosecutor will even the odds against the drug smugglers, people traffickers and large-scale fraudsters who damage our economy and destroy lives.
Will the Prosecutor be worth the money? That can be measured by whether the fraud the Prosecutor detects and prosecutes (often leading to the recovery of assets) and other fraud disrupted or deterred is greater than the cost of the Prosecutor’s work. Although, I strongly believe that upholding the rule of law is a value that cannot be reduced to a book-keeping exercise. It is an essential part of civilised society. The richest society is deficient if it does not uphold the law.
The European Public Prosecutor will not bring charges against citizens in a federal European court. Lisbon guarantees that the prosecutor will bring charges in the national courts. So, if the Prosecutor charges someone in England she will still have to convince am English jury to their guilt, with the same burden of proof and rules of evidence as a Crown Prosecutor or a prosecutor from any of the multitude of organisations that regularly prosecute in our criminal courts. Indeed, tabloids who sometimes criticise the CPS for the cases it brings (or doesn’t bring) to court have expressed horror that the European Prosecutor will be able to bring cases without approval of the CPS. But anyone already can bring a prosecution without CPS approval. As well as prosecutions by private citizens, Whitehall departments like the DWP prosecute as do local councils, bodies like the DVLA and Environment Agency and charities like the RSPCA.
The Prosecutor will be created when 9 of the 27 states of the Union agree to proceed. If Britain sits out the early days of a new institution the danger is that (once again) precedents will be made, a blank canvass filled, differently than if we were involved. Our coalition government should not miss a great opportunity to lead Europe on the creation of the Prosecutor and further the fight against serious crime.
The 2010 General Election was a failure for Britain’s two openly nationalistic parties.
UKIP stood in 556 constituencies and lost their deposit in 459 (83%). Their vote share varied between 0.65 and Nigel Farage’s 17.3 in Buckingham where none of the three main parties contested the Speaker’s seat. No other UKIP candidate hit double digits.
The average vote share per UKIP candidate was 3.54.
The BNP stood in 338 constituencies and lost their deposit in 267 (80%). Their vote share varied between 0.4 and Nick Griffin’s 14.6 in Barking. Only two other BNP candidates hit double digits.
Eight out UKIP’s highest ten results were in constituencies where there was no BNP candidate, which suggests UKIP do best where there is no BNP candidate to split a shared pool of supporters. But, nine out of the BNP’s highest ten results were in constituencies were there was a UKIP candidate, which suggests that the presence of a UKIP campaign stimulates a higher BNP result.
The failure of these two parties is a pleasant contrast to 2009 when UKIP came second nationally in the European Elections. Let’s make sure we defeat them there too in 2014.
On 29 November 2003, a woman’s body was discovered near a farm by her husband and other people from her village. She was 20 years of age and her name was Naang Sa. She and her husband Zaai Leng had been approached, three days before, by 40 soldiers from the Burmese Army. Zaai Leng was tied up and Naang Sa was gang raped. The soldiers took her back to their base and her dead body was left at an unknown time during those three days, completely unconcealed, to be found by those who loved her.
Events such as these are not unusual in Burma. Numerous United Nations reports have expressed concern about high numbers of rapes of women by the army in Burma since at least 1996. The number of reports that reach the UN are, almost certainly, gross underestimates. The lack of effort to conceal rapes or the bodies of victims is a regular feature of such cases that underlines a culture of impunity for soldiers in a country under military rule.
The UN’s Torture Rapporteur recorded in 2006,
“Women and girls are subjected to violence by soldiers especially sexual violence as “punishment” for allegedly supporting ethnic armed groups. The authorities sanction violence against women and girls committed by military officers, including torture as a means of terrorising and subjugating the population.”
This has been brought to the attention of Burma’s military government consistently since 2002 but United Nations representatives have found, at best, shrugging indifference from the government and often active attempts to prevent impartial investigation.
The widespread abuse of civilians by their own country’s government (or its soldiers or agents) is a crime against humanity under international law. Unfortunately, the rape of women is but one strand of human rights abuses in Burma.
Burma gained independence in the 1947 and enjoyed parliamentary government, albeit with inter-ethnic and Communist inspired armed conflict occurring, until 1962 when General Ne Win staged a coup that begun a continuous period of rule by force. Ne Win‘s regime sought to control rural areas by destroying farms and villages, killing thousands of civilians. Student protests were harshly suppressed and the once prosperous economy collapsed.
In 1988, further protests against military rule led to 3000 people being killed and fighting between the army and rebels groups has continued since then creating 100,000s of refugees. The regime has forced people away from their home areas and used murder and torture, as well as sexual violence, as tools of oppression on a widespread scale and with an ingrained culture of impunity for those who commit such crimes.
In 1998, a UN Special Rapporteur wrote,
“These violations have been so numerous and consistent over the past years to suggest that they are more simply isolated or the acts of individual misbehaviour by middle and lower-rank officers but are rather the result of policy at the highest level, entailing political and legal responsibility.”
More recently, you may recall the violent suppression in 2007 of Buddhist monks who began peaceful protests against military rule.
The United Nations and the European Union have published numerous reports documenting these crimes against humanity. President Obama has indicated that the United States is willing to take more decisive action against Burma.
There are two recent developments that deserve to be noted. The first is the publication of the report “Crimes in Burma” by the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School. The report was commissioned by five of the world’s leading jurists from Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. The Harvard Report took as its source material not any and every allegation, but only those allegations documented and actually found to have occurred in United Nations investigations and reports.
The 102-page report surveys the evidence and the legal framework (the established elements of crime against humanity) and concludes that there is undoubtedly a strong prima facie case for Burma’s military leaders to answer.
The report also notes the glaring disparity between the international community’s response to these cases and how it has acted in relation to similar crimes in other countries.
The established response to a prima facie case of crimes against humanity is an international judicial process. This is what the international community has done in recent years with regard to the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Darfur. Abuses of human rights in Burma are comparable to all three of those countries. An international judicial process establishes the truth and brings some of the guilty people to justice. Armed with those precedents for action, the Harvard Report calls for an international judicial commission of inquiry for Burma. If we fail to set up such a process, it is likely that abuses of human rights will continue for decades to come.
Secondly, during August, the military regime announced new elections but 25% of the seats in parliament will be reserved for the military, numerous democratic parties including the movements led by Aung San Suu Kyi have been barred from even taking part and the leading General announced on 31 August that he will not relinquish power whatever the election result. There is every chance that the election period and its aftermath will unleash a heightening of violence and oppression by the regime.
I and Sir Geoffrey Nice QC (who prosecuted Milosevic at the Hague) have tabled an Emergency Motion to a recent Party Conference calling for urgent action. We want the British government, and the European Union of which we are also citizens, to use all means at its disposal to begin an international judicial process as called for by the Harvard Report to end the murder and torture of innocent people.
County councils all over England are making deep cuts to school transport that Liberal Democrats are right to fight against. School transport cuts are bad for child safety, bad for working parents and bad for congestion on local roads.
The cuts, which mostly have come into effect this term or will over the next 12 months are, in most cases, to reduce school transport to the very least permitted by statute. That means it is being axed for everyone who is not on free school meals or who lives more than 3 miles (2 for primary children) from their nearest school.
Thousands of pupils and families are affected by these cuts and the problems caused are extensive. Putting aside the argument as to whether a six-mile daily walk is reasonable for an 11 year-old, councils are requiring children to walk on roads many of which are unsafe and unsuitable: roads with no pavements or step-offs with heavy 60 mph traffic. Already an average of 47 child pedestrians are killed or seriously injured every week on our roads, a figure that will surely rise following these cuts.
It is bad for the economy. The cost of several dozen extra car journeys is greater than the cost of a school bus journey. Greater congestion is bad for local business. Many parents (particularly mothers) will have to give up work. If you have to walk your children three miles to school in the morning and back home again it will be 10 am before you can head off to work. You will need to leave work perhaps by 2 pm to walk to school to collect the children. There are few jobs, and almost no skilled jobs, that you will be able to do. The loss of income tax and economic benefit of having adults in work will surely outweigh what councils will claim to save by these cuts.
Rural and semi-rural communities will feel these cuts the worst. It will be a great shame if villages and small country towns, which in so many ways offer great places to grow up, become more difficult to live in for working families.
These cuts also mean that children on free school meals may be readily identifiable (they will get transport while their school mates do not). This will undermine efforts by many schools to shield FSM pupils from being identified and stigmatised.
“Choice” of school is being made a mockery by these cuts. Many children choose to attend a school other than their absolute nearest for perfectly good educational or personal reasons. Indeed, previous Tory, Labour governments and now the Coalition have encouraged choice.
In Kent, for example, the county council is abolishing free school transport for pupils of grammar schools and church schools. The existence of such schools is controversial but most of us will agree that if we have such schools then access should not depend on your economic or other personal circumstances.
There is generally no provision being made to continue school transport for pupils who have started at a school with, we would say, a legitimate expectation that they would receive school transport throughout their time at that school. It is outrageous that some pupils, in the middle of the school education, some of them halfway through GCSE courses are being forced to change school because of transport cuts. We are specifically aware of bright sixth-formers leaving school because the transport they depended on is being taken away.
No county council should be allowed to say school transport cuts are forced on them by the national fiscal position. In most cases the transport being removed has been in place for decades. We are often reminded that the Coalition is cutting spending back as a share of GDP only to 2006 levels. School buses that were affordable in the ’70s or ’80s should certainly be affordable in 2011/12 or in a hypothetical comparison to 2006.
Cuts are a question of priorities. There can hardly be a county council that is so perfectly configured in every other respect that there is nothing else that can be cut instead of school transport. In any case, these are not real “savings” because the financial cost of several dozen car journeys will exceed the cost of a shared school bus. It is a transfer of cost from the council to working families and an increase in cost.
We believe that choosing to cut school transport is an ideological choice by Conservative councillors. We know that some Tory councillors are lobbying for councils to have no responsibility for school transport whatsoever. One East Sussex Tory county councillor said to one of the authors of this article, “people shouldn’t have children if they can’t afford to get them to school.”
Conservatives often talk of “rolling back the state” to the most minimal level. This is a difference between Liberals and Conservatives. We too don’t support state activity for its own sake. There are some areas where the state is too intrusive. But unlike Conservatives we know that the state, not least our local authorities, can be the place where people come together for the common good. Where the disadvantages faced by some citizens can be reduced or even eliminated. Where action can be taken that benefits every person in the community because there is plenty we can do collectively that we cannot do individually.
It is in the interests of every individual in the community that there is a good school transport system. It does no-one good for local roads to be congested by 50 cars instead of a school bus. It does no-one good for some mothers to have to give up work because walking children 3 miles to and from school twice a day means they can’t get a job locally. It will do no-one if a child is hurt walking to or from school. It does no-one good for bright sixth-formers to drop out because they physically cannot get to school. It does no-one good for some villages to become effectively unliveable areas for working families.
So far, the campaign has gone well. An open letter signed by teaching unions and campaign groups from all over England has gone to Michael Gove and Annette Brooke tabled EDM 2283. The Guardian and BBC Radio 4′s Woman’s Hour gave supportive coverage. This led to a meeting with Education Minister Tim Lougton who was initially brusque and dismissive but by the end was promising to take action.
We have testimonies from parents, teachers and councillors all over the country detailing just how devastating these cuts have been to them and letters of support from MPs of all three parties (even a couple of evidently moderate Tories). Transport Minister Norman Baker has given us considerable support and it is unfortunate that national responsibility on this matter rests not with him but with the Education Department. The shadow Secretary of State for Education has our evidence and has said he will look into the issue.
We need to keep up the pressure. Please go to our Facebook page. Ask your MP to sign EDM 2283. Find out what your local education authority is doing. Campaign on this issue in your community.
If Conservatives are intent on rolling back school transport then there is every reason for the public to roll back the Conservatives at the county council elections in 2013.
