Will it not be embarrassing for a Government who cannot stick to the Paris Agreement? They are dithering about opening new coal mines, they are planning new roads and they are encouraging airport expansion—plus they have just given £750 million to a Mozambique scheme for a fossil fuel project. How is this reducing global CO2 emissions?
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I write for Left Foot Forward
Voter suppression, limiting protest on the streets by banning anything that might be effective, stopping people seeking justice in the courts when the government acts in a dictatorial way – the Queen’s Speech is clearly designed to help the Conservatives stay in power for many decades longer.
Continue reading “The Tories are planning an assault on democracy”
There are some important pieces of legislation tucked into the Speech, but I feel that those are the ones that will fall through the cracks and that we will probably not get around to. This is very distressing because it will be the most regressive laws that come through and that the Government support. This is really appealing to the darkest parts of human nature and it is not good for our collective psyche, not just here in the House but in the wider society. As such, I promise you strong and relentless opposition.
Continue reading “5th Day of Debate on the Queen’s Speech”Is there anybody in government or in the wider Conservative Party who can either make the Prime Minister honour his promises or stop him making any further false promises?
For those in buildings more than 18 metres tall with combustible cladding yet to be fixed, the government has allocated £3.5bn in new grant funding, which is welcome, but not enough. That leaves hundreds of thousands of others in unsellable homes in lower-rise blocks with the same cladding, who are disappointed at the offer of loans. And for people with other non-cladding fire safety problems, there is nothing. This backtracks on the key government promise that leaseholders should have no costs to pay.
I believe that it is impossible to separate forensic science from the wider undermining of criminal justice funding that has occurred during 11 years of Conservative cuts. The Government have treated people’s innocence as an unaffordable and optional luxury, rather than the underpinning of the fabric of society’s trust in the justice system. When people realise that innocent people can go to jail and guilty people can go free because of failures in the system that the Government have allowed to happen, the whole system is doomed. Continue reading “Forensic Science and the Criminal Justice System (Science & Technology Committee Report)”
We have passed legislation in the past year at the most incredible rate; a year ago, we would have said that it was impossible, unconstitutional or just plain ridiculous, so Parliament and the Government have shown that they can act fast in an emergency. Targets are great, and I welcome better and higher targets, but they are not met without a plan. It is not enough to talk. We must act. The Dasgupta Review and the Climate Change Committee’s sixth carbon budget have given us a pathway to doing exactly that—to declaring a biodiversity and climate emergency, acting on it and reducing our impact on the natural world.
Continue reading “Time to declare a Biodiversity Emergency”
The reasons the Commons have given for rejecting our amendments are absolutely pathetic. I just do not see how the Government can persist in their blindness towards what is happening in society and not at least try to make it a bit better. I fully realise that the Bill is a very valuable one and we absolutely need it, but why not make it as good as we possibly can?
Existing regimes often fail to ensure that people in government and politics work for the public interest and not for private gain. We need a legal, formal separation of public service from private enrichment. We need to hold former Ministers, former politicians and even former lawyers to much higher standards than exist at present. Continue reading “Public service and private enrichment: the need for legal separation”
Any national planning system that allows Heathrow to expand or fails to stop new and bigger roads, is clearly not going to deliver net zero emissions. At a local level we are still building new houses that will have to be retrofitted in the next few years and incinerators that add to greenhouse gas emissions.
Continue reading “Considering the climate in advice to Planning Inspectors”
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 