It is impossible to consider the disproportionate number of ethnic minority children in custody without drawing the conclusion that the criminal justice system is institutionally racist. More than half of all children in custody in 2020 were from a BAME background. However, the problem starts with the police…
Continue reading “Institutional racism”
I am not going to argue that we have an environmental or ecological crisis, or a nature or planetary crisis, because for me those things are absolutely self-evident. What we have is a political crisis. The Government are creating a new system of environmental law that is almost undeserving of being called law because it is so full of loopholes and get-out clauses and allows unlawful acts to carry on unimpeded. We have to be absolutely sure that what we are doing is the safest way forward. The Government simply do not understand that the environment encompasses everything. It is not an issue on its own; it encompasses the economy, transport, education and social well-being. It is absolutely everything, and this Bill is our one opportunity to get it right.
Continue reading “The Environment Bill finally reaches the Lords”
There are very few such atrocities that are committed independently of the global arms trade, of which the Government of the UK are a major component
I am concerned that we as a nation are pontificating about global corruption when it is clear we have inherent local corruption. Corruption is corruption, whether it is here in the UK, via Ministers, or anywhere else. So this does seem a strange piece of legislation to be coming through this House while details are still being released about the Government’s VIP-lane contracts to friends of Ministers and the dubious funding of the Prime Minister’s living arrangements. The Explanatory Memorandum recognises that “serious corruption” “has a range of corrosive effects on states, markets and societies wherever it occurs” – and it is occurring in Britain, and it will have a corrosive effect.
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?
Read the whole debate on Hansard
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)”
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 