Category: Civil liberties

Government, the police and intelligence services are too easily given sweeping powers that they too often abuse.

Jenny works with campaigners to defend our civil liberties. She has worked on legislation like the Investigatory Powers Bill, raised the cases of victims of state power such as detained pregnant women, and defended the right to protest.

Jenny speaks out against the detention of pregnant women

Published on by jonesjb

Jenny initiated an hours debate (Question for Short Debate) on the detention of pregnant women. The debate takes place today in Grand Committee. The government is failing to tell support groups how many pregnant women are currently being detained. Jenny believes that NO pregnant women should be detained. The terrible stress, anxiety and hardship associated with detainment can only injure mothers and unborn children and should not be tolerated by a civilised society.  Here she explains her views

Blacklisting question

Published on by jonesjb

I’m asking the \Government this question in the Lords today:

“…what plans do they have to strengthen provisions in the Investigatory Powers Bill to increase the protection of data relating to trade union and political activities?”

Blacklisting destroys lives because employers can use it to punish people who stand up to them. Major employers can plunge families into poverty by stopping people working their chosen trade in the mainstream of a particular industry. In the construction industry, it was used to destroy the ability of working people to organise in defence of a safe working environment, which for several decades has been a matter of life and death.

I’m very concerned that the police and the state colluded in this horrible practice by sharing information with blacklisting companies. We know that undercover officers spied on trade unionists and the Pitchford Inquiry into undercover policing must assess whether this information was used by blacklisting companies. The Investigatory Powers Bill gives the police expanded powers to potentially do much worse damage to people’s lives in the future, but I don’t see the strong safeguards in place to stop systematic  information sharing people’s personal information with private companies.

John McDonnell MP has been very involved in helping to expose the links between blacklisting companies and the state. The ex-director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, has become a Labour peer. I hope that this will translate into the Labour Party doing everything it can to amend and oppose the appalling IP Bill in the Lords.

blacklisting-meeting

Prevent is not fit for purpose

Published on by jonesjb

Responding to the comments by David Anderson QC, the outgoing chair of the Government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation,that Prevent should be reviewed and overhauled, Baroness Jenny Jones said:

“The fact that many people, especially within the Muslim community, are refusing to cooperate with Prevent is clearly damaging its effectiveness and that alone is a good reason for a review. Continue reading “Prevent is not fit for purpose” →

Queen’s speech: Let’s find solutions to the problems in prisons, not add to them

Published on by jonesjb

Further steps towards privatisation of the prison system will make an already bad situation even worse. Privatisation of the prison system won’t solve the problem of overcrowding, a lack of money and staffing shortages. But the solution is simple. We must send fewer people to jail. Continue reading “Queen’s speech: Let’s find solutions to the problems in prisons, not add to them” →