The death of Ella Kissi-Debrah has put a child’s face on a huge public health emergency. The struggle by her brave mother, Rosamund, to get air pollution recognised as the killer of her daughter can pave the way for a new Clean Air Act that will end the hundreds of thousands of premature deaths. Continue reading “Justice for Ella can pave the way for new Clean Air Act”
If you wanted to convince the public that international trade agreements are a way to let multinational companies get rich at the expense of ordinary people, this is what you would do: give foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever a government passes a law to, say, discourage smoking, protect the environment or prevent a nuclear catastrophe… a process known as ‘investor-state dispute settlement‘, or ISDS.
(The Economist, October 2014)
This Trade Bill the government has written includes ISDS…
Continue reading “The Trade Bill: Report Stage – ISDS”
The Government have put the Trade and Agriculture Commission on a statutory footing – with Amendments 49 and 50 giving it a degree of permanency – and have even seemed to incorporate what we were pushing for, in that it should have its own staff and facilities, but then government Amendment 36 throws all that out. A Secretary of State can ditch the whole thing with a statutory instrument. How is that sticking to a promise about making this a body that can properly do the job?
Continue reading “Trade Bill Report Stage day 1”
The big problem with this Bill is that the legal tests are too wishy-washy. They give the authorising bodies free rein. If we do not contract those processes in some way, there will be mistakes – there are bound to be. It will become very difficult to challenge even the most obviously wrong authorisations.
Continue reading “Police Spies – Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) – Bill”
The first day of the Report stage of the High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill saw four votes on amendments, three of which Jenny voted for in an attempt to improve the project if it cannot be stopped:
Continue reading “HS2: Destruction and broken promises”
The CHIS (spycops) Bill is in the Lords at the moment. The Minister couldn’t tell me if criminals who are authorised as police spies will be able to keep the proceeds of any criminal activity during the period when they are immune from prosecution. At the moment criminal proceeds are often confiscated by the state. Will they be taxed instead? I have written asking again…
Continue reading “Will state authorised spies keep the money they make from crimes?”
We should cancel HS2 and reallocate all public funds to a zero carbon transport future – why the Green Party voted to oppose HS2.
Continue reading “HS2 opposition and alternatives”
It is obvious that the Bill hugely expands the state’s ability to authorise criminal conduct and grant legal immunity to criminals. Surely the Government understand this and can see that it is wrong to try to legislate like this.
Continue reading “Covert Human Intelligence Sources: Immunity from crime for criminals and no recourse to justice for victims”As Jacob Rees-Mogg, as leader of the Commons, continues to attack remote voting and to resist the Commons working more remotely during Covid, Jenny responds in the Lords. She disagrees with any peers who think that being in the chamber should give them more priority than than those who are working remotely.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 