A parliamentary pantomime

Stuart Weir (London, Democratic Audit): A delicious irony, between the elaborate pantomime of the Commons’ tradition of independence enacted once again for the royal opening and the abject reality of the House’s current weakness, another aspect of this cruelly made evident by the Speaker’s pitiful performance.

However his inadequacies have already been clearly signalled in previous episodes of doubt and confusion.  What hasn’t been discussed is the foolish and partisan way in which the House now chooses the Speaker, whose charade of refusal fails to mask the attraction of the office for MPs who are past it (or have never been with it) for a prestigious perk. It is a national version of the yearly processions of mayors being crowned in town and county halls around the world, and operates broadly on the same principle of buggin’s turn.  It hardly seems to matter at local level, though it is often an unnecessarily costly and pompous affair, and frequently unedifying. I still remember a drunk mayor in Hackney tumbling into a swimming pool on the occasion of a show house opening.
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Damian Green: A constitutional failure

Tom Griffin (London, OK):Brassneck's Mick Fealty is not impressed with speaker Martin's performance yesterday. Like Mary Riddell, he suggests that the Damian Green affair has highlighted the inadequacies of an unwritten constitution.

In truth, the British Constitution was blown wide open by what may have been nothing more serious than a lapse in attention to important detail. The Police it seems failed, and the House also failed.

In principle it still exists, but it is worthless if the functionaries upon which it relies at critical moments have not the first idea of how to perform that constitutional role.

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Mary Riddell gets it right

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Great piece by Mary Riddell on the larger picture of the Greengate affair in today's Telegraph.

Attacks on Assembly's role at Stormont

Damian O'Loan (Paris): The Damian Green scandal betrays a contempt for democracy that has similarities to that practised by the Stormont executive, and the shared Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister in particular. They have most recently called for parliamentary questions to be reduced to once per month, alternating between Sinn Fein and DUP ministers, of which there are four in the Department. 

While the debate on PMQs has been marked by the need to improve a system that is not allowing parliament to fully play its role, this proposal is based on little more the most Hobbesian of foundations. Stormont houses an infant and fragile democracy. It is inconsistent to sell stability to American investors on the one hand, as those very ministers have been doing, and meanwhile to launch an attack on the equilibrium of that most crucial of triumvirates: executive,
legislature and judiciary. Read the rest of this post...

Back door bills

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Inquest has today welcomed the inclusion of the Coroners and Justice Bill in the Queens Speech as an opportunity for a long overdue reform of the inquest system. However, it looks as if that prospect may be tainted by a nasty sting in the tail of the legislation.

According to NO2ID National Director Phil Booth, the bill contains broad new data-sharing powers that could be used to sweep away existing legal protections.

Rather than protecting our personal information, as it should be, the government is cutting away safeguards for its own data-trafficking convenience. This is a Bill to smash the rule of law and build the database state in its place. Burying sweeping constitutional change in obscure Bills is an appalling approach. Having proved - and admitted - they cannot be trusted to look after our secrets, they are still determined to steal what privacy we have left. Parliament needs to wake up before it has no say any more."

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A very British arrest

Editor's introduction: Laura Sandys is the Chair of the openDemocracy Board as well as a contributor and a Conservative candidate preparing to fight the coming election. This post is taken from her regular emails to her constituents. Readers outside Britain especially may need to know that her father was Duncan Sandys a leading ally of Churchill and later a senior minister in the post-war Conservative governments. They may also need to know that the parliamentary offices of Damien Green MP, a distinguished Conservative opposition spokesman, were raided by the police and his computor files taken from there as well as from his home.

Laura Sandys ( Conservative Party Candidate for South Thanet): I take this personally. My father was subjected to the "Damian" treatment just before the outbreak of the Second World War. When your father tells you that he was almost charged with espionage and could have faced years in prison you sit up and listen! When he tells you that he was within minutes of being court marshalled for treason you take a sideways look into his eyes and consider whether you truly know this person who you have lived with all your life.
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Newsnight hop

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Fascinating Newsnight last night on the Damian Green affair. Ken Macdonald, who has just stepped down as the DPP was sharp and impressive. He made it clear that the police had made a hash of it and had to be kept under control and he drew a proper distinction between punishing an MP for accepting leaks - they had already found the leaker, of course - and investigating the high crime of corruption involved in the sale of peerages (which clearly took place even if they could not establish evidence to convict).

Michael Howard was robust and drew on the 17th century to protest against the invasion of Parliament, implicitly comparing the government of Gordon Brown to that of Charles Ist. It was left to the third retired figure, Ken Livingstone, to defend what happened. What a sad and lame performance it was. I've been a longtime supporter of one of the most creative figures in British politics but this was Ken as an old fart defending the police and seeking to assure us that we are not on the verge of a civil war as if this made everything hunky-dory. What role reversals we are seeing!

Martin Bright catches the mood of this in his angry contribution to the Progress conference.

Progressive future is beyond Parliament

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Last night saw the last in the Comment is free/Soundings series of debates on Who Owns the Progressive Future? Guy Aitchison sums up over at CIF:

Debates like this rarely provide definitive answers. At best they can throw up new possibilities and explore alternatives. One lesson I took from them is that if there is any hope for the future it is not to be found in parliament but in the countervailing forces to what has been called the "neoliberal state" – a theme explored by conservative theologian Philip Blond in the first debate and echoed by Jeremy Gilbert in the second, this time from a radical perspective. 

Calman, shared social citizenship, and the defence of the union

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Over at Unlock Democracy, Deputy Director Alexandra Runswick warns the Calman Commission against considering Scottish devolution in isolation from the wider UK constitutional settlement.

Sadly the First Report suggests this may well happen. For example, it warns against greater financial autonomy on the grounds that it would lead to less ’shared social citizenship.’ That may be true in Scotland but the experience suggests that, if anything, the lack of financial autonomy is causing resentment in England and goes to the heart of Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question. Fundamentally, we believe this to be a false dichotomy; a fairer and more transparent financial settlement will be good for Anglo-Scottish relations on both sides of the border.

The BBC's Brian Taylor suggests that Calman's concept of 'shared social citizenship' is at the heart of an intellectual defence of the union.

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Devolution in Northern Ireland: The Never-ending Story

Fair Deal (Slugger O'Toole): The Northern Ireland Executive met last month for the first time since June. Two letters signified an agreement between the DUP and Sinn Fein on policing and justice (Letter 1 and letter 2 (pdf files)). Many are questioning what the 150+ day hiatus was about?

The Northern Ireland peace process is an instrumental one, consistently agreeing a limited number of issues with more difficult ones left for a later date. The hope is that successful implementation will make difficult issues resolvable later without a crisis, something the NI process has rarely managed.  In terms of hegemony in the process, the party with something still to give has an advantage.
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Calman issues first report on future of devolution

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Calman Commission on the future of  Scottish devolution has today published its first report. It's very much a provisional exercise, but it provides some important indications of the Commission's thinking.

The maintenance of the union was always going to be a key principle for the Commission, which is backed by the three main unionist parties in Scotland and boycotted by the SNP.  However, even within the unionist spectrum, it has become increasingly clear that Calman is headed for a much more cautious set of proposals than the fiscal autonomy advocated by the Lib Dem Steel Commission. 

Today's report states:

our consideration of finance follows from our discussion of the nature of the Union. As well as being an economic Union, the UK has a shared social citizenship. Greater tax devolution would be associated with less shared social citizenship, while high dependence on grant funding implies some common expectations about the need for welfare services like health and education. We have not reached a view on the appropriate point in what is a spectrum of possibilities, but we do recognise that this must reflect the expectations of the Scottish population. In the next phase of our work, with further help from the Independent Expert Group, we will identify the possible combinations of the funding mechanisms and their implications for the nature of the Union.

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Questioned by the Met: An MP's experience

Tony Clarke (Northampton Independent Voice): Damian Green's role in allegedly "grooming" Graham Galley, an assistant private secretary in the Home Office, and a former Tory election candidate, is still to be fully determined. One can only wonder at what "inducements" would have been put up to persuade the civil servant to leak highly confidential information to the shadow immigration minister in the first place. The Daily Mail and other right wing rags must have thought Christmas had come early as story after story was revealed to give them even more front pages to attack Johnny Foreigner with.

But Green's stupidity, and the distasteful thought of how cheaply politically sensitive information can be acquired are deemed (rightly so) secondary issues to the real crime committed here. That, in my view, was carried out by the Metropolitan Police the minute they entered the parliamentary office of the MP for Ashford and seized his computer. Whatever happened to parliamentary privilege? What on earth was the Sergeant at Arms thinking about allowing such access without the MP's agreement? and what role did the Speaker play in giving permission for such an affront to our democracy?

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Parliament must clarify privilege law

Keith Ewing (King's College London):  According to Vernon Bogdanor, the Damien Green affair is a ‘storm in a teacup’; while according to Harriet Harman it raises ‘big constitutional principles’. They cannot both be right.  What also cannot be right is the Home Office response that this is an operational policing matter, which is not the responsibility of ministers (who as Jackie Ashley points out in this morning’s Guardian are first and foremost MPs).

Although the facts and circumstances of the affair continue to unfold, and although we do not yet have a clear picture of what has happened, there are nevertheless a few inconvenient principles around which the debate needs to be constructed, principles some of which to his great credit Dennis MacShane appeared to identify well on the Today programme, also this morning.
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Britain’s neo-liberal state

The global financial crisis exposes anew the flaws of a British polity that resists democratic modernisation. In a long, sweeping overview, Gerry Hassan & Anthony Barnett declare the United Kingdom state unfit for purpose. Read the rest of this post...

Molehunt doesn't justify breach of privilege

Tom Griffin (London, OK): I spoke to a civil servant yesterday who was very bullish in support of the police's decision to arrest Damian Green.  According to their version of events, documents were being leaked systematically by a woman with links to the Conservative Party who was employed as cover for another member of staff. It looks as if Mick Fealty has heard a similar account.

If, for instance, Mr Green had someone in the Home Office who seemed to be less motivated by a desire to expose corruption, and more by a determination to run an anti-government campaign from within a government department, it would be a different matter - particularly if Mr Green knew this to be the case.

If, for instance, this person was leaking other material to other senior Conservative spokesmen, for example - or worse still, if this person had some sort of record of Conservative activism - then it really would be a problem.

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Damian Green blog reactions

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The arrest of Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green has provoked a huge amount of comment  since the first hints started emerging on the blogosphere last night.

ConservativeHome's Tim Montgomerie is incensed...

Given that Boris Johnson and others received prior warnings - but were unable to act - it seems very unlikely that a Home Office Minister (who did have the power to stop the police and may have even had to sanction what happened) did not have prior knowledge.  Such is the reputation of this Government, few are likely to believe ministers' denials anyway.  If Jacqui Smith did know she should resign.

...but so to is Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne...

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Privacy: This is a 'Magna Carta moment'

Phil Booth (London, NO2ID): At a conference in Manchester organised by the Information Commissioner twelve months ago, NO2ID raised a wry smile from delegates by handing out pairs of (blank) CDs marked 'HMRC'. A year on, it is no joking matter that so little has been done by the government to address the systemic and policy failures - and internal culture - that led to the worst data breach in UK history.

In fact, government data breaches are on the rise - a 77 per cent increase so far this year - and almost every branch of government is involved: the Home Office, MoD, NHS, DWP, HMRC again (repeatedly), the list goes on and on. Every week there is another story of more people's personal details being mislaid, citizens put at risk by a government that not only can't protect them but which doesn't seem particularly bothered to do so. The scale of the problem 12 months on is so great that the Information Commissioner himself has quipped that his office is being used like a confessional.

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One reason why the police are dangerous, undemocratic and stupid

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The arrest of Damien Green, early blogged by Tom (below), included a police search of his office in the House of Commons. Let's assume that there was no political direction or permission, even of an informal kind. This makes it an even more dangerous attack on democracy given that his crime was to expose wrongdoings - as he should. What do the police think they are up to? If the answer is 'just doing their job' it means they have lost any belief in parliamentary democracy. Before we get coldly outraged by this - as we will - we have to ask: is there any basis in the experience of the police for ceasing to believe in parliamentary democracy?

I think there is. The police spent many months and a huge amount of money investigating the cash for peerages scandal. They interviewed the Prime Minister twice, something that had never happened before to a serving premier. The reason is obvious to everyone. Parliament and Downing Street was a crime scene. Peerages were indeed being sold for cash. I recall watching Blair saying (but I can't find the link or the transcript) in a press conference that of course individuals who assisted political parties with large sums might be ennobled and there was nothing wrong with this - provided it didn't take place in the same transaction. The cynicism was transparent.

So there is a very strong and recent experience in the upper levels of the police that politicians get away with breaking the law. Even more annoying, when the police fail to make a case against them stand up strongly enough for a court of law, they are then attacked by the same politicians for wasting public money.

Thus the arbitrary, corrupt and despotic behaviour of New Labour under Blair has now bred an arbitrary and despotic police command. We are reaping Blair's failure to believe in democracy. 

Which makes the widening of the intrusive extension of state powers that we are now witnessing all the more a matter for profound concern. Lacking a deep belief in public values and democratic accountability, as they evidently do, those who use these powers will desire to expand them - if only in order to protect themselves from the inevitable abuses generated by their own all too human incompetance. 

This adds a new urgency to the fight for a principled modern liberty that is exercised by us as free citizens governing our own democracy. We can't just look to 'parliament' to do this.

I am working with Henry Porter (see his blog in Comment Is Free) and others on a Convention on Modern Liberty that will call on all those concerned to debate the issues and what to do next. The event and associated meetings around the country is still under construction. A combined effort is going to be needed.

Damian Green arrested

Tom Griffin (London, OK): A bit of breaking news that's been inspiring a few rumours on the Tory blogosphere tonight. From PA:

A member of David Cameron's Tory frontbench team has been arrested, the party has disclosed.

Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green, MP for Ashford in Kent, was arrested on Thursday afternoon at his home and taken for questioning at a central London police station.

He has not been charged with any offence.

In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said: "A 52-year-old man was arrested in Kent. He has been taken to a central London police station where he will be interviewed by detectives.

"The man has been arrested on suspicion of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office and aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office."

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David Blunkett on the resurgence of politics

Tom Griffin (London, OK): David Blunkett became the latest speaker to mark the 20th anniversary of Charter 88 on Wednesday when he delivered an Unlock Democracy lecture at Westminster's Portcullis House.

There was a certain mild irony, albeit a much appreciated one, as Mr Blunkett repeatedly ignored the division bell calling him to vote, in order to continue his speech on the case for organised politics:

One thing that has happened over the last two months is a resurgence of political democracy, of people suddenly rediscovering that politically elected representatives, that formalised political processes, can actually get a grip on, and be dominant in putting wrongs right

In other words, the property owning democracy promoted in the 1980s, the market economy, the voting by proxy in terms of how much wealth you have and how much wealth you can spend as a consumer, has suddenly met the buffers in a big way in the global financial crisis.

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Human rights v civil liberties?

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): I have never quite followed the split between those who think reform-minded people should talk in terms of "civil liberties" and those who insist on "human rights". But a packed meeting of people in Cambridge last night for a forum to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Human Rights Act gave me cause to consider the terminology of rights, and especially the split in thinking it revealed between practitioners and the public.
 
The panel consisted of Rabinder Singh QC, from Matrix Chambers, Professor Rob Home, of Anglia Ruskin University, Andrew Watson, a local No2ID activist, and Jean Candler, from the British Institute of Human Rights. They spoke throughout in terms that emphasised the "human" in the phrase "human rights" and brought the debate down to everyday level - assisted, it should be said, by an admirably forthright chair, Boni Sones, of Women's Parliamentary Radio.
 
Naturally enough for Cambridge, there was an assumption that this was a gathering of enlightened people.  But it became apparent that there is a distinct difference in understanding between the practitioners and some of the audience when it comes to the use of the word "rights", which I think goes far wider than the Mumford Theatre at Anglia Ruskin, co-sponsor with the Cambridge CAB of the debate.
 
The panel spoke always in terms of "human rights", but several people in the theatre spoke of "rights" as individualistic and undesirable commodities that could, for example, cause disruption in families (children's rights) and schools (ditto), where children who should be excluded were not and so damaged the education of their class mates.  Of course, the panel had emphasised that human rights strike a balance between rights and responsibilities that must be determined in any case; that the interests of others and the wider community had to be taken into account; and that every judgment had to be proportionate.  But they blamed the Human Rights Act, at least implicitly. Read the rest of this post...

What is the real case for more powers?

Tomorrow's Wales (Cardiff): The report in the Western Mail on Friday on Sir Emyr Jones Parry’s call for politicians to give concrete examples of laws they would like to see passed in order to better explain why the Assembly needs primary law-making powers raises some interesting question about what the Convention’s role is and how the case is best made for giving the Assembly primary legislative powers.

Firstly,  politicians obviously have a responsibility to put the case for further powers to the people, and would by necessity have to do so during any referendum campaign. But it is also one of the core purposes of the All Wales Convention, as set out in its terms of reference, to explain to people how moving to primary legislative powers would affect the future governence of Wales. It is rather worrying if the members of the Convention see this as a role for others to fulfil while the Convention sits back and simply assesses the effect of such arguments on public opinion.

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Mandelson moves UK towards presidential system

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): This argument heads Britain in the direction of a presidential system - but without an independent legislature:

Parliamentary rules should be changed to allow Lord Mandelson to be answerable to the House of Commons, MPs have said.

The Commons business and enterprise committee said that following Lord Mandelson's appointment as business secretary there had been no one to come to the despatch box to answer MPs' questions on the brief.

Is parliamentary sovereignty still vital?

John Jackson (London, Mischon de Reya): The texts of Nick Herbert's public speeches sometimes give the impression of having been drafted first by a well informed assistant, with a sound knowledge of our constitutional history, and then given a ‘going over’ by Herbert to provide a (Conservative Party) politically correct gloss. The result can read in an oddly disjointed – almost Palinist -  way. This is a pity: it diminishes the value of serious attempts to discuss serious questions in a serious way. The public lecture commenting on a decade of the Human Rights Act, sponsored by the British Institute of Human Rights and delivered by Herbert yesterday at the site of the British Library’s Taking Liberties exhibition is a striking example of this.

Despite the disjunctions, some good, and some bad,  points emerged clearly from  Herbert’s lecture.

He was right to:-

• Warn against the dangers of judicial activism;
• Emphasise that human rights cannot have meaning, or exist, without popular consent;
• Say ‘ – in society we have responsibilities to one another.’ and ’- there is a danger that rights become not tools for protecting the individual within society, but advancing the individual against society.’

But wrong to:-

• Argue that judicial activism has been accelerated by the Human Rights Act which has undermined parliamentary sovereignty and the separation of the powers;
• Imply that popular consent can only be expressed through parliamentary representation;
• Suggest that the best way for our society to ‘re-balance’ rights and responsibilities is via a British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities proposed by a (Conservative) government and, following debate, converted by a (Conservative) government dominated parliament into an Act ‘preventing judge-made law’ and restoring ‘the place of parliament’.

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A stay of execution for English local government?

Chris Game (University of Birmingham, Institute of Local Government Studies): Every cloud, as the saying goes. It seems that one of the collateral victims of the global economic crisis may be the current round of English local government reorganisation.  

Speaking at a recent Belfast conference of local authority chief executives, Communities and Local Government Secretary, Hazel Blears, claimed her department had gone ‘back to the drawing board’ on any issues that might help local government ‘in the tough times ahead’. These included a possible reconsideration of the Government’s latest bout of restructuring, taking place under the controversial auspices of last year’s Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act (see Michael Chisholm and Steve Leach, Botched Business: The damaging process of reorganising local government, 2006-2008 (Douglas Maclean Publishing); and Chisholm’s ‘Fears for tiers’ in Public Finance, 23 May 2008).

Those of us in the local government world learned long ago to be thankful for small mercies. So, if it takes an economic crisis to prompt at least a delay in what to most outside observers looks like the final destruction of much of English local government, we’ll welcome it as the proverbial silver cloud. It’s sad, though, that there wasn’t even a hint from the Minister that considerations of that quaint concept of local democracy played any part in her thinking.
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Shifting the burden

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Over at Compass, Tom Copley of London Young Labour points to the historic significance of Alistair Darling's decision to cut VAT while bringing in a new 45 per cent rate of income tax. 

To understand why these changes are so important, we need to look at the history of taxation in this country since Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979. A key part of her economic policy was the transference of taxation away from income and on to spending. In her first budget in 1979 she cut the top and basic rates of income tax whilst increasing VAT from two rates of 8% and 12.5% to a unified rate of 15%. This put money in the pockets of the rich whilst punishing the poorest who would see little reduction in their tax bills whilst facing increasing prices. Indirect taxes, favoured by Thatcher, always hit the poor hardest.

At ConservativeHome's CentreRight blog, Andrew Lilico puts the same comparison in a slightly different perspective:

In the first Thatcher term there was a major tax reform - switching away from income tax to VAT.  The government attempted to make this seem less inflationary by trying to get us to use a "taxes and prices index", but no-one used it, and the impression of the VAT increase was that it fueled inflationary expectations.  Perhaps we are all much more sophisticated now and the deflationary effects of VAT will be "seen through", but I'll believe that when I see it.  And if that was really the concept, why not cut income tax in the first place?

Of course, Darling's VAT cut is intended to be temporary, but it may nevertheless mark the end of an era.

 

Fiscal federalism

John Osmond (Cardiff, Institute of Welsh Affairs): Hints from the Prime Minister on future funding options for the Scottish Parliament are rare and usually Delphic in their meaning. So close attention was paid to Gordon Brown’s relatively unambiguous remarks on the theme in a speech delivered to a CBI Scotland dinner in Glasgow in early September.

Although observing that on the whole devolution had worked pretty well, he said he did see one problem: fiscal accountability. As he put it: “The Scottish Parliament is wholly accountable for the budget it spends but not for the size of its budget. And that budget is not linked to the success of the Scottish economy.
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ID card scheme marches on

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The National Identity Scheme gets underway in earnest tomorrow when the first ID cards start being issued to non-EEA foreign nationals. The move coincides with the launch of a consultation on the secondary legislation that will enable cards to be issued to UK nationals, starting with airport workers in late 2009.

NO2ID's Phil Booth described the planned provisions as "a wake-up call for everyone who bought the line that ID was just a simple card." They provide for a draconian list of penalties for non-compliance of which the highlights include the following:

• Failure on the part of a cardholder to notify the Secretary of State, where the cardholder knows or has reason to suspect that the card has been lost, stolen, damaged, tampered with, or destroyed. Maximum penalty £1,000.
• Deliberate or reckless provision of false information is a criminal offence under section 28 of the Act with a maximum penalty of 2 years imprisonment.

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Can Obama deliver amendments to Blair's flawed Inquiries Act?

Damian O'Loan (Paris): The election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States may bring good news to the hunt for one of the most closely guarded secrets in the history of British involvement in the Northern Irish troubles. During the campaign, as noted here and elsewhere, the now President-elect pledged support for a comprehensive truth recovery process, in particular for a full, independent public judicial enquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane, a lawyer shot dead in front of his wife and children at home in Belfast in 1989, by loyalist paramilitaries with the alleged collusion of British state agencies.

In responding to a questionnaire compiled by two Irish-American groups, Mr Obama said he would support an Inquiry under the terms recommended by Canadian judge Peter Cory in 2003, a report accepted by the Tony Blair under the Weston Park agreement of 2001. The government went on to delay proceedings before eventually hastily passing the Inquiries Act 2005 with no public consultation. That legislation, which replaced the 1921 Public Inquiries Act, allows ministers the power to deny truth recovery in several ways.
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Database state on the defensive

Tom Griffin (London, OK): No one has kept a closer eye on the rise of the database state than Henry Porter. On his Guardian blog today he sees signs in stories from Westminster, Scotland, Northern Ireland and France that suggest the tide may just be turning.

In the United Kingdom the primary struggle against government intrusion centres on the ID card and the plans for a huge government silo to store information on every phone call, email and internet connection. There is good news on both these but the campaign against the theft of our democratic rights will not be won unless public opinion builds against these two schemes.

It is in our hands.