16.00 Arrive Liverpool
18.30 Conference Rally
20.00 Impact of Immigration cap on Communities / EMLD and Chinese Liberal Democrats / Fringe / speaking
21.00 London Region Reception
22.00 LibDem Blog of the Year / Nominated
Monthly Archives: Sep 2010
Id cards finish passage through the Commons
It was a real pleasure to be on the front bench today for the Report Stage and 3rd Reading of the Identity Documents Bill. Good riddance!
Labour thrashed around with the same amendments more or less that they laid at the Bill Committee Stage – same arguments as before. So I just refer you to my last blog post here as the same arguments were rehearsed.
The part I covered today was again the transgender issue of whether there should be two identity documents to allow those who use both genders during the journey to transition as the Labour opposition had tabled a New Clause on this issue. ID cards were not the answer. There only ever was one issue of dual cards – and the equality impact assessment found no equality issues in the abolition at all as services can still be accessed etc.
The whole issue of how to better a whole range of things to improve things for the trans community is on the coalition agenda – including how to address the issue of maybe needing dual identities – and I am taking forward the preparation of an action plan for trangender equality personally.
It was a great shame that when I raised the issue on the floor of the House to say that members of the trans community posted last time on my blog about not necessarily wanting to be identified – Meg Hillier, MP who leads for the Labour opposition dissed blog comments as not worthy of note compared with a formal government consultation.
Now a government consultation is undoubtedly a good thing (a coalition one – obviously) but to dismiss the comments on the last trans blog I posted when you are claiming to care about trans rights says it all.
Personally, I am indebted to members of the trans community who take the time and trouble to comment on my blog and who inform and educate me on gender identity issues each and every time. Please continue to do so!
And so ID cards finish their passage in the Commons. It was an historic day – and full credit to Liberty and the NO2ID card campaigns who along with Liberal Democrats and Conservatives stood up for civil liberty and freedom.
Funnily enough – on the road to the Labour leadership two of the five leadership contenders have now publicly stated that ID cards were a mistake!
Fixed-terms Parliaments Bill – 2nd Reading
I’ve always believed that we should have fixed-term Parliaments.
Pasted below is an article I wrote for Liberator magazine about this in January 2008. Today is the 2nd Reading of the Bill that will, if it passes, introduce fixed-term Parliaments. What’s your view?
It’s 80 minutes into an Arsenal-Tottenham football derby. Tottenham lead 1-0. Arsenal are piling on the pressure. The Tottenham manager shouts at the ref, “OK, that’s it – can we have the final score now please?” The ref agrees, all the players troop off the pitch 10 minutes early and Tottenham get the three points.
Sounds absurd doesn’t it (and I don’t just mean the idea of Tottenham beating Arsenal!)?
But that’s what passes for normal in the world of Palace of Westminster politics when it comes to general election dates. The Prime Minister – and the Prime Minister alone – gets to choose the date. Now – in theory Parliaments last for five years and the monarch has to agree to any earlier election, but in practice – the PM always gets his or her way.
Yet why should the PM get to choose the election date? We all know how PMs have chosen the date – they choose a date when they think they have a decent chance of winning. Fixing part of an election system just so you can maximise your own chances of winning – isn’t that normally called rigging an election?
You might think that is a rather drastic charge, but what other part of choosing the terms and conditions of an election could be left to the Prime Minister to choose – and choose just on the basis of what maximises his or her chance of re-election? Imagine the outrage if a Prime Minister got up and said, “You know, I think we won’t let the over-85s vote this time round.” The power to set the date of an election is an extremely powerful tool to influence its outcome – and so one that shouldn’t be wielded for partisan advantage.
Democracy after all is for all of us – it’s for the public to control who runs things, not for those in power to manipulate the public into re-electing them.
And that’s why the case for fixed-term Parliaments is so persuasive. Don’t let the Prime Minister fiddle the system to suit themselves – instead fix the date of election. (Personally, I’d prefer scope for two variations on this – an automatic general election on the appointment of a new Prime Minister, because although we don’t have a Presidential system in practice many voters do cast their votes based on who the leaders are, and the possibility of cross-party agreement for a general election at other times to cover unusual circumstances of crises. But both of these are only elaborations of the core point – elections are for the public’s, not the PM’s, convenience).
There is a glimmer of hope after the Grand Old Duke of York farce of Gordon Brown’s nearly-but-not-quite calling of a general election after the Labour Party conference in 2007 where he marched all his troops up to the top of the hill ready for an election, and then marched them all back down again. Such blatant posturing poured particular discredit on the exercise of the power to fix the election date.
It also highlighted the significant costs and inconvenience to others – such as the staff who have to actually organise the running of elections – when they are messed around with weeks of “will he? won’t he?” stories rather than having a clear date and timetable to work to.
We now have the best opportunity since the early 1990s to see fixed-term Parliaments introduced. Back then the Labour Party – including one Mr G Brown – supported them in their 1992 general election manifesto. Shame that when they got their hands on power those views never saw the light of day again – convenient, hey? But after Grand Old Duke of York saga, even some in the Labour party are muttering about the need to change the rules. The same too is true of the Conservatives – not a party traditionally warm to such ideas, but having nearly been on the receiving end of such an abuse of power, there is hope there too.
Of course my own party, the Liberal Democrats, have consistently argued for fixed-term Parliaments. But with signs of movement in the other parties too, we now face the real prospect of being able to secure change.
You can help bring about this change by backing the cross-party campaign at www.fixedterm.org.uk.
Of course, when I wrote this article, I thought that we would have a chance of the Labour government bringing in fixed term parliaments – but it didn’t happen. Now I hope it will.
9/11 remembered
On 9/11 I was at the HQ for the GLA which was in Marsham Street – a temporary home (two years) – whilst construction of City Hall was being finished.
I remember someone saying a plane had flown into one of the twin towers and running to find a television in some one’s room. And then just watching mesmerised – at first not knowing that this was a terrorist attack – just worrying about how people were going to get out of that first tower. Of course – as on screen before my eyes – I saw a second plane hit the other tower – instantly I (like anyone else watching) realised this was a full on terrorist attack.
And then – the images that have been seared into our consciousness – of the collapse of the towers. The way they just fell, melted, down upon themselves. The images of people, dusted with debris, running. The fear and the confusion in the streets. The dreadful realisation – almost impossible to comprehend – of the magnitude of what was unfolding before my eyes.
Now nine years ago – but the awful, stupid, ignorant, media-fed proposed burning of a sacred book – seems to have turned this anniversary into a ratcheting up of hatred across the world.
Should the media have given this legs? Or is the media simply bringing to light a deep hatred and war that is out there anyway?
Equality is important Alan Johnson!
There was an Opposition day debate yesterday on ‘crime and policing’ – an opportunity for Labour to lay out their angst about the Coalition plans for policing.
But that is not the focus of the first part of this post.
During the opening speech from Alan Johnson, former Labour Home Secretary, he said this:
”The Home Secretary (Theresa May) has been careful to have only one LibDem in her team, and she is a very good Minister (me), but the Government have not allowed her anywhere near the important stuff in the Home Office.’
(I was on the bench with Theresa May and the other Home Office ministers for the debate).
So – Alan Johnson is saying that ‘equalities’ is not important. Now Alan Johnson is a decent man and I have no doubt if you asked him he would say he was completely committed to equality etc. So the point of this post is not to have a go at Mr Johnson but to demonstrate how deeply embedded is the attitude that ‘equalities’ is somehow not important.
It is very very important. And I am sure – or at least I hope – that Alan Johnson believes that too – but what a very long way we still have to go to a point in time when a throw away remark does not reveal such a disappointing reality. Prejudice is still alive and well and living all over the place .
On the substance of the debate – Labour (unsurprisingly) attacked the coalition plans for policing reform and we defended them: directly elected individual police commissioners elected locally to hold local police to account; the ending of the retention of the DNA of innocent people on the DNA database; the re-organisation of the policing landscape with the ending of SOCA (Serious Organised Crime), the proposal to bring i regulations to control the use of CCTV cameras properly and the setting up of a new National Crime Agency.
There was also a great deal of argee bargee as to how the comprehensive spending review (the cuts) would (or would not) hit front line policing. Obviously Labour said they would and we said that front-line policing would be as protected as possible and that as currently only 11% of police were actually on visible duties – we would be cutting the bureaucracy enabling more time on the street.
The actuality of the spending review will be announced on 20 October – we will undoubtedly be in a better informed position to have the debate then.
Home Office Orals
First day back – Home Office orals (done) and Adjournment Debate after votes at 10pm (still to come).
Two questions came my way: one on wheel clamping and the other on what resources we are putting into enforcing the law against female genital mutilation (fmg).
The first on clamping – as in my blog posts really – just when would it happen and what about the clampers. Given how much I’ve written about this already – there was nothing new that came up.
On seeing the question on female genital mutilation and seeing that it was the same question that Ann Clwyd MP had asked a previous Labour minister some years earlier – I could tell the supplementary would be about why there had been no prosecutions since her Bill became law in 2003 when she asked it this time. She has campaigned tirelessly on this issue – credit to her.
Whilst prosecutions aren’t the answer to stopping the hideous practice – and fmg will be part of the strategy being formed to end violence against women which will be published in Spring 2011 – I was interested myself in understanding why none had been brought,.
I have no doubt that if a case was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service it would be prosecuted – but none have been referred by the police. Obviously in researching the answers – it came to light that there was an awful lot of work going on. There have been many investigations started – but none have produced the evidence needed to take the case all the way to prosecution.
Why? It would seem a number of reasons inhibit the collections of evidence. Firstly – the victim is usually too young at the time of the act to remember anything and doesn’t necessarily even know that she has been changed. The families do not want to give evidence and the communities that practise this won’t often help the police as they want to carry on their customs. Also families often say that the child was ‘done’ before coming to this country in a country where it is not illegal.
There was a news item recently about Egypt – where the practise was banned two years ago – but still nine out of ten young girls are mutilated. So here in this country the government is putting its resource into education and public awareness – as only a cultural change will ultimately bring about the necessary change.
The police in the form of Project Azure have made some progress and take the issue very seriously. For those women who are against the practise but feel too weak or unable to sustain the hostility from their families or community – the police help them sign a pledge not to mutilate the daughters and then they use the written and signed document to show their families that the practise is against the law.
At Heathrow Terminal 4 (which fly to those countries where parents take their daughters at the beginning of the summer holidays to be ‘done’ and come back at end of holidays when they are healed) the police have been approaching likely families and explaining the law to them – not just about the law if the practise is carried out here – but also that it is illegal to take them to a country elsewhere to have it done.
Each year since 2003 when the law was introduced the number of investigations by the police have increased – so the trend is in the right direction – but there is clearly still a very long way to go!
Lynne Featherstone 