Pat and Vera agree: 28 days is enough

November 22 2007

Thanks to Charon for spotting the Times story today reporting that both current law officers, Baroness Scotland and Vera Baird, agree with the line taken yesterday by Lord Goldsmith, and feel that the case has not yet been made for a further extension of pre-charge detention of terror suspects beyond 28 days.

I have to say, I’m astonished by this. Unless the Times has somehow got this wrong – and that seems incredible, especially as the line they’re reporting sounds, with its emphasis on what both Law Officers think, an awful lot like a http://www.raybani.com/ briefing given by the Attorney’s press office – then it’s the most significant indication yet that Gordon Brown’s in serious trouble on this. The Law Officers are prepared to signal publicly their concern about the proposal, with the implication that if pressed this might be a resigning matter. I notice there seems to have been no denial.

The fact that they’re prepared to do this, where Lord Goldsmith wasn’t, may indicate that they’re more prepared to throw their weight around than he was (he said at the Home Affairs committee yesterday that Ray Ban outlet threats weren’t his style). It may show they feel able to do it if they stand together as a pair. And it may show they feel a need to be seen and heard to be independent-minded in order to justify their roles in the post-Goldsmith, post-Iraq era. But it certainly shows Gordon Brown’s perceived weakness and the power these relatively junior ministers think they have in his administration.

Extraordinary!

I’m beginning to think that, if Gordon presses this, the backbench rebellion may be even greater than it was over the 98 day proposal – Labour backbenchers will have heard and understood this signal, I have no doubt.

I think he’d better reconsider.

2017-03-20T02:37:35+00:00Tags: , , , , |

Goldsmith, MacDonald: 28 days is enough

November 21 2007

At the Commons Home Affairs select committee today, both the DPP Sir Ken MacDonald and the last Attorney General Lord Goldsmith have said they see no need to extend pre-charge detention of terror suspects beyond 28 days.

Damningly for the government, Goldsmith said his view was based on the evidence he’d seen when in government – though he accepted things might have http://www.raybani.com/ changed since then, surely if something radical had, the government would be telling us very clearly what that thing was. And don’t forget, it’s only a few months since he was attending Cabinet. Goldsmith said he opposed an extension to 90 days, and would have resigned had Tony Blair’s government pressed the issue to a vote in the Lords.

The BBC website has a clip of Goldsmith’s argument against a further extension – I think he makes a decent point, that the reasonableness of police suspicions about someone – the basis on which they are detained – must gradually drain away with time if no evidence is found on which to charge them of a serious offence.

Can the government hope to win this argument, when old friends like Goldsmith are against them?

2017-03-20T02:37:44+00:00Tags: , , , |

The HMRC boo-boo: ID fraud victims could get compensation

November 21 2007

Iain Dale has raised the question whether those whose data has been leaked by HMRC could sue.

The answer is, strictly no; you can’t sue simply for loss of your data. But if you suffer damage – say, as a result of ID fraud using bank account details leaked by the HMRC – then you do have a right to compensation under section 13 of the Data Protection Act 1998, for breach of the seventh data protection principle. You might get your money back, plus a bit of compensation for distress, too.

The information commissioner has published advice on how to claim.

2007-11-21T14:13:00+00:00Tags: , |

Lords judgments today

November 21 2007

There are two of them.

First, Ward v PSNI, in which the Lords ruled that it was lawful, under the Terrorism Act 2000, for a judge considering an extension of detention, so that the police could put new matters to a suspect in interview, to exclude the suspect and his lawyers from the http://www.raybani.com/ hearing so as to make sure the questions would be on genuinely new matters while avoiding prejudice to the police investigation; and to fail to explain the new matters to the suspect once he was allowed back in.

Then there’s Watt v Ahsan, in which Raghib Ahsan has succeeded in a race discrimination claim against the Labour Party, who chose a white candidate in preference to him to stand for the Sparkhill ward of Birmingham Council in 1997. A slightly odd result this, since the Lords all agreed with Lord Hoffman that Labour is not in law a qualifying body under section 12 of the Race Relations Act 1976 – so the employment tribunal never actually had jurisdiction to hear Mr. Ahsan’s claim. However when Labour appealed on that ground, the Employment Appeal Tribunal decided wrongly that it was such a body. The procedural Ray Ban outlet history of the case gets complicated after that, but ultimately the Lords decided that, though the EAT was wrong, Mr. Ahsan’s case proceeded for so long on the basis that the tribunals were bound by the EAT’s approach that it would now, almost ten years after his claim, to require Mr. Ahsan to begin his claim in the County Court under some other provision of the Race Relations Act. That would simply put him to greater expense and delay in getting a court to rule on the merits of the case – and on those, the Lords were with him, agreeing that the selection was discriminatory.

2017-03-20T02:38:16+00:00Tags: , , , , |

Lord Bingham: Head of Legal commenter absolutely right

November 20 2007

Well, he didn’t quite say that in terms, as we lawyers say. But he did agree with the thrust of JB’s comment on my David Pannick fisk, in his interview in the Times today. Like JB, and like me, he doesn’t really get this “bill of rights and responsibilities” stuff ministers are going on about:

I’m puzzled because we are bound by the European Convention on Human Rights . . . it seems inconceivable that the UK would remove its membership of the http://www.lependart.com Council of Europe, so the international obligations we then assumed remain binding on us . . . It is not absolutely plain what duties it would impose . . . you could impose a duty to obey the law, but that exists; you could spell out that you must pay your taxes, but we all know that. I don’t suppose it will say: you have a duty not to barge in front of the bus queue . . . I don’t really see the point of it.

Quite. Does anybody see the point?

2017-03-20T02:52:40+00:00Tags: , , |

Sarko’s legal axe-woman

November 16 2007

Not only is the French justice minister Rachida Dati planning to close courts – Le Monde reckons a quarter of civil courts and half of employment tribunals are going to go; she’s also suggested in an answer in the National Assembly that legal aid may be made be subject to contribution. She’s not making herself popular among lawyers. Here’s the senate report she mentioned.

2007-11-16T21:44:00+00:00Tags: , |
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