Articles with the Tag legislation

A Good Day To Bury A DNA Database

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The expenses scandal rolls on and on, and while it may be a disaster for the public’s faith in constitutional government, for New Labour it’s business as usual and every new day of scandal is just another good day for burying bad news.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in particular must be chuffed to bits that the politerati’s bogged down in the mire of the expenses scandal; it all not only takes the heat off her personal travails, it lets her get on with dismantling democracy by the back door in decent peace and quiet:

Opposition parties and civil liberty groups united to condemn plans that are being steered through parliament while MPs are distracted by the expenses row.

The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats claim the government is seeking to make controversial changes to the national DNA database via a “statutory instrument” because it fears losing a vote that would be required if they were introduced by the more conventional method of primary legislation.

A statutory instrument has to be discussed only by a specialist committee which meets for 90 minutes and is usually made up of 16 MPs and a chairman. Critics say the Labour MPs who will dominate the committee will be handpicked by government whips and therefore back the Home Office proposals

How to do things with rules, in a nutshell.

Wounded and weak though he is, Gordon Brown is still PM and intends to stay PM for the foreseeable future; he still wants to get his way and as we already know, bullying is one of his favoured methods of doing so. I’ll bet those MPs will be handpicked – handpicked to be lying awake nights fretting they’ll be found out about something.

I can only hope that because of the unauthorised publication of the unredacted reciepts (with more yet to come) that the whips have lost most of their coercive power over MPs. I can only hope too that enough MPs are roused by this blatant use misuse of procedure to ensure the DNA database isn’t bulldozed through via statutory instrument while there’s no Speaker and Parliament’s in turmoil.

Those are very faint hopes, though. What they’re fretting about nights may not even be expenses at all: milking allowances may be the least of some MPs’ sins. While the latest revelations are certainly juicy and indicative of the unscrupulousness greed of some MPs, not least the whips themselves, not all scandals are financial and the whips probably have plenty of even juicier stuff left to make members sweat with nervousness and suddenly decide to retire ‘because of health problems’.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that publication of the reciepts has enabled whips to join the dots on some very questionable personal behaviour by some MPs. I think MPs will do what they’re told.

A Need To Focus

Bloody Lawyers, Corruption, New Labour, Parenting, UK politics, War on Terror
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What was it Jacqui Smith said about ID cards recently?

“Like every other citizen, they [pilots] ask themselves what will happen to the data they are coerced into providing; whether it will it be safe, whose hands might it fall into, and what might they do with the data?”

Well,quite.

If you, like me, have been indulging in the bitter pleasure of having our belief that most elected politicians are deceitful, greedy, entitled egotists confirmed yet again, have you not idly wondered what fresh hells the government’s been quietly getting away with under cover of media furore? Me too.

MPs may be focused on covering up their corruption and incompetence, scrambling desperately to hold on to their lucrative seats, while bleating about data protection and invasion of privacy, but the implementation of the many repressive and unnecessary laws they’ve steamrollered through rolls inexorably on for the rest of the population.

First off, if you thought ID cards were a goner, think again. Spyblog reports that the planned advent of biometric ID cards is going ahead full steam . While we were boggling over 88p bathplugs, massage chairs and moatcleaning fees, four pieces of secondary legislation were laid before Parliament under the Identity Cards Act 2006:

They are The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Information and Code of Practice on Penalties) Order 2009, which allows government to require referees to vouch for your existence, and keep their details on the database too; and

The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Fees) Regulations 2009, which lays down a £30 charge just to apply for an ID card; and

The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Provision of Information without Consent) Regulations 2009 which allows for the sharing of your information by the government, without your consent, with the tax authorities and with credit reference agencies.
Secondly, Justice Secretary Jack Straw has told Parliament that although he’s backed down on trying to make inquests secret whenever it suited the government, he’s still going do it, but by using other legislation.

“Where it is not possible to proceed with an inquest under the current arrangements, the government will consider establishing an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005”.

And who’d decide it was not possible to proceed? Jack Straw. Of course.

In legal news, the Attorney General and the police are collaborating on new legislation that will give ‘law enforcement’ – now there’s a nicely nebulous name – power to, amongst other things, remotely scan your hard-drive.

Oh yes, and terrorism legislation was used to spy on eight people suspected of committing benefit fraud.

But most worrying for any British parent is the announcement that the illegal government database containing your child’ fingerprints and other physical and personal details is about to go live:

Frontline professionals will start using the controversial children’s database ContactPoint from next week, the government has announced. Up to 800 frontline practitioners, including social workers, health professionals and head teachers, in early adopter areas will be trained to use the £224m system from Monday 18 May.

New Labour may have set all this repressive legislation in motion, but now the machine of enforcement grinds on regardless of expenses scandals or public opinion. And like disgraced Labour MP Shahid Malik claims to have done, the government will enforce the rules, however unjust and or illegal they may be, “One million percent by the book”.

MPs may be corrupt, but then we knew that already. This receipts hoohah is mere confirmation. Parliaments may rise or fall, but Government goes on – and I’m more worried about what the State is actually doing right now, and how to oppose it effectively, than I am about the petty bourgeois aspirations of Labour members or the mole problems of Tory grandees.

Though I do wonder just how far that purple-jowled prick of a Speaker Michael Martin can inflate himself in pique before he has an apoplexy.