Yesterday, May Day 2012, was a very special day for a little noticed reason. On 1 May 2012 an Act of Parliament abolished the infamous system of IPPs (Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection). This régime, the brainchild of Labour’s David Blunkett when he was Home Secretary, has kept – and still keeps – literally thousands of men and women in prison cells long after they have served the portion of their sentences deemed by the judges to be sufficient for their punishment. They remain incarcerated indefinitely. The only way they can regain their freedom is by satisfying a risk-averse parole board that something has happened to them while in prison which demonstrates that they will not reoffend if and when they are released. Predictably, this requirement to prove a future negative has set IPP prisoners an almost impossible task, and only a tiny percentage (around 4%) of IPP prisoners have ever been released, even though in many cases their original offences have been relatively minor – as their often short minimum sentences have shown.
The Act of Parliament which has at long last swept away future IPPs, the Legal Aid, Sentencing & Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, or “LASPO”, deals with a wide range of topics in addition to the abolition of IPPs. Many of its provisions are controversial, and some are certainly objectionable. It seems clear that some of the more draconian provisions of the Act have been included as the price that Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, and the government’s house liberal, has been forced to pay for the abolition of IPPs, a measure that goes against the grain of much Tory backbench opinion and the reactionary policies of the feral tabloids. The Labour frontbench, much to its discredit, has dismally failed to give even lukewarm support to Clarke’s efforts to rid us of IPPs: indeed, there have been moments when shadow ministers have come close to opposing abolition, whether from fear of the tabloids or because of pressure on them from the succession of illiberal Labour home secretaries responsible not only for IPPs but also for numerous other indefensible laws on crime and punishment and under cover of the so-called war on terror. So the abolition of IPPs owes nothing whatever to the Labour opposition in Parliament or to the massed ranks of retired colonels on the Tory back-benches.
However, it’s too soon to say ‘Mission Accomplished’. Thankfully, no more IPP sentences can now be passed. But all those handed down before 1 May 2012 remain in force, and those thousands of prisoners who have paid their debt to society, but still see no hope of ever being released, still face the same impossible requirements for regaining their freedom as if LASPO had not been passed into law. The gleam of hope for them lies in the power given by LASPO to the Justice Secretary to set new criteria to be used by the parole boards in deciding whether an IPP prisoner can safely be released. It’s clear from earlier Justice Ministry documents that the intention will be to remove the onus for demonstrating that the prisoner will not reoffend from the prisoner, requiring instead that the parole boards must order the prisoner’s release unless there are solid and specific grounds for believing that he will reoffend if released. This change can’t happen too soon if a huge weight of fear and uncertainty is to be lifted, not only from the prisoners concerned, but also from their families and other loved ones. Now is the moment, not only to liberalise the criteria for releasing IPP prisoners, but also greatly to accelerate the processing of all those who have served their minimum sentences (‘tariffs’) but who still languish in jail under what can only be described as preventive detention.
Ken Clarke and his Justice Ministry deserve congratulations and thanks for steadfastly sticking to their guns and getting this significant reform through Parliament and onto the statute book, in the face of widespread timorous doubts and much outright hostility, some of it from powerful quarters. They need no reminding that the task is not completed until the last post-tariff IPP prisoner walks through the prison gates to freedom.
As a postscript, this blog is glad to have played a part, however small, in the campaign for the abolition of IPPs, including the provision of a space on the Web in which literally hundreds of relatives of IPP prisoners have been able to appeal for advice and support, as well as expressing their anguish and fear at the appalling uncertainty facing them and their loved ones, never able to be sure that the person concerned will ever be released. Many have written in comments on blog posts here about the disgraceful games of cat and mouse played with IPP prisoners by parole boards and the prison authorities in the effort to postpone indefinitely a decision on whether a prisoner has demonstrated that he will not reoffend if released. This cruel behaviour by an effectively unaccountable authority should now be ended by an entirely new regime, to be installed by the Ministry of Justice, to ensure that the great majority of IPP prisoners are systematically, but rapidly, processed and released without further delay.
Historians of penal reform by a right-of-centre government, sulkily opposed by a supposedly left-of-centre opposition, may care to read through some of the posts on this blog over the past several years, including especially the hundreds of comments appended to them by others: http://www.barder.com/3419, /3372, /3355, /3350, /3331, /3326, http://www.barder.com/politics/liberty/ipps-extracts-from-parliamentary-papers-october-2011, and many, many more.
So: three cheers for May Day, 2012 and the end of IPPs. By all means open the bubbly! But tomorrow there’s more work to be done before those infamous IPPs can be said to have been consigned to where they belong: the dustbin of history.
Brian
The government’s Bill to reform the House of Lords and the majority report on it by a parliamentary Joint Committee are as full of holes as a cheese grater, and they grate equally painfully. Both are skewed by an irrational terror that a mostly or wholly elected second chamber would be so intoxicated by its electoral legitimacy that it would challenge the “primacy of the house of commons”. Both are bemused by the myth that the exceptional wisdom and profundity of the proceedings in the House of Lords are down to the immense expertise in every known subject supposedly possessed by its 800-odd members. And it seems never to have crossed the minds of the authors of either document that since devolution the UK has acquired a quasi-federal constitution: if Scotland votes to stay in the Union and moves to virtually full internal self-government under ‘devo max’, Britain will have taken a big stride towards a fully federal system. But the second chamber of the federal legislature in a federation is commonly a “states house”, or Senate, with equal numbers of members elected from each of the federal units (states, provinces, nations, lander, etc). This provides a safeguard for the smaller units against domination by the largest, a concept especially relevant to the UK’s situation, in which the huge disparity in size, wealth and power between England and the other three nations cries out for just such a safeguard.
The obsession with preserving the primacy of the House of Commons, and avoiding conflict between the Commons and an elected second chamber, is misconceived. The Commons’ primacy is already guaranteed by its function as the creator and home of governments – the prime minister and all senior ministers must nowadays be MPs, not peers, and the government derives its legitimacy from having the confidence of the majority in the House of Commons, not the House of Lords. (It would be wise to provide that after any reform of the second chamber all ministers must be MPs, not members of the second chamber: there could be provision for ministers to appear in the second chamber to answer questions.)
The primacy of the house of commons is further secured by the strict limits on the powers of the Lords, including provision to ensure that in the event of deadlock the Commons always prevail: the second chamber can delay legislation sent to it from the Commons, but can’t veto it. These safeguards should remain after the second chamber at last becomes an elected body.
We need to remember that we don’t need to invent the wheel. The vast majority of western democracies have two wholly elected legislative chambers without suffering the kind of constant conflict or paralysis that our rulers fear (the coup d’état mounted by the Governor-General of Australia and the then leader of the federal opposition against the prime minister, Gough Whitlam, in November 1975 following a deadlock between the two Houses was a function of a bizarre anachronism in the Australian constitution). Moreover a degree of constructive conflict between the two chambers can be good for accountability and transparency, especially if both have a plausible claim to democratic legitimacy through being elected. The fear of an elected second chamber sometimes challenging the house of commons reflects the control freakery and over-centralism that are the bane of our politics.
The alleged benefits of the expertise contributed by members of the House of Lords, cited as justification for retaining an unelected, appointed element in a reformed second chamber, are wildly exaggerated. A distinguished ex-gynaecologist has no more credentials for contributing to a debate on Trident than an equally distinguished retired admiral has for speaking on abortions (and the bishops have no obvious expertise on anything relevant to law-making). An elected second chamber could call on expertise ad hoc, even allowing experts to participate in debates, as required: but unelected experts should have no claim on seats in our legislature just because they are experts. What’s more, the great majority of members of the House of Lords have no particular expertise anyway: many are just superannuated ex-MPs, ‘elevated’ to the Upper House purely because their seats in the commons were needed for someone else, or alternatively as a reward for a lifetime of sheep-like obedience to the party whips in the house of commons In any case, the wisdom and profundity of House of Lords debates are more often admired than experienced: as our sharpest constitutional commentator, Walter Bagehot, sagely remarked, “A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it,” an observation as accurate now as when it was written (in 1867!).
As to the timing and purpose of the reform, and as a brave minority of the Joint Committee have pointed out, it’s absurdly premature to design a new second chamber before Scotland has decided at the referendum on independence scheduled for autumn 2014 whether to secede. Following devolution the UK is now a quasi-federation, or ‘semi-federation’, as acknowledged by the constitutional guru Professor Vernon Bogdanor. If the Scots choose to stay in the Union, as most sensible people hope, the need for a federal Senate on the Australian and US patterns will become increasingly obvious. Each of the four UK nations should elect an equal number of Senators — perhaps 20 each, giving us a Senate representing the four nations with 80 elected members, almost exactly a tenth of the present grotesqely swollen House of Lords. If the US, with a population five times ours, can manage with 100 Senators, surely we can make do with 80. Equal representation for each of the four UK nations (like equal representation for each of the Australian and US states in their respective federal Senates) would provide a vital safeguard for the UK’s three smaller nations against continuing domination and interference by England, by far the biggest of the four.
As a footnote on the preferred size of a reformed second chamber, it should be noted that the government’s draft Bill envisages a chamber of 300 members, while the Joint Committee says this is far too few, and goes for 450. Well, both are better than the present 800 plus, which is manifestly crazy; but 300 and 450 are both still ridiculous. 80 would be quite enough. The fewer the Senators, the better the research staff and facilities we can afford to provide them with.
There are other nonsenses in the draft Bill and the Joint Committee report. Both the government and the majority of the Joint Committee favour 15-year terms (non-renewable, mercifully) for all second chamber members, with no requirement to face the electorate, once elected, ever again – a reliable recipe for sloth, complacency and lack of accountability, far longer than in almost any comparable parliament. The proposal that 20% of the membership should be appointed, not elected, soldiers relentlessly on, impervious to intellectual demolition and to the impossibility of inoculating it against corrupt political patronage, despite fantastic attempts to devise ever more indirect controls: ” Appointments would be made by a statutory Appointments Commission, which for certain purposes would be overseen by a Statutory Joint Committee…” – the latter to be a joint committee of both houses of parliament! There is still to be a bench of unelected Church of England bishops, in reduced numbers to be sure, as if a mere dozen of them would be too few to raise any question of justification for having any at all, quite apart from the implied insult to Catholics, Jews, Muslims, flat-earthers and the sizeable majority of us who rarely give religion a thought. Elections to the new second chamber are to be held at the same time as general elections to the house of commons, although how this is to be squared with the proposal that one-third of the second chamber’s members should be elected to 15-year terms every five years is unclear. Some of the Joint Committee’s conclusions are simply unintelligible: “The Committee considers that a more assertive [second chamber] would not enhance Parliament’s overall role in relation to the activities of the executive” – which I find more obscure each time I read it. There is almost no evidence that either the government or the Joint Committee have studied the experience of other bicameral legislatures, or sought to learn from it, presumably out of a settled conviction that the British have nothing to learn from Johnny Foreigner.
Nearly half the members of the Joint Committee disagree with a sizeable number of the recommendations of the majority. All three major parties are deeply divided on nearly all the principal questions arising from the reform project. Right-wing Europhobic Tories are insisting that if the eventual proposals for House of Lords reform are to be put to the people in a referendum, there must also be a referendum on UK membership of the EU, although the reasoning behind this proposition is obscure. Leading LibDems, the most ardent reformers, argue that since all three major parties are committed to Lords reform, there is no need for a referendum on the matter – whereas in fact that makes a referendum all the more necessary, since the electorate has no means of registering opposition to any change by voting for a serious party which favours the status quo.
There could scarcely be a less promising prelude to carefully thought-out and coherent, purposeful reform than this chaotic medley of irreconcilable differences and often ludicrous proposals, many of them based on demonstrably unsustainable premisses. A sane consensus is most unlikely to emerge from the dissonant clamour, and the likeliest destination of the volumes of solemn argument is surely the Too Difficult Tray (known to cliché-addicted hacks as the Long Grass). It’s hard to resist the conclusion that this is probably the least bad of possible outcomes of the current exercise. Steadily growing interest in a federal future for the UK will be reinforced if Scotland votes to stay in the Union with devo max, and a federal system absolutely requires a full written constitution, justiciable by a Supreme Court and defining in detail the respective powers and functions of the constituent parts of the federation and their organs. A separate parliament and government for England, among many other controversial matters, will be essential features of a federal system. The preparation of such a constitution will have to be preceded by at least one Royal Commission and at least one constitutional convention, followed by exhaustive scrutiny in parliament and a number of referendums, in a process likely to stretch over 20 years or more. The nature and purpose of the federal parliament’s second chamber are just one piece that will have to fit precisely into the enormous jigsaw. To attempt to create it now, in isolation from its almost certain future context, is surely the biggest exercise in futility since King Canute’s courtiers tried to persuade him to make the sea recede.
Brian
The election for London mayor is a dismal affair. It seems inevitable that either Boris Johnson (Conservative incumbent) or Ken Livingstone (his Labour predecessor) will win, but neither is an attractive candidate, both carry a lot of baggage, and both have run more or less distasteful campaigns combining crude pork-barrel promises and ugly personal vilification each of the other. The Labour Party blundered in allowing Livingstone to run again: many Londoners see him as well past his sell-by date and it’s most unlikely that he can dislodge the vaguely charismatic and amusing Boris. Boris hasn’t turned out to be the catastrophe as mayor that many of us predicted, having averted disaster by doing very little indeed, sounding as vague and lazy about details of policy now as when he first stood for election.
A new, youngish (well, 41), attractive, independent candidate is suddenly and belatedly beginning to attract more interest. Siobhan Benita is a former civil servant who has left a quite impressive career to run for mayor of London. Her only backer of any note is Sir Gus (now Lord) O’Donnell, former head of the civil service and cabinet secretary, with whom she worked during her civil service career. She is due to release her manifesto tomorrow; so far the only elements in it that we know about are worthy but unexciting. Nevertheless, such is their widely shared dislike of Messrs Johnson and (especially) Livingstone that already several of my politically savvy friends and family have announced that they intend to give her their first preference votes.
The yearning for a fresh face at Greater London’s City Hall is totally understandable, and the general mistrust of professional politicians feeds it. But a first preference vote for Siobhan Benita is not so much a political act as a gesture, which has political consequences that may not be what her supporters intend. It’s virtually inconceivable that she can win, having no party label, no organisation to fund and master-mind her campaign, and no record of having run an enormous and complex institution comparable with London. She has no experience of any kind of elected office. Very few Londoners know anything about her. No-one can tell how she would cope with the huge pressures of the job, managing a multi-million pound budget and having to stand up to extremely powerful vested interests. In truth her candidature is not completely serious, attractive though she is in almost every sense of the word. She may well have a future in UK politics, for which her London mayoral campaign could be a useful preparation, but unless there’s a political earthquake in London of unprecedented magnitude, she’s not going to win.
At present Boris Johnson has a significant lead over Livingstone and seems extremely likely to win, despite representing the party of an unpopular, deeply reactionary, incompetent and manifestly failing Conservative-led national government. In this situation, every vote for Siobhan Benita that might otherwise have gone to Labour improves Boris Johnson’s chances. I just hope that those on the liberal-left side of politics who are currently determined to make the essentially futile gesture of voting for Benita will at least give their second preferences to Labour, if only as a penance; but that should salve no consciences, since if Boris Johnson wins an outright majority in the first round, Benita’s second preferences will never be redistributed and those giving her their first preferences will have contributed to a famous and wholly undeserved Tory victory. However flawed, Livingstone is the Labour candidate. He is more concerned about London’s have-nots than Boris, who seemingly couldn’t care less about anything except Boris and his career. A Labour defeat in London will badly damage Labour morale nationally and give a big fillip to Cameron and Osborne, which must be the last thing most of us want. Conversely, if Boris were to be defeated, he would quite likely find his way back into the house of commons and become a threat to Cameron, which could usefully shake up the Tory party and British politics with it.
London is a deeply unequal city, with a huge gap between the enormously rich and privileged and the increasingly hard-pressed poor, victims of national Tory policies that place the main burden of deficit and debt reduction on those least able to bear it. A progressive mayor can do a certain amount to protect London’s most vulnerable citizens, including those who commute in and out of London to work. Whatever his failings, Ken Livingstone is much likelier than Johnson to work to reduce poverty and inequality in London. It’s still possible that he could win. But a surge of protest gesture votes for Siobhan Benita could make a Johnson victory virtually certain. If you’re a Londoner, hold your nose if you must, but Vote for Ken with your first (and only[1]) preference on Thursday May the 3rd!
Update (10 April): I owe Ms Benita [sic] an apology for misspelling her name throughout the first edition of this post, and in the notification emails. Mea maxima culpa.
Second Update (10 April): A friend has commented privately that even for those who on balance, even unenthusiastically, prefer Labour’s Livingstone to the Tories’ Johnson, it can do Livingstone no harm to give a first preference to Siobhan Benita as a gesture of support, so long as the second preference goes to Ken Livingstone if and when Ms Benita is eliminated. My initial reaction was that such a failure to give a first preference vote to Livingstone from the start would risk allowing Johnson to cross the 50%+1 line and win the election before Ms Benita has been eliminated, so that her second preferences, including those for Livingstone, would never be redistributed. However, my unpaid numeracy adviser has persuaded me of the counter-intuitive mathematical fact that if Boris wins enough first, second and if necessary third preferences eventually to win the 50%+1 of the votes to get himself elected, it won’t make any difference whether those who preferred Livingstone have given their first preferences to Siobhan Benita or to Ken Livingstone. The only scenario in which failure to give a first preference vote to Livingstone could damage his chances of beating Boris is the unlikely situation in which Ken is himself in danger of being eliminated before the final round. In that case, a first preference for him could keep him in ahead of someone else (say, the Green), and then he could go on to win it with everyone else’s second preferences. Apart from that, there is no way that you can harm Ken’s chances by putting your favoured candidate (such as Ms Benita) first, so long as you put Ken Livingstone second. Assuming that Ken is not going to be eliminated (except in the last round if Boris then crosses the 50%+1 line to win), then it should make no difference to his chances of being elected whether you put a minority candidate such as Siobhan first, and him second, or whether you give him your first preference. So Labour-inclined voters can reasonably safely vote 1. Benita, 2. Livingstone, if that makes them feel better.
That is the electoral arithmetic. The political case against voting 1. Benita, 2. Livingstone is that there is an inherent futility in casting one’s first preference vote, in an election for mayor of London, for a candidate who you know can’t win, and who would be unlikely to be capable of governing London successfully even if she did. To do so would be pure, or impure, gesture politics. It risks deluding oneself that it’s possible to evade the only real choice, namely that between Ken and Boris. Politics is very often a matter of identifying and then accepting the lesser of two evils. As the great Saul Bellow remarked, quoting T S Eliot, ‘Perhaps humankind can’t bear too much reality, but neither can it bear too much unreality, too much abuse of the truth.’ The grown-up thing to do is to decide which of the two candidates with a serious chance of winning is less unsatisfactory than the other, and give him your first and only preference. By all means also send a donation to Ms Benita’s campaign fund, just to encourage her to stick at it and try again for elected office later, even if she persists in pretending that a person who actively practises politics can somehow not be or become a politician. She might even eventually grasp the reality that if she’s going to make a difference, she’ll need to join an existing party — in her case presumably Labour or the Greens — and work to change and reform it from within. It will be a pity if she wastes her talents on being a permanent lone voice. Meanwhile, I can only repeat: Vote 1. Livingstone, and no-one else. It may not taste nice, but you’ll get over it.
[1] If you give your first preference to either Livingstone or Johnson, it’s a waste of time to cast your second or other preferences for anyone else, because it’s highly unlikely that either Livingstone or Johnson will be eliminated until the final round — which means that their second, third and lower preferences will never be redistributed.
Brian
The Labour leadership has made a regrettable mistake in seeking to put the problem of antisocial behaviour at the top of the party’s list of priorities, however large it might and does loom in the lives of its many victims.
In the first place, the problem is inherently insoluble, so any measures proposed as Labour policy are doomed to be seen as failures, even if some of them achieve occasional partial success.
Secondly, this is preeminently a problem to be tackled in local communities, not by a novelty silver bullet (‘restorative justice’) fired by swingeing legislation from the centre. To mix the metaphor, one size will never fit all.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, putting top emphasis on antisocial behaviour is fatally reminiscent of the Blair years, giving the impression that Labour is more concerned to sound tough than to promote progressive reform, uphold civil liberties and defend human rights. It should increasingly obviously be an urgent priority for the Labour leadership to mark a sharp break with New Labour: to make the fresh start promised by Ed Miliband in his speech at the party conference immediately after the leadership election.
On far too many subjects Labour under Mr Miliband sounds like a continuation of Blairism. Some of the old stagers of the Blair and Brown governments need to be pensioned off, or at any rate invited to keep quiet: above all, not to complain if some of the more glaring deficiencies, errors and indeed crimes of the Blair years are now explicitly disowned by the party he led. For evidence of this pressing need, you only need to look at Bradford West. Whatever people might think of George Galloway as a politician and a person, thousands of us have been yearning to hear our Labour leaders talking pretty much the same language as Gorgeous George – so far, in vain.
There’s also the question of priorities. When we have the most reactionary government in living memory systematically dismantling the welfare state; enriching the bankers at the expense of the unemployed, the homeless and the disabled; squandering millions on pointless and unwinnable foreign wars; maintaining an ‘independent British nuclear deterrent’ which is not independent, which is not British, and which deters no one; selling off the NHS to private interests; privatising state education and removing it from local authority control; tackling an economy in depression through lack of aggregate demand by slashing the disposable incomes of working people and throwing millions of public servants out of work, thus throttling such demand as still survives – when a Tory-led government is doing all these appalling things, it beggars the imagination that a Labour leader and Leader of the Opposition can be seriously proposing that the main focus of the party’s national policy should be antisocial behaviour.
I’m not saying that antosocial behaviour doesn’t matter: obviously it is the bane of very many people’s lives. But so are aeroplane noise, inefficient public transport, travelling conditions in the rush hour, bullying and sadistic bosses, interminable road works, customer service call centres, criminally over-priced restaurants and petrol pumps, rotten standards of nursing in hospitals and Mr Nick Clegg. National politics can do something about some, but not all, of these familiar pestilences. None of them, though, not even antisocial behaviour, qualifies for the top billing in the national policies of a great political party, at a time when our whole liberal democracy is under active threat (not to mention such issues as climate change and global poverty). Right now the worst and most damaging kind of antisocial behaviour is that of Messrs Cameron, Osborne and Clegg. First things first, please, Mr Miliband.
[This is an edited and expanded version of a comment on an article about Labour policy on antisocial behaviour in LabourList, here.]
Brian
There is solid justification for about 50% of the indignation aroused by the exposure of the attempt by the then Treasurer of the Conservative party to sell access to David Cameron (and, more seductively, his wife) and influence on Tory party policy for a quarter of a million pounds. Unfortunately for the hapless Mr Peter Cruddas (presumably no relation to Labour’s blameless Jon), the offer was made to a pair of Sunday Times journalists, wreaking Murdoch’s revenge on the Tories, not, as Mr Cruddas had been led to believe, two businessmen claiming to represent a rich firm in the Gulf. Not surprisingly, the the airwaves, newspapers and blogs have been alive with charges of corruption and sleaze. The damage done to the Tories has been exacerbated by the timing of the Sunday Times sting, coming only a few days after George Osborne’s extraordinarily cackhanded budget, not unreasonably represented even in the Tory press as a handout to the rich at the expense of the poor.
David Cameron has made no serious attempt to defend Mr Cruddas’s performance, calling it “completely unacceptable”. And clearly there were aspects of the Tory treasurer’s offer that were indefensible: the expressed willingness to use underhand devices to circumvent the legal ban on donations to UK political parties by foreign companies or persons, and the sheer crudity of the suggested deal. But a good deal of the hoo-ha has been synthetic, ignoring or misrepresenting at least two aspects of the affair.
First, the British – or at any rate the English – are absurdly squeamish about the realities of politics. It is in the nature of political activity both to seek to influence the policies of political parties and the government, and to give various kinds of support, including money, to the party which comes nearest to reflecting the interests, aims and values of the individual citizen or his company, union or other group. The key word here, apart from ‘money’, is ‘interests’. The essence of politics is the attempt to promote the interests of the numerous groups that make up society, and especially those of the main social and economic classes. Sometimes this effort is a zero-sum game, in which the aim is to promote the interests of one class at the expense of another. In its more palatable form, politics is about trying to reconcile partially conflicting interests so that there are no outright winners and no outright losers. For some reason English political commentators tend to be mealy-mouthed about the reality that in this battle of class interests, and occasional attempts to mediate it, the moneyed classes – property owners, employers, managers, the City – are mainly represented by the Conservative party, while the poor and the less well-off, the employed and unemployed, the ethnic minorities and the most vulnerable in society, are generally speaking represented by the Labour Party. Of course there are numerous exceptions to this generalisation: well-off middle class liberal intellectuals supporting Labour, and working-class men and women afraid of change, naturally deferential, or just reactionary or xenophobic, supporting either the Conservative party or other parties even further to the right of it. But it is impossible to understand the working of the British political system without recognising that the two major political parties exist primarily to promote the interests of the two fundamental social classes in society, the haves and the have-nots, or however you choose to define them.
It follows from this that the Conservative party will basically be funded by donations from the relatively or absolutely rich, both individuals and institutions; and the Labour Party by contributions from ordinary working people, liberal intellectuals, and the organisations to which such people belong, predominantly of course the trade unions. Everyone knows that this is so. Not everyone seems to realise that it is also inevitable, and in many ways quite healthy. Both the main parties are forced by the sheer need for funding to cultivate their natural supporters, to identify their interests and aspirations as well as their problems and grievances, and to formulate their policies in ways which will maintain that support, both on the doorsteps and at the ballot box — and by donations of money. It is this, more than any other factor, which drives the parties and keeps their feet broadly on the ground.
The second aspect of the Cruddas affair which is widely misrepresented or ignored is the nature of the relationship between the Labour Party and the trade unions affiliated to it. That relationship differs crucially from that between the Conservative party and the big financial interests which support and fund it. The affiliated trade unions are an intrinsic part of the Labour Party and of the wider labour movement. It was principally the trade unions that founded the Labour Party to represent their interests in Parliament. They have a significant voice – some mistakenly say too loud a voice – in the election of the party’s leader, and in the development of party policy; they often sponsor its MPs. The connection is not just one of convenience: it is institutional and organic. To demand that the unions should be banned from providing the bulk of the Labour Party’s funding, or to express outrage at the extent of trade union influence on Labour party policies, is to misunderstand the nature of the party itself: a form of party point-scoring that merely exposes the ignorance of the critics. It is also, of course, in effect to demand the demise of the Labour Party, which could not operate effectively as the principal representative of the have-nots in society without trade union financial support. The fracturing of the structure of the present political parties which would result would be deeply damaging to our democracy, substituting horse-trading among numerous party leaders for the will of the electorate in determining who governs us and how we are governed. The outcome of the 2010 election should serve as a terrible warning.
The Cruddas scandal has predictably prompted another round of interparty talks designed to ‘reform’ the way our political parties are funded. The Lib Dems, who no longer represent any recognisable class or other sectional interest, naturally favour a system that would guarantee their financial future – which can only mean public funding out of general taxation, although their leader (Nick Clegg) is reported to have ruled this out. There are many obvious objections of principle and practice to public funding of political parties. However small the contribution from each individual taxpayer to the political parties support fund might be, I for one would have the strongest objection of principle to a single penny of my taxes going to the Conservative party, and an even stronger objection to other pennies going to UKIP or the British National Party. No doubt most hedge fund managers and industrialists would object equally to any funding for the Labour party out of their taxes, if they have failed to find a way to avoid paying them.
But there is an even stronger objection. The need to raise money and other forms of support from their natural constituencies imposes an indispensable discipline on the parties. A guaranteed handout from the taxpayers, however modest, would encourage them to be even more indolent, complacent and out of touch than they are already. We should not forget that there is already some support for the parties from public funds in various forms; there is no case for increasing it.
There is however a strong case for imposing much lower limits on the amounts of money that the parties are allowed to spend both at election time and between elections. Much of the electioneering undertaken by all the parties prompts more general contempt and irritation than loyal support. It is probably largely counter-productive; we could do without it. If the parties were forbidden by law to spend as much as some of them do at present, it would tend to free them in part at least from the tedious necessity of constant fundraising, and enable them to spend more time maintaining contact with the electorate and developing and refining their policies. It would also reduce the unfairness implicit in the much greater wealth of the supporters of the Conservative party than that of the supporters of any other parties, including Labour. We don’t want to get into the situation in the United States where only the mega-rich can afford to run for national office and where in effect elections can be bought.
So poor boastful doomed Peter Cruddas was essentially doing what the treasurers of all political parties in the UK have to do: they offer influence on party policy in return for money. All political activists seek to influence the policies of the parties they support. Some of us do it by blogging and writing to the newspapers, badgering our constituency MPs, devising and voting for resolutions in dusty committee rooms, marching in demonstrations and delivering leaflets. Others do it by giving money, thereby enabling their chosen party to function. There is nothing inherently sleazy or corrupt about it. It is when it happens in secret that it becomes morally and politically unacceptable. As so often, the key to reform, to the extent that reform is needed, is transparency. We probably don’t need to know which company directors and bankers have been sharing roast pheasant and vintage claret with Mr Cameron: nor which trade union leaders have been having a pint and a packet of crisps (or a bottle of champagne with caviar nibbles) with the Milibands or with Yvette and the other Ed. Politicians naturally socialise with their supporters and those with similar class tastes and interests, and are influenced by them on policy issues. But we need complete openness about who gives how much money to which political party, and as far as possible what policies the bigger donors, whether billionaires, chairmen of FTSE 100 companies or trade union bosses, are pressing on their politician friends. Daylight is a great cleanser.
Brian
The European Court of Human Rights is preventing Britain from deporting the radical Moslem preacher, Abu Qatada, to his native Jordan on the grounds that he would not get a fair trial there if, as is likely, much of the evidence against him would have been obtained by torture. Instead of joining the clamour for the public to be protected by ever more draconian and illiberal measures from the threat posed by this pantomime villain, Yvette Cooper, Labour’s shadow Home Secretary, would be better advised to attack the coalition government from a liberal and enlightened position, perhaps using the following script:
“The Home Secretary, Theresa May, and her illiberal right-wing supporters in this House, should be ashamed of themselves for their reckless and populist attacks, not only on the European Court of Human Rights for preventing the government from deporting Abu Qatada to be tried in Jordan and probably convicted there on evidence likely to be tainted by torture, but also for attacking our own judge, the chairman of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), who has rightly ordered that Abu Qatada should be released on bail, subject to extremely stringent conditions, since he clearly cannot and should not be kept indefinitely behind bars any longer when apparently — and inexplicably — our police and prosecuting authorities can’t find any evidence on which to charge and try him, and under the ruling of the European Court, there’s no prospect that we shall be able to deport him any time soon.
“It is a sad reflection on British justice that we have kept this man in prison in England for a total of 8-1/2 years — the equivalent of a 17 year prison sentence — without having charged him with any offence, still less having put him on trial. Half a dozen countries around the world reckon that they have enough evidence to put him on trial, if they can get their hands on him. Apparently we are the only one that can’t. One of our oldest and most jealously guarded liberties is the right not to be deprived of our liberty except after a fair trial by our peers. How can the Home Secretary demand that this individual, however evil he might be, should be kept in prison even longer when we aren’t prepared to charge or try him, and we can’t legally deport him? Does Mrs May want to sentence him to another eight or nine years behind bars when he is entitled to the presumption of innocence until a court of law convicts him of an offence? If we can’t put him on trial and we can’t deport him, he is absolutely entitled to his liberty. Once he is free, he can be subjected to intense surveillance by the police and the security services, so that the moment he steps out of line the evidence will be there for him to be tried, convicted and given an appropriate sentence, not by a government minister, not by the bellowing colonels on the back benches opposite, and not by the tabloids, but by an impartial judge.
“The Home Secretary says ‘it is simply not acceptable that Britain cannot deport a radical Moslem cleric who poses a serious risk to our national security.’ Does Mrs May not understand the basis on which the European court has ruled that to deport Abu Qatada to Jordan where he is unlikely to get a fair trial would be a breach of his fundamental human rights, as defined in the European Declaration of Human Rights to which this country has subscribed, in accordance with the ruling of a European court whose jurisdiction we have accepted? Does the Home Secretary, of all government ministers, not subscribe to the rule of law? If she can’t grasp the importance of respecting the legal rights of everyone in this country, however vile they might be, perhaps she should have a talk with her colleague, the attorney general, who understands these things so much better. (I hope I won’t get him into trouble by saying that.)
“The government says it is considering the possibility of an appeal against the decision of the European court, presumably welcoming the likelihood of further humiliation. It is also continuing to pursue the possibility of deporting Abu Qatada to Jordan. I suppose they hope to extract from the Jordanian government a document that will say: ‘Normally we do like to torture a few witnesses in terrorism cases to make sure they will give the evidence we want, but since you have asked us to make sure that we don’t use torture to convict Abu Qatada, we will do what we can to comply, although we aren’t sure that we have total control of our prosecutors, who do seem to have potentially controversial ways of making people talk. We have deliberately qualified this promise a little, because we are not really that keen to have this man back in Jordan: we would much sooner he was kept in Britain for another decade or so. After all, he’s your problem, not ours.’
“The Home Secretary and some of the retired colonels on the benches behind her have lost no time in seeking to exploit the case of Abu Qatada in support of their campaign against the European court of human rights, a body which Britain took a leading part in establishing and whose decisions we are bound to respect and obey as a treaty obligation under international law. The Prime Minister is taking the lead in accusing the court of interfering in the rights of national governments and parliaments to make their own policies and carry them out. Sir Nicolas Bratza, the distinguished British judge, appointed by Britain to represent us on the European court and currently the president of the court, has taken the unusual step of publicly reprimanding our Prime Minister for misrepresenting what the court does and for failing to understand its history and role. Yet again the Prime Minister brings Britain into disrepute. Predictably, the right-wing tabloids and other chauvinistic voices have set up a clamour about the ruling of the European court and the decision of our own British SIAC that Abu Qatada must be released on bail. Do the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary do their duty by defending the role and decisions of the judges against ignorant, prejudiced criticism, and pledge to act in accordance with the law, however unpalatable its requirements might be? On the contrary: they join in the clamour, ensuring by their example that it becomes yet more subversive of the rule of law, more disrespectful of Britain’s international and domestic obligations, more shrill.
“Those of us who served in the New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are justifiably proud of their many achievements. But as Ed Miliband said in his speech to the Labour Party conference immediately after his election as party leader, Labour’s attitude in office too often seemed casual about British liberties. Too often we sponsored legislation to enable us to imprison without trial people who had not been convicted of any offence, but who were thought likely to commit an offence if they were left at liberty. People given Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs) are still behind bars in punitive conditions after having served the punishment part of their sentences, sometimes years ago. They go on being punished, no longer for what they have done, but for crimes that someone thinks they might possibly commit if they are let out of jail. Other people have been placed under control orders which make it impossible for them to lead ordinary lives, earn their living and socialise with their friends, deprived of most of their liberty without ever having been charged or convicted of breaking the law. The present government, to its credit, has abolished control orders, but it has replaced them by something very similar – T-PIMs, control orders lite. The Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, also to his credit, is taking steps to abolish IPPs — but introducing new mandatory prison sentences which eat into the discretion of the judges. Now the Home Secretary and her supporters are damning the Special Immigration Appeals Commission for ordering the release of Abu Qatada on bail conditions similar to those imposed by the old control orders, not because these are too severe but because they think Abu Qatada should not be let out at all but should be kept in prison indefinitely, even if this would be against the law.
“When the coalition government was formed, we were promised that its junior partners, the Liberal Democrats, would be able to restrain the authoritarian and illiberal tendencies which are the traditional mark of the Conservative Party. Yet the voice of the LibDem members of the coalition is silent while the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary flout and vilify every principle of a civilised society which respects the rule of law. I have to confess that until now what should be the liberal voice of the historic values of the Labour Party on the opposition front bench on our fundamental human rights and liberties has also been either muffled or silent. I now pledge that this will change. We should no longer have to rely on the government’s two token small-l liberals, the Secretary of State for Justice and the Attorney General, to uphold our traditional British values. We claim to be a law-abiding people. It’s time we had a law-abiding government.”
Come on, Yvette: you can do it!
Brian
A government Bill, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (‘LASPO’), now going through parliament aims to replace the infamous system of Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection or IPPs, a legacy of Mr Blunkett’s tenancy of the home office, with ‘tougher’ determinate sentences for various very serious offences. Replacement of IPPs won’t, however, be retrospective. Nearly 7,000 IPP prisoners are currently adding to the grotesque overcrowding in our jails, and more than half of them have served out their tariffs and ought, in justice, to be released unless in a few exceptional cases it can be demonstrated that they represent a genuinely serious risk to the public if set free. The LASPO Bill makes no direct provision for these. But we now have a valuable statement of the position from an authoritative source.
The following letter from a senior official at the National Offender Management Service, stating the government’s policy on existing IPP prisoners following the ‘reform’ (or replacement, or abolition) of IPPs under the LASPO Bill currently going through parliament, is important, cautious but generally encouraging. [Hat-tip: Mr Robinson of Emmersons Solicitors and the Facebook IPP Campaign website]:
Dear Mr Robinson
Thank you for your e-mail of 22 January about the indeterminate sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP).
You ask what is happening to speed up the release of post tariff IPP prisoners and what will be done to ensure post tariff IPP prisoners are treated fairly when the IPP sentence is reformed by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (LASPO) Bill. On 26 October the Government tabled amendments to the LASPO Bill which will reform sentencing for dangerous offenders. We will replace IPPs with a tough new regime which will see more dangerous criminals given life sentences, and others spending long periods in prison and being supervised for long periods after their release. Prisoners currently serving an IPP sentence will not be released unless the Parole Board authorises it.
However, there is concern that those currently serving IPP sentences should be supported in progressing through their sentence and reducing their risk. We will be using our best efforts to improve the progression of these prisoners through sentence, including improvements to assessment, sentence planning and delivery, and parole review processes. We continue to monitor outcomes to ensure further improvements in this area.
In the Sentencing and Rehabilitation Green Paper last year we raised the issue of whether the Parole Board’s test for release in these cases was the right one, and this is a question that we will explore further. Our legislative proposals also give the Secretary of State a power to change the release test used by the Parole Board for IPP prisoners and prisoners serving the new extended sentence. We plan to consult on whether the current release test for IPPs and the new Extended Determinate Sentence ensures effective public protection while allowing offenders to demonstrate that they can be safely managed in the community.
Yours sincerely,
Polly Churcher
ISP Policy Lead
Public Protection Operational Policy Team
NOMS Offender Management & Public Protection Group
Ground Floor, Grenadier House 99-105 Horseferry Road London SW1P 2DD
For multiple statements and examples of the giant miscarriage of justice represented by IPPs, please do a search for ‘IPPs’ on this blog, including for the most recent (here). Thanks to an enlightened Justice Secretary, it looks at last as if IPPs are on the way out, whatever misgivings we might have about some of the measures proposed to replace them. It’s good to know from Ms Churcher’s letter that if and when IPPs are replaced, the fate of those serving IPPs when LASPO bec omes law won’t be forgotten. It would be a gross denial of justice if any significant number of IPPs were to be left languishing in prison well beyond their tariffs, their release delayed by mainly bureaucratic factors. Polly, we look to you to make sure that not only justice is done to these people, but also that justice is done briskly and humanely.
Brian
I propose the following basic elements in a new constructive policy on Scotland for the Labour Party:
1. Scottish independence, just as much as devo max, will (or would) require the collaboration of the Westminster government, with whom its terms and practical application would have to be negotiated. It’s a myth that Scotland could simply take independence on its own terms without the government of the rest of the UK (“rUK”) having a major say in, for example, the division of assets and liabilities as between the two countries.
2. It is very much in the interests of all concerned, independentistas and unionists alike, that when the Scots come to vote in the autumn of 2014, they have a reasonably detailed knowledge of the implications of both independence and devo max. Work should begin without delay on negotiations between Holyrood and Westminster, ideally on an all-party basis, to find as much common ground as possible about what either independence or devo max would entail. Any agreement on the implications of a vote for either would necessarily be provisional, with final decisions on all the issues deferred until the result of the referendum is known. If broad provisional agreement between all concerned could not be reached by the time of the referendum, both sides would need to publish an account of the negotiations, so that voters in the referendum would have a reasonably clear idea of the positions of the two governments and other parties, and the nature of the issues that would need to be resolved if the result turned out to be a majority for either independence or devo max.
3. The referendum is most unlikely to result in a majority vote for the status quo. As between independence and devo max, those who wish to avert the disintegration of the United Kingdom have a strong interest in encouraging a vote for devo max. The best hope of securing that result lies in a decision by the UK Labour Party, including the Scottish Labour Party, to give full support to devo max and to collaborate with the SNP and other Scottish supporters of devo max in working out which additional powers a Labour government at Westminster would agree to devolve to Scotland in the event of the referendum confirming majority support for devo max. If the Conservative and Lib Dem parties could also be persuaded to support devo max, so much the better. But at least Labour should do so, whatever the other parties decide. Labour, after all, is the father of devolution and should recognise its merits – or at worst accept that devo max would be the least damaging outcome of the referendum.
4. Both independence and devo max would have huge implications for rUK (the rest of the UK). The unionist parties should begin now to develop their policies for dealing with either a UK without Scotland, or a UK in which Scotland would be to all intents and purposes fully internally self-governing. In the latter case, full self-government for Scotland would inevitably prompt demands for the same status for England (which would require the creation of a separate parliament and government for England) and for Wales and Northern Ireland. This would take several years to achieve. The result would be the creation of a federation of the four UK nations, with all the institutional and legal safeguards required by a federal system. Such a radical change in the relationships between the four nations, and between the nations and the federal centre at Westminster, could well inaugurate a revival of the politics and constitution of Britain, to the benefit of everyone. Scottish independence, on the other hand, could well spell disaster for rUK. It is questionable whether the three remaining UK nations could form a viable federation, even if, as seems unlikely, the secession of Scotland were to prompt a desire for one.
5. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that devo max for Scotland would signal the beginning of the end for the UK. Scottish devo max would not be likely to turn out to be a stepping stone to full independence: quite the reverse. The full internal self-government enjoyed by, for example, California or New South Wales is not regarded in either state as a preliminary to independence from the rest of the United States or Australia. Indeed, the opposite is the case. The completion of the devolution project in Scotland could well pave the way to the completion of devolution in rUK and the establishment of a durable, democratic federal system, as suggested in (4) above.
6. Devo max for Scotland would not mean that Scotland’s MPs at Westminster would only be able to vote on foreign affairs issues. The Westminster parliament, already a quasi-federal organ, would have roughly the same powers in respect of Scotland as the federal government of the United States has in relation to California or Massachusetts. No one regards these powers and responsibilities as trivial.
[The writer and commentator Gerry Hassan has posted an interesting and thought-provoking article about the Scottish Question in the Open Democracy website forum, provocatively entitled 'Historic day for the UK: Salmond consults Scotland but can't civilise Paxman'. This has prompted a number of equally interesting responses, some of which however reflect surprising misconceptions. This post first appeared, with some minor editorial changes, as my own comment on Mr Hassan's article and on some of the responses to it.]
In the last few days I have posted a couple of pieces about the Scottish Question (here and here), most recently quoting a prize example of sub-standard journalism in a Sunday Times article purporting to analyse the issues. I have now come across an equally striking example of excellent journalism from and about Scotland and its future, and accordingly added this update to my last post:
Update, 17 January 2012: For a stark contrast with the sloppy journalism quoted above, you should read an excellent article in today’s Scotsman by Professor Gavin McCrone, a distinguished Scottish former public servant, academic and economist (full disclosure: also one of my oldest friends). After describing some of the complex issues that will have to be negotiated either for Scotland to become independent or for it to achieve devo max, McCrone concludes that –
Sorting out all of these issues and ensuring that they are fully understood by those who will vote is going to take time, so that whatever Mr Cameron says, I do not expect the referendum to take place any earlier than October 2014, the date chosen by Alex Salmond. What worries me most is that as the debate continues, it could become not only increasingly intense but acrimonious. I give politicians the credit on both sides of not wanting that to happen, but they might find it difficult to control. There are plenty of people both in England and in Scotland who might make it so.
All those of us who comment on Scotland’s future, from north or south of the border, in the conventional media or in the blogosphere, have a duty to heed Professor McCrone’s warning. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game: if all concerned play fair, both Scotland and the rest of the UK can benefit equally from whatever constitutional changes emerge from the referendum process. Let’s all go easy on the acrimony, keep the temperature down, and treat each other like friends and neighbours, not as rivals or enemies.
Brian
While we are on the subject of the Scottish referendum, I should announce the result of the competition for the most obtuse, confused and misleading contribution to the analysis of the possible consequences of a Scottish referendum vote for full independence. The winning entry is from the Sunday Times of 15 January 2012 (yesterday), in a ‘Focus’ article on page 18 headed “Scot Free”. So, [tearing open the envelope], THE WINNERS ARE: Nicholas Hellen and Jason Allardyce!
Nicolas and Jason, your entry came out on top because of the almost unique way in which it confused England, the United Kingdom, and what would be left of the United Kingdom if Scotland were to secede from it. I am confident that in the coming months many more commentators south of the border will try to live up to the standard you have set.
Here is your winning entry:
At stake is much more than England’s alleged appropriation of North Sea oil revenues. If Scotland went its own way more than three centuries after the 1707 Act of Union, it could raise questions over England’s status in Europe, its claims at the United Nations to be one of the great powers and its relationship with other members of the United Kingdom.
Bravo!
Update, 17 January 2012: For a stark contrast with the sloppy journalism quoted above, you should read an excellent article in today’s Scotsman by Professor Gavin McCrone, a distinguished Scottish former public servant, academic and economist (full disclosure: also one of my oldest friends). After describing some of the complex issues that will have to be negotiated either for Scotland to become independent or for it to achieve devo max, McCrone concludes that –
Sorting out all of these issues and ensuring that they are fully understood by those who will vote is going to take time, so that whatever Mr Cameron says, I do not expect the referendum to take place any earlier than October 2014, the date chosen by Alex Salmond. What worries me most is that as the debate continues, it could become not only increasingly intense but acrimonious. I give politicians the credit on both sides of not wanting that to happen, but they might find it difficult to control. There are plenty of people both in England and in Scotland who might make it so.
All those of us who comment on Scotland’s future, from north or south of the border, in the conventional media or on the blogosphere, have a duty to heed Professor McCrone’s warning. Fortunately, it’s not a zero-sum game: if all concerned play fair, both Scotland and the rest of the UK can benefit equally from whatever constitutional changes emerge from the referendum process. Let’s all go easy on the acrimony, keep the temperature down, and treat each other like friends and neighbours, not as rivals or enemies.
Brian
