November 2008

Justifying misconduct in public office

November 29, 2008

A particularly interest aspect of the law relating to the Damian Green case came out in my discussion with Charon QC earlier. You’ll remember that he was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office, and as a secondary party to misconduct in a public office. The elements of the offence of [...]

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Charon Podcast: Damian Green’s arrest

November 29, 2008

Charon QC interviewed me this morning about the Damian Green arrest: we discussed what offences he’s suspected of, ministers’ denial of prior knowledge of the arrest, the Parliamentary privilege aspect and the role of the Speaker, and wider issues of secrecy in government and the law relating to “leaks”. A very interesting discussion to take [...]

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More thoughts on Damian Green

November 28, 2008

I’m glad Damian Green has been released on bail: this affair is quite worrying, and David Cameron is entitled to be angry and ask questions, I think. Home Office ministers in particular need to explain what if anything they knew about the arrest, and we need an explanation of why this happened on Sir Ian [...]

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Damian Green arrested

November 28, 2008

Astonishing news: the Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green has been arrested on suspicion of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office – a doubly vague and, to policemen, useful charge, based as it is on a conspiracy to commit a common-law offence. Here are the CPS’s guidelines on misconduct in a public office. Iain [...]

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Lords judgment: Kay v Metropolitan Police

November 27, 2008

The other Lords judgment yesterday came in this interesting case about section 11 of the Public Order Act 1986, and whether Critical Mass is a procession requiring to be notified to the police, or is exempt under subsection (2) as a procession which is “commonly or customarily held”. Critical Mass is a gathering of cyclists [...]

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Lords judgment: R (JL) v Justice Secretary

November 27, 2008

The first of yesterday’s Lords judgments was in this human rights case, about the standard of investigation required by the article 2 Convention right to life, when a prisoner attempts suicide and fails, but injures himself seriously. In this case, JL tried to hang himself at Feltham YOI, and suffered serious brain damage from lack [...]

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Lord Rodger’s Renton lecture

November 26, 2008

Last night I heard Lord Rodger of Earlsferry give the first Lord Renton memorial lecture – his subject being “interpreting statutes today” – and an interesting lecture it was, too. He spoke about the importance of close reading of provisions in the context of a statute as a whole, and told the audience that he [...]

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German anti-terror proposals

November 24, 2008

I thought you’d be interested in a couple of stories (in English) about the German government’s proposed new BKA law (Federal Crime Agency law, would be my translation) which is proving controversial because it will give the BKA new powers of intercept and “cyber-spying”, through remote online searches of computers. The proposals have passed the [...]

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Buy British?

November 21, 2008

Unity at Liberal Conspiracy has an interesting suggestion about the government’s prostitution review – suggesting it’s part of Gordon Brown’s policy of securing “British jobs for British workers“. Great line; you wouldn’t actually be safe buying British under the proposals, though, if the British provider had a pimp.

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Not quite a blawg

November 21, 2008

Joshua Rozenberg has started something like a blawg on the Telegraph‘s website. He specifically says it’s not a blog: though his reasons are wrong, if he thinks blogging means you write about yourself or simply recycle stories and opinions from other sources. I’m sorry he has such a limited view of what blogs can be, [...]

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