legislation

Lap-dancing clubs and human rights

April 21, 2010

I’ve written at Comment is Free today about the threat, made by lap-dancing club owners, to use the Human Rights Act to challenge the new legislation regulating them: It’s difficult to argue that firms should never enjoy convention rights – if they didn’t, media organisations like the Guardian would be unable to enforce freedom of [...]

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The Tory legal bits

April 14, 2010

Following my post on the “legal bits” of the Labour manifesto, here’s my analysis of the most important Conservative proposals of particular legal interest. I warn you: this is a long one, and needs sub-headings. Constitutional law On the constitution, the Tories promise that A Conservative government will change the law so that never again [...]

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Balls on human rights

April 9, 2010

I was interested in a debate yesterday kicked off by Jessica Asato, writing at Left Foot Forward about the way Conservative opposition led to the government’s dropping provisions in the Children, Schools and Families Bill about personal, social and health education – sex and relationships education being its most controversial aspect. The plan had been [...]

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Sion Simon, Keith Vaz and Law Officers’ advice

January 6, 2010

The DCMS minister Sion Simon has been speaking for the government in the Commons this afternoon, and is in an embarrassing situation: it appears that government lawyers have advised that the Video Recordings Act 1984 should have been notified to the European Commission under the “Technical Standards” Directive, 83/189 (since replaced by Directive 98/34). Since [...]

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Gordon’s speech – and law as a stick for governments

September 30, 2009

Gordon Brown’s conference speech yesterday gripped the nation, obviously – if you want to know what I thought of it politically, have a look at my other blog. A couple of constitutional and legal points emerged from it too, though. Obviously, there was his surprising (in the civil service sense – a phrase I may [...]

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Congress acts while MPs pussyfoot around

March 31, 2009

Last week the House of Representatives in Washington passed a Bill taxing at about 90% the bonuses received by employees of firms given $5 Billion or more in taxpayer support. Here’s a Washington Post story explaining the Bill. The background is the outrage American voters and politicians felt at the bonuses paid to staff at [...]

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Grabbing Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension

March 3, 2009

A lot’s being written and said on the airwaves this week about how lawyers are supposedly crawling over Sir Fred Goodwin’s exceedingly generous pension from RBS. Well, I’ll leave it to the pensions experts to speculate about whether his pension was discretionary and whether any attempt to stop his money under existing law could succeed. [...]

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Global financial crisis: the legislative responses

September 30, 2008

It’s becoming clearer every day that what we’re living through is the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s: Alistair Darling was right in his Isle of Lewis interview with the Guardian a month ago. Of course everyone’s looking to Washington right now, wondering whether Congress will be able to agree a rescue plan. I thought [...]

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Legislating to abolish child poverty

September 24, 2008

In his speech at the Labour conference yesterday, Gordon Brown proposed new legislation to enshrine his government’s commitment to abolish child poverty by 2020 (or as the article puts it, he vowed to bring in ground-breaking legislation). Mm. Don’t get me wrong: I strongly support his political commitment to achieving this – and just wish [...]

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The meaning of camp

April 3, 2008

Until now I’ve missed this judicial review judgment from March, about byelaws relating to a women’s peace camp at Aldermaston. The challenge to the byelaws succeeded in part, because they would have criminalised putting a jumper down on a bench, but I’m more interested in the failed attempt to argue that making it an offence [...]

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