Devotees of this blog may know that we are battling with the Coroners and Justice bill. An important bill but one which has several contentious issues such as, mandatory life sentences, secret inquests, relationship between coroners and the justice courts, free speech (including whether or not criminals can benefit from the publication of memoirs, seditious…
Many of you will have read of the Tory plan to ship in a large number of peers if they win the 2010 election. The rumour is that up to perhaps 40 will be rapidly ennobled, so that the Tories have a substantial majority (and get their legislation through) and to fill any gaps in…
A week to go before the House reconvenes and it promises to be a sticky time before the new Session begins after the Queen’s Speech on 18 November. Before plunging into the hurly-burly of bills and amendments and committees and debates, not to mention the results of the current reviews on parliamentary expenses, let me just finish…
There is a strange anomaly in UK law that allows those suspected of genocide and other serious crimes against humanity to remain in the UK with impunity. This arises following the UK ratification of the 1998 Rome Statute which establised the International Criminal Court based in the The Hague and adopted by the UK in the International Criminal Court…
I visited Rwanda just a few months after the horrific slaughter of approximately 800,000 people in 1994. I remember a Rwandan woman with whom I worked showing me a wedding photograph with about 50 guests and pointing hesitantly to a few saying ‘He’s still alive and she’s also still alive..’ She could identify only about five…
