GIVE OTs A VOICE IN THE COMMONS - UK MP

British MP Andrew Rosindell

A British MP has called for Bermuda and other overseas territories to be given representation in the UK House of Commons.

In a submission to the UK Parliament’s Backbench Business Committee, Andrew Rosindell said that since the UK makes decisions that can directly effect territories such as Bermuda, the territories should be able to have their own voices heard.

Mr Rosindell, the chairman of the British Overseas Territories All Party Parliamentary Group, said: “We give our 21 territories nothing. All they have is an informal all-party group, of which I am proud to be chairman.

“We have a democratic hole, with hundreds of thousands of people for whom we make laws, whom we ultimately govern and on whose behalf we can declare war, make foreign policy and sign international treaties. We have substantial control over their domestic affairs.

“Those territories that have sterling are bound by much of our own economic policy. In a range of areas, although the Crown dependencies and Overseas Territories are not part of the UK they are substantially influenced and ultimately governed by this Parliament, so it is wrong for them to have no voice at all.”

The Conservative Party MP said other nations, including Australia, Denmark, France and the Netherlands all have external territories, but those territories have representatives elected to external territory committees.

He said he hoped issues related to the overseas territories would be debated this year, noting that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the Falkland Islands.

“Perhaps it is an appropriate time to establish the principle that at the very least the UK Parliament gives recognition to our Territories and Dependencies, and that we actually want to debate subjects that affect them, so that is why I have put in for this debate,” he said.

“I have been an MP for 11 years and I do not think there has been an actual debate on territories and dependencies, except when the British Overseas Territories Bill was introduced by the previous Government in 2001-02.

“There needs to be a similar kind of annual debate such as we have on Scotland and Wales. Our 21 territories deserve to be given that kind of recognition, and I hope the Committee will give that due consideration.”

In a recent Government submission to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for a new White Paper on the Overseas Territories, Government called for a greater voice in the UK Parliament on issues affecting the Island.

A section of the submissions read: “This could be done by serving on Parliamentary Committees, for example, where matters affecting Bermuda’s national interest are discussed.”

Mr Rosindell visited the Island last year as part of a three-day fact finding mission, during which he met with Premier Paula Cox. He later told The Royal Gazette they had a frank exchange of views about the relationship between the UK and Bermuda.

He also described Premier Cox as being “cynical” about the British Government’s desire for closer links, comments that National Security Minister David Burch said were disrespectful.

By: Owain Johnston-Barnes

UK LOSES 3 OUT OF 4 EUROPEAN HUMAN RIGHTS CASES? MORE LIKE 1 IN 50, ACTUALLY

It is rightly said that 95% of statistics are made up. Today’s Daily Mail front page headline contained a typically exuberant statistical claim: Europe’s war on British justice: UK loses three out of four human rights cases, damning report reveals. According to journalist James Slack “Unelected Euro judges” are mounting a “relentless attack on British laws laid down over centuries by Parliament”.

The Telegraph’s Andrew Hough and Tom Whitehead chime in with Britain loses 3 in 4 cases at human rights court. But are they right? To add a bit of spice to this statistical journey, I will aim to use at least one analogy involving a popular TV singing contest.

The “explosive research” is a report by Robert Broadhurst, a Parliamentary legal researcher for a group of Conservative MPs. The headline grabbing figures are in this paragraph:

Between when it first signed up to the Court‘s jurisdiction in 1966 and the end of 2010, the UK faced over 350 rulings from the judges in Strasbourg… In about three-quarters of these judgements the Court ruled that the UK had breached a Convention right.

This is simply misleading. Only counting final judgments of the court obscures the reality of how it operates. In fact, the number of claims which are brought to the court is enormous compared to the amount which reach full hearings. This is because the vast majority are struck out at an early stage, and those strike outs are effectively victories for the UK.

Judges consider the case and decide that it is “manifestly unfounded”; similar to when a domestic court finds that a claim has no reasonable prospects of success. This is a very high bar, which means that the vast majority of claims don’t reach it. Some of these will be not worth the paper they are written on, but many are genuine claims and to ignore them when considering the court statistics is to miss most of what the court does.

Broadhurst’s figures are taken from the European Court of Human Rights’ owndocument, which reveals that since 1966, out of a total of 443 judgments against the UK, in 271 there was a finding of at least one violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. This is compared to 86 finding no violation.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. As demonstrated by the rather nice pie diagram inanother of the court’s own reports, since 1966 97% of cases against the UK were declared inadmissible, that is they were struck out. This means that in reality, of all the claims brought before the court against the UK (in the region of 15,700, by my calculation), only 3% made it to full hearings, and a – let’s face it miniscule – 1.7% succeeded.

So, not three quarters, as the Mail suggests, but under one in fifty cases brought before the court against the UK were successful. As it happens, the Strasbourg court is good at publishing statistics, but perhaps could have been clearer with these, for example by including the total number of claims brought in its Violations by State table.

But in any case there is no excuse for a significant report – signed and prefaced by 10 MPs – making such a hash of its statistics (and I haven’t even mentioned the Mail’s “unelected” judges, who are actually elected).

Presenting the figures in this way is a bit like watching X-Factor from the live finals, which begin with 12 contestants, and extrapolating that since one of them wins in the end, therefore almost 10% of X-Factor applicants ultimately win the contest. In reality tens of thousands apply, so only a tiny percentage of them “win”, but most are “struck out” as being bad singers in the months before the finals.

The high proportion of finally decided cases which are successful is interesting, but it hardly represents a court which is mounting a “relentless attack” on the British laws. Indeed, there are so few fully heard cases that any statistical analysis is fairly meaningless anyway.

In fact, what the statistics do reveal is that the European Court hears a tiny amount of cases against the UK each year; just under 30. The success rate for the lucky few Claimants is quite high, but it is about the same the success rate across all states, and is probably is more a reflection of the high “manifestly unfounded” bar the court sets for Claimants than any “relentless attack” on British justice. In other words, only good cases get through, so a lot of those ultimately win.

So, legal researcher Robert Broadhurst can pop up on to the legal naughty stepfor disservices to statistics, and the Daily Mail and Telegraph journalists can join him for their gleefully unquestioning acceptance of his statistical sleight of hand.

By: Adam Wagner

Adam Wagner is a founding editor of the UK Human Rights Blog. He is a Legal 500 2011 recommended barrister specialising in public law, human rights and medical law, and was longlisted for the 2011 Orwell Prize for blogging. He can be found on Twitter as @AdamWagner1

DAVID CAMERON TELLS SCOTTISH NATIONALISTS TO PUT UP OR SHUT UP ON INDEPENDENCE

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron 

Photo: PA Photos

PUT up or shut up. That is the risky (but arguably rather canny) message that David Cameron has sent to the pro-independence head of the Scottish devolved government in Edinburgh, Alex Salmond. Specifically, Mr Cameron has announced that the British government and Westminster Parliament are willing to give Mr Salmond the referendum on Scotland's future that he says he wants—as long as it is a proper, straight up-and-down vote on whether to stay in the United Kingdom or leave, and is held sooner rather than later.

It is not that Mr Cameron wants to break the three hundred year old union between London and Edinburgh. Both emotionally and intellectually, he is fiercely committed to the union as a source of strength for both Scotland and Britain, insist Conservative colleagues who have discussed the question with him. Publicly, he has pledged to oppose Scottish independence with "every fibre" of his being.

But Mr Cameron and his ministers also feel that Scotland has been drifting in a constitutional limbo, ever since Mr Salmond's Scottish National Party (SNP) won an outright majority at Scottish parliamentary elections in 2011 (a feat that was supposed to be impossible, under the complex voting system used in Scotland). The SNP campaigned on a simple manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on the future of Scotland. But after his thumping win Mr Salmond slammed on the brakes and started talking about holding a consultative vote in the second half of his term in office, ie, some time between 2014 and 2016.

The accusation from Mr Salmond's opponents is that he is "frit", or too frightened of a No vote, to hold a straightforward independence vote any time soon. Instead, goes the charge, Mr Salmond is planning a fiddly, three-way vote on whether to stay, leave or seek another big dose of devolution to transfer more powers from Westminster to the Scottish parliament at Holyrood. Should such a vote end up with Scots splitting roughly equally between the three options, Mr Salmond would then turn round and say he had an overwhelming mandate to seek drastic changes, pro-union politicians grumblingly predict.

In a final provocation, Mr Salmond is widely reported to be planning to hold such a referendum in 2014, around the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn. That would link the vote to an emotionally-resonant victory that (according to popular belief) saw Robert the Bruce and a band of hairy Highland heroes defeat a much larger army of sneering, heavily-armoured Norman knights sent north by a simpering English tyrant, Edward II. Short of having a blue-faced Mel Gibson charge up Sauchiehall Street crying "Freedom", the theory goes, Mr Salmond and the SNP could not pick a more stirring backdrop to a referendum.

Understandably, it is the timing question that dominated this morning's headlines, after what was clearly robust briefing by sources close to the prime minister. The morning newspapers reported that Mr Cameron's brilliant wheeze involves making the SNP a time-limited offer of a binding referendum, with a shelf-life of just 18 months. Only the Westminster Parliament has the power to order a legally-binding referendum, the same papers report, so logically this would pose quite a dilemma for Mr Salmond and the Scots Nats, prodding them to hold their vote by 2013 at the latest. The Independent called it a poker move, and you can see what they mean: it sounds as if Mr Cameron is seeing Mr Salmond's consultative vote, raising him a binding referendum and calling him.

The SNP has reacted crossly, with Mr Salmond's deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, telling the BBCthat Mr Cameron was trying to interfere in Scottish democracy, and predicting that this would backfire, because the "more a Tory government tries to interfere", the "greater the support for independence will be". All referendums in Britain have always been consultative, she added, so promises of a binding referendum are "absurd". The SNP majority in the Scottish parliament won office on a clear prospectus of holding a referendum in the second half of its term, she concluded. Thus "it's right that now that we have the mandate we can proceed on that basis."

Does a stand-off loom? There is no doubt that Mr Salmond takes this mandate business seriously, rejecting any talk of the Westminster Parliament seeking to organise his referendum. Last October, Lord Forsyth, a former Conservative member of parliament and cabinet minister with responsibility for Scotland in the government of John Major, stirred up the House of Lords with a rather cryptic question to the government, asking if it was true that Mr Salmond had been "threatening government Ministers that if we constitute a legally conducted referendum campaign in Scotland, he will make it his business to boycott that referendum"? Could the government confirm that the first minister was "getting a bit too big for his boots?" Lord Forsyth ventured.

On being questioned by Scottish reporters later, Lord Forsyth offered further details of his claim. Mr Salmond, he had been reliably informed, had told George Osborne, the Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, that if the government in London and the Parliament in Westminster set up a Scottish referendum he would use his powers as Scottish first minister to block it, for instance by preventing the Scottish police and other public services from administering and overseeing such a vote. Lord Forsyth had checked the story with Mr Osborne, who had confirmed it, he added, while Mr Salmond's staff had only issued what he considered a non-denial sort of denial.

For the moment, we are still in the realm of clashing politics. Mr Cameron made his position clear in an interview on Sunday with the BBC's Andrew Marr, arguing that the Scottish people needed and deserved more clarity on who was going to be asking them about independence, when, and what the question was going to be. Scotland needed to know that any vote would be fair, legal and decisive. To that end, the British government would set out its plans in a few days, the prime minister said, adding:

"I think what Alex Salmond is trying to do—I think he knows the Scottish people, at heart, don't want a full separation from the United Kingdom—and so he's trying to sort of create a situation where that bubbles up and happens... Whereas I think we need some decisiveness, so we can clear up this issue"

More technical details will not be long in coming. Government sources say that the current cabinet minister for Scotland, or Scottish Secretary, Michael Moore, will be unveiling plans to the House of Commons on Tuesday. Mr Moore, a Liberal Democrat, will play down the question of timing and play up the importance of a straightforward, in-or-out question, I am told. His statement will set out measures that could be included in a new Scotland Bill currently trundling through the House of Commons and House of Lords in Westminster, which is already set to deepen devolution in various ways.

Government sources say that it is a bit of a red herring to draw a contrast between binding and consultative votes. The political reality is that Mr Cameron's coalition government is not about to prevent Scotland from splitting away if a decisive majority of Scots vote in a referendum to leave. A decisive consultative vote would be binding for a'that, sources say.

The same sources say that talk of a precise 18-month deadline for holding a vote is also missing the main thrust of the British government's gamble. Yes, Mr Cameron and his ministers would prefer a vote sooner rather than later, not least because they think that Scotland is being kept in limbo by uncertainty about its constitutional fate, and fear that that is hurting the Scottish economy.

But what really exercises the government is three different things: the legality of the vote; securing a clear, binary question and ensuring that the referendum campaign is fairly- and transparently-funded and overseen by an independent electoral commission.

Prominent unionists agree. If Mr Salmond wants to "make a fool of himself linking the timing of his referendum to a mediaeval battle", then supporters of the union should not "go to the stake" over the precise date of a referendum, a leading player says. What matters is getting the right question: in or out.

Within the government, there is some surprise that the whole obeying-the-law thing is not attracting more attention. Sources point to a growing body of legal opinion arguingthe Scottish parliament has no right to organise a referendum on Scotland's constitutional settlement with the United Kingdom. Under the terms of the 1998 Scotland Act that set up the Holyrood parliament, constitutional questions are "reserved" for the British parliament in Westminster.

Government ministers believe that that if the Scottish parliament passed legislation to hold a referendum, it would certainly face legal challenges, plunging the whole process into uncertainty if not chaos. The House of Lords fairly heaves with distinguished former Scottish judges and politicians who care very much about the legal niceties, and who are poised to table any number of amendments to the Scotland Bill when it enters committee stage in the upper house on January 26th.

In short, the government in London is sure that it has a legal mandate to weigh in, whether the fierier sort of nationalist cares to admit it.

Mr Salmond and the SNP seem just as sure that they have a democratic mandate to run this show and that the main Westminster parties, whether Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Labour, have no political interest in using legal niceties to trump democracy. Brian Taylor, the BBC's well-informed political editor in Scotland, makes the point that any legislation in Westminster establishing a referendum might have to be approved by Holyrood in any case, after political guarantees not to ram the Scotland Bill through against the wishes of the devolved Scottish assembly.

This may be right. But a Scottish Labour grandee offers a neat concluding point. Mr Salmond does not just face legal pressure from London to hurry up and organise a vote. He faces mounting political pressure at home, too. Everything in Scotland is "on hold", awaiting a referendum, says the Labour figure. That means Mr Salmond simply cannot duck naming a date for much longer.

It is all pretty ironic. Political and legal forces are aligning to put the Union to a once-in-a-generation test. And Mr Cameron, a politician who wants to preserve the status quo, finds himself pressing an in-out vote on Mr Salmond, whose adult life has been devoted to the cause of Scottish independence.

By: Bagehot's Notebook

STEPHEN LAWRENCE: A GENERATION OF SHAME

Stephen Lawrence

Stephen Lawrence verdict delivers justice after 18-year wait

It is impossible not to have mixed feelings at the convictions of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of Stephen Lawrence in the Eltham district of south-east London 18 years ago. Eighteen years – the same span of years lived by Lawrence before his murder in 1993 – is far too long for justice to be denied in any criminal case, let alone one that was so serious and so emblematic for the nation. Seven Scotland Yard investigations later, the police's efforts have finally generated two convictions by an Old Bailey jury. But it has been an insufferable ordeal for Lawrence's parents, both in terms of time and emotion. Doreen Lawrence, Stephen's mother, was right in every way to say that the verdicts are no cause for celebration.

This is true not least because the case is not yet over. Sentences have yet to be imposed on Dobson and Norris. There may be other charges to come, as Neville Lawrence, Stephen's father, urged after the verdicts. So the many failures to secure convictions over the long years cannot simply be dismissed now as an embarrassing prelude to yesterday's more satisfactory outcome that can somehow now be forgotten. These events have inflicted a generation of shame on the Metropolitan police and on those responsible for the delay of justice – primarily the suspects and witnesses who lied for 18 years about that night and the friends and family who protected them.

It is important to state in plain terms why this was so. Stephen Lawrence was murdered because he was black. The initial police failure to follow the evidence trail with sufficient speed, professionalism and determination reflected exceptionally badly on some officers' values, and their understanding of the society they lived in. Racist attacks in Britain neither began nor ended with the Lawrence case. But the murder brought the question of police complacency about race – supposedly a much higher priority in policing after the 1981 Scarman inquiry – to a head. Much has changed for the better on that front since 1993, not least because of the Lawrence case and, in particular, because of the 1999 Macpherson inquiry. Yesterday's convictions were the result of the indignation which engulfed the police for their earlier failures.

The turning of the tide on the Lawrence case clearly owes more to Stephen Lawrence's parents than to anyone else. Their reactions to yesterday's result differed – Mrs Lawrence less reconciled, her former husband more relieved. Yet their common determination to win justice for their murdered son was the key, assisted, it should be said, by bold journalism from the Daily Mail. It did not simply keep the case in the public eye. It also became a national reprimand to the criminal justice and political system in a wider sense. Changes were made – improvements in forensic investigation of the sort which delivered the crucial evidence at the trial, as well as legal changes allowing the double jeopardy rule to be set aside and permitting evidence of bad previous character to be heard in court. The verdicts vindicate those changes. There is less justification for any complacency over the Lawrence case outcome than in most criminal cases. The verdicts have not purged English criminal justice of its failures. Hate crimes still go unprosecuted. But Neville Lawrence was right to say that he has spent the past seven weeks at the central criminal court watching justice being done; right, too, to speak of relief at the outcome. In the end, good policing, official determination and a jury have proved that the system is strong enough to correct its mistakes. The convictions of Dobson and Norris are a far better outcome for the Lawrences and for Britain than their acquittal would have been. Mixed feelings? Of course. Profoundly so. But as Shakespeare puts it at the end of the convulsions of All's Well That Ends Well: "All yet seems well; and if it end so meet the bitter past, more welcome is the sweet."

By: the guardian