Tag Archives: gavin barwell

Election law snippets

MPs who suffer mental health problems will benefit from the government’s decision to back a Bill going through Parliament:

The Deputy Prime Minister announced that the Government is backing the Mental Health (Discrimination) Bill brought forward by Gavin Barwell MP, which receives Second Reading in the House of Commons today.

The Bill repeals section 141 of the Mental Health Act, which sets out that an MP automatically loses their seat if detained under the Act for more than six months. It also amends similar discriminatory provisions in legislation concerning

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Five MPs face questions over election expenses – how good are their answers?

Channel 4’s investigation with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism into MPs’ election expenses has raised questions about another five MPs in addition to Zac Goldsmith.

Having already looked at some of the legal questions around Zac Goldsmith, how do the other five stack up? Two raise important points of how the law should be interpreted, one has unclear evidence so far and two appear to involve administrative errors without any actual overspending.

First, the legal issues.

Phil Woolas (Labour), who is already facing a court hearing in the autumn over his election campaign, is accused of not declaring leaflets that …

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Recent Comments

  • James Dennison
    Thanks David. I certainly didn't mean to imply that the UK begins and ends with England — rather, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland already have substantia...
  • James Dennison
    Thanks Jana. My instinct would be to approach this from the other direction: rather than create a new English Parliament to exercise the powers currently exerci...
  • Jana
    “ Give England institutional expression” Just ‘institutional expression’? Unless it is viewed as acceptable that criminal laws in England, for exampl...
  • David Raw
    Professor Dennison write, "England does not need another large parliament or bureaucracy"..................... and goes on continually refer to England. Writ...
  • Jana
    We don’t need a cap on donations - we need a cap on total spending by each political party, both on routine running costs each year and on specific election c...