Tag Archives: police reform and social responsibility bill

Paul Tyler

Paul Tyler writes…What Acts do we need to reconsider?

By Paul Tyler | Thu 12th June 2014 - 3:21 pm

Parliament ActsYesterday, I spoke in the House of Lords debate on the Queen’s Speech.  There has been much made of how ‘light’ the legislative programme is, even if it still contains more than one bill a month for the coming session and carries over five (including the gargantuan HS2 Bill) from the last session.

However, I challenged colleagues to consider – if we really are so short of work to do – which Bills from early in this Parliament we might usefully subject to “post-legislative scrutiny”:

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 19 Comments
Tom King

Opinion: The Liberal Democrats should contest Police Commissioner elections

By Tom King | Mon 31st October 2011 - 9:24 am

Ask many people what they think of the Lib Dems’ approach to law and order, and you’ll be told – erroneously – that we’re a soft touch. Our approach, traditionally evidence-based and less punitive than the populist authoritarian policies of Labour and the Tories, takes longer to explain. When we fail to do so, we risk being seen as the party that panders to criminals.

Of course, that isn’t the case. We believe in policy that actually works to reduce crime and recidivism, using all possible means to rehabilitate those who resort to illegality, while reiterating the importance of the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 19 Comments
Tom Brake

Tom Brake MP writes: Sir Paul Stephenson’s resignation

By Tom Brake | Mon 18th July 2011 - 3:05 pm

Tom Brake MP is Lib Dem Home Affairs, Justice and Equalities Co-Chair.

A friend texted me over the weekend, after the news of Sir Paul Stephenson’s resignation, saying ‘What next?’. I texted back, ‘The Queen abdicates?’.

Revelations about phone-hacking and the Metropolitan police have been coming so thick and fast over the last couple of weeks that nobody would bat an eyelid (all right, I exaggerate slightly) if Her Majesty revealed a previously unknown Met and NOTW connection.

Sir Paul’s departure is just the latest extraordinary development in the phone-hacking saga.

Even though he was widely recognised as an outstanding commissioner who …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 2 Comments
Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert writes… The future of universal jurisdiction

By Julian Huppert | Wed 30th March 2011 - 12:48 pm

The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill about to complete its ride through the Commons, contains a range of items under ‘social responsibility’. One of these relates to changes to the way arrests for crimes under Universal Jurisdiction would be implemented (Clause 152). These are crimes such as genocide, torture, piracy and hostage taking, where the UK asserts the right to try people regardless of where the crime may have taken place.

This has been controversial in the past, particularly with the attempted arrest for private prosecution of Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli Foreign Minister, in 2009. She avoided arrest …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Elected Police Commissioners: how the elections would work

By Mark Pack | Sun 5th December 2010 - 4:57 pm

The publication this week of the Police Reform And Social Responsibility Bill provided, amongst other matters, details of how the planned elections for Police Commissioners (or, strictly speaking, Police and Crime Commissioners) would be conducted.

The overall plan is to treat them like local elections, with the same electorate and the same polling day in May. However, the Bill also applies the ‘standard’ election system for existing directly elected executive posts to Police Commissioners, namely the supplementary vote.

This is likely to be controversial, both because the supplementary vote is very unpopular with many Liberal Democrats and also because the …

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Posted in Election law and News | Also tagged , , and | 13 Comments
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