Tag Archives: sadiq khan

News Meerkat

Siobhan Benita slams London Mayor’s mass surveillance roll-out as a real risk to civil liberties

By News Meerkat | Sun 26th January 2020 - 1:00 pm

Embed from Getty Images

Responding to the Metropolitan Police’s announcement on Thursday that it will begin to use automated facial recognition surveillance operationally, Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London Siobhan Benita said:

It is unacceptable for a new form of mass surveillance like this to be rolled out onto London’s streets without proper consultation, regulation or oversight.

Facial recognition technology is hopelessly inaccurate. It is biased against women and ethnic minorities. The evidence that it will make us safer is patchy at best, but there is a real risk that it will erode civil liberties and increase distrust and discrimination.

To make London safer we must restore effective community policing, starting with the re-opening of local police stations, which the current Mayor has shut down.

Liberal Democrats do not want London to become a city where innocent people feel as though their every movement is being watched. The fact that Sadiq Khan has given the go-ahead for this undermines his recent claim to share our liberal values.

If Londoners want a liberal mayor with a positive vision for a safer, greener, kinder capital, their best option is me.

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Chris Key

Why has nobody been held accountable for the Garden Bridge scandal?

By Chris Key | Thu 10th August 2017 - 4:02 pm

Yesterday on LBC, Sadiq Khan acknowledged that the taxpayer is unlikely to see anything for the £50 million which has been spent on the Garden Bridge.

The Daily Express did its best to portray Khan, rather than Boris Johnson, as the guilty party here. Following James O’Brien’s show, they wrote a piece which totally failed to recognize the fact that it was Khan who had been the one who had instigated the enquiry which Margaret Hodge produced. A report which made it clear that no more public money should be invested in this project.

It is clear that there were …

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Posted in London and Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 13 Comments
Mary Reid

Heathrow, Gatwick or anywhere else?

By Mary Reid | Mon 18th July 2016 - 12:34 pm

 

The decision about whether to expand Heathrow is imminent. In fact, it has been imminent for quite some time.

A year ago the Davies Commission recommended that a third runway should be built at Heathrow, not at Gatwick, the only other contender at the time.

We were expecting to hear an announcement from Government before Christmas, but then the Department of Transport said that the decision would be delayed until summer 2016, conveniently after the May elections. This delay was not unconnected with the fact that Zac Goldsmith was the Tory candidate for London Mayor. Zac has famously declared that he will resign as MP for Richmond Park if Heathrow is chosen. He has now said he regrets this but will still stick by his plan to resign as an MP.

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Katharine Pindar

Let’s express the passionate commitment of our united party

By Katharine Pindar | Mon 16th May 2016 - 11:13 am

‘Divided parties don’t win elections.’ Those were the words of newly-elected London mayor Sadiq Khan, recorded in Saturday’s Guardian (14.05), asking his Labour Party for unity. Of course, if true the saying should equally apply to today’s Conservative Party, with its bitter infighting even at Cabinet level. Liberal Democrats can offer a saying arguably more telling – ‘A small party can help a divided major party form a governing coalition.’ A year after the Coalition Government ended, the road to 2020 may lie wide open.

We are a small party now, but we are not a minor party. Unlike other small parties we have many hundreds of councillors in England, with 45 more elected this month as our Fightback kicks in, and we have a voice and an impact beyond our eight MPs and our cohorts in the House of Lords. Liberalism has a proud history of almost 170 years of progressive service to the British people, reaching its latest peak with five years of shared power within the Coalition.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 5 Comments
Mary Reid

Voting in the London elections – after 16 years voters are still confused

By Mary Reid | Mon 2nd May 2016 - 12:49 pm

Caroline-Pidgeon

The Guardian has an interview with Caroline Pidgeon, the Lib Dem candidate for London Mayor.  After disclaiming any responsibility for the cold that has afflicted all the candidates, she says this about her campaign:

Overall, it’s gone well. Ordinary people are saying they like what I’m saying on childcare and cheaper fares that are affordable. And that’s not just in places where we are strong, like Sutton, or in Bermondsey, where I’m known.

She says this of her two main rivals, Zac Goldsmith and Sadiq Khan and the dirty campaign they have been running:

I think both of them, but particularly Zac, will wish they hadn’t done it. It’s damaged their reputations. Zac has always been seen by most people as a decent kind of guy.

On the doorstep voters are still confused about the voting processes for the London elections – and that is not surprising because they will be presented with three ballot papers, each using a different voting system.

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Paul Walter

DPMQs: LibDem MPs enjoy an untroubled post-questions lunch

By Paul Walter | Thu 22nd December 2011 - 10:03 am

Time was when Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions was the closest you got to bloodsports in the House of Commons. The DPM would be tethered, red-faced and growling, to the dispatch box, as Labour MPs taunted him and propelled all sorts of bile at him, augmented by the odd tactical nuclear missile rear-launched by the Tory swivel-eyes.

We’ve come a long way in a few months. Now, DPMQs are relatively sedate affairs. The DPM is well in control and there is little mischief from the Labour benches. Well, none that would spoil LibDem MPs’ lunches.

Indeed, at least four MPs found it difficult …

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Stephen Tall

LDVideo: Nick Clegg – “It is time we knew whether the Labour party can think for itself.”

By Stephen Tall | Sat 19th November 2011 - 2:25 pm

Lib Dem Voice contributor Paul Walter noted here Nick Clegg’s strong response in this week’s Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions to the Labour party’s aim of protecting its cosy financial relationship with the trade unions — but for those who missed it here’s that exchange in full:

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Paul Walter

Opinion: Nick Clegg lays into Labour links to unions

By Paul Walter | Wed 16th November 2011 - 6:24 pm

Here’s a superb clip of Nick Clegg in full, passionate flight as he attacks Sadiq Khan regarding links with the GMB union. There is some background to this story on order-order.com here.

Here’s the exchange in full from Hansard:

Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab): The Deputy Prime Minister has previously endorsed the long-held convention that issues of party funding should—as he has just said—be resolved by cross-party agreement when that is possible. He has told us that the Committee on Standards in Public Life will report shortly: in fact, it will report next week. Is he concerned about the objections from

…

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Posted in Parliament | Also tagged and | 20 Comments
Mark Pack

Sadiq Khan, master of political caricature, I salute you

By Mark Pack | Fri 14th October 2011 - 7:59 am

Listening to Deputy Prime Minister’s Question Time and also the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s hearing this week, I was tempted to blog about how in a throwback to the worst of New Labour, many Labour MPs seemed to be confusing something being a “civic duty” with it being a legal requirement. After all, it doesn’t say much for your idea of “civic duty” if you think it is synonymous with “legal requirement”.

I didn’t have time to blog about this… but then today Sadiq Khan writes for The Guardian:

The compulsory nature of our interaction with registration officers may seem

…

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Mark Pack

Labour prisons expert attacks party for “shameful” stance on penal reform

By Mark Pack | Thu 30th June 2011 - 1:54 pm

Frances Crook, a Labour member and Director of the Howard League for Penal reform, has launched a stinging attack on the Labour Party’s approach to penal reform calling recent moves by Shadow Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan “shameful”.

Writing on the Howard League’s website, Frances Crook said,

I was so angry with the Labour Party I found it hard to put into words. For the record I am a Labour Party member and was a Labour Party councillor and I have been a huge admirer of Sadiq Khan, a man who has up until recently had an exceptional record

…

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Stephen Tall

Labour members attack party’s “Daily Mail view of the world”

By Stephen Tall | Fri 7th January 2011 - 7:25 am

Another day, another nail in the coffin of liberalism in the Labour Party. Sadiq Khan, the party’s shadow justice secretary, today amped-up the debate on votes for prisoners by condemnIng the Coalition’s proposals as — POPULIST CLICHE ALERT — “a slap in the face for victims of crime”.

But his pandering to the forces of authoritarian conservatism hasn’t gone down well with all Labour members. Over at LabourList, Kevin Peel has an excellent post criticising Mr Khan’s outburst, pointing out that no matter what you think of the decision the UK was under a legal obligation following a …

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Mark Pack

Ed Miliband campaign chief broke rules for MPs

By Mark Pack | Wed 6th October 2010 - 5:55 pm

So reports Paul Waugh in the Evening Standard:

Ed Miliband’s campaign chief breached House of Commons rules by sending a Parliamentary letter to voters during the general election campaign, anti-sleaze watchdogs have found…

Mr Khan was reported to the watchdog after it emerged that he had sent a mailshot using Commons notepaper and pre-paid envelopes to inform voters that he could no longer deal with constituency cases during the dissolution of Parliament…

Mr Lyon said that although it was clear Mr Khan had tried to keep constituents informed, one effect of the letter was to appear to be canvassing “support for his

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 15 Comments
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