Newham Borough Liberal Democrats

Sarah's bulletin: 27th January

Holocaust Memorial Day

Today is International Holocaust Memorial day, marking the anniversary of the liberation of Auchswitz. You can see my comments here. I attended a ceremony in the European Parliament as well as an inspiring commemoration and exhibition in London on the theme 'Learning lessons from the past to create a better, safer future.' The Holocaust, and other atrocities such as Darfur and Rwanda should never be seen just as tragic historical events, they should motivate us to protest against discrimination, hatred and persecution today. I also signed the 'Speak up speak out' pledge to end discrimination, see the photo. You can do the same here.

I referred to the Holocaust as a historical event, but it seems that not only crazy Holocaust deniers fail to recognise historical fact. This story from Russia highlights a shocking attempt to airbrush Jewish victims from history. The massacre of Jewish residents in Rostov-on-Don was one of the worst single Holocaust atrocities, and was recorded on a plaque at the site. However, a replacement plaque drops this mention, referring instead to the victims as "peaceful citizens of Rostov-on-Don and Soviet prisoners-of-war". It is as impossible to overlook that Jews were the major victims of the Holocaust as that all Guantanamo prisoners are Muslim.

Cameron and the European Court of Human Rights

I find it horribly ironic that David Cameron was in Strasbourg on the eve of Holocaust Memorial day this week taking aim at the enforcement of the European Convention on Human Rights, Europe's much-admired and copied flagship fundamental rights charter drafted - with British lawyers in the lead - in the wake of Nazi atrocities and the Nuremburg trials in order to try to make a reality of 'never again'. You can read his main points here.

Last October when the UK took over its 6-month chairmanship of the Council of Europe I gave what I understood to be the UK reform agenda a fair wind, though I warned

'The objective is to increase respect for the European Human Rights Court and Convention, not to undermine them.'

And I then went to say that 'Europe minister David Lidington has rightly disabused those Tory MPs hoping for UK government sabotage.'

Unfortunately I was - naively? - wrong about that last bit, because the barrage of obsessive Eurosceptic criticism against not only the EU but the (non-EU) Court of Human Rights has only intensified. This is partly Cameron has misguidedly fed those idiots the red meat of the December EU 'veto which wasn't one' and now the attack on the Strasbourg court. (By the way, even the BBC put the latter under an 'EU woes' banner so it's not just the tabloids which confuse the EU and he bigger Council of Europe. Almost funny though, when you consider that BBC chairman Chris Patten is a former EU Commissioner)

I do still believe that Cameron is right to call for reform of the Court towards greater efficiency to deal with the backlog of cases. But he is completely wrong to undermine the credibility and standing of the decisions of the Court. He ignores the many invaluable judgements that the Court has made, as Nicolas Bratza QC, points out in his very interesting article in the Independent that you can read here. Judgements on for instance LGBT issues, privacy and fair trials have all been necessary and important. Cameron is advancing a thesis whereby Strasbourg leaves a nice democratic country like Britain alone, free to make political decisions like a blanket ban on prisoners voting, while concentrating on the 'other' countries, the real human rights abuses.

There are so many flaws in this reasoning that it would take a whole bulletin to recite them, but the most obvious are a) that unless there is uniform enforcement, no country will feel pressed to obey the EcTHR b) if the 'best' countries don't set an example of respect for the court, who will? and c) who said we were that great anyway? All the court is asking is that the absolute ban on votes for prisoners be replaced by a mechanism whereby each prisoner's case would be considered on its merits and it would be perfectly straightforward if it was not for the lunacy at Westminster.

Thanks to the LibDems, the coalition agreement stated that the commission would be established to investigate the creation of a British Bill of Rights 'that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights'. This turns out to be even more crucial than it seemed at the time. It is imperative that the Convention remain enshrined in British law through any Human Rights Act +. You can read my thoughts on what the priorities of the UK chairmanship of the Council of Europe should be here.

LibDem fairness agenda has impact in government

Another major area where LibDem influence in government is crucial is on fairness. Listening to Labour and Conservative scare tactics (direct and through their media supporters) on the eve of the 2010 general election, you would be forgiven for thinking that the world would end if a coalition government was formed. Well, it seems that the British public are far more intelligent. In a Populus poll this week 51% overall were 'glad that David Cameron and the Conservatives ended up sharing government in coalition with the LibDems rather than forming a minority government on their own'. Indeed, the figure for Tory voters was an astonishing 62% preferring a coalition with the LibDems rather than a majority Tory government! This must be rather disconcerting for some Conservative leader and cheerleaders!

And one of the chief reasons for such views is that we are the ones pushing for social fairness. The same poll showed that 47% of people believe that the decisions by the coalition have been fairer than they would have been otherwise because of the influence of the Liberal Democrats, and for 25-34 year olds it's an impressive 54%. So Nick, Vince, Danny and our other ministers are absolutely right to make tax and pay fairness our central message - with a special bit of applause for Jeremy Browne on Question Time criticising the contract Labour conferred on Stephen Hester of RBS and saying he should not take a £1 million bonus on top of his £1 million salary.

With action taken by Vince Cable on executive pay and Nick Clegg's robust demand to speed up the implementation of our commitment to raise the income tax threshold to £10,000, people can see that LibDems are determined to make society more equal. Mark Pack provides a good overview of the salient points of Nick's speech to the Resolution Foundation here highlighting how Nick stressed the importance of rebalancing the economy and protecting those who will be worst hit by the spending cuts. As he says: "We cannot pin all our hopes on the traders or the bankers. It will be the millions of hardworking Britons who deliver the nation from these difficult times. So we must now make the most of all of our human capital. And we must help struggling families stand on their own two feet. That means a benefits system that gets more people into work and a tax system that ensures work pays."

It seems that members of the Conservative party are also concerned by the impact of Clegg's emphasis on fairer tax policies. An article by Tim Montgomerie on Conservative Home called this 'the cleverest political position he has yet adopted and it's central to the very dangerous Lib Dem claim that they are humanising the Conservatives." I think this says it all!

Lib Dem action gives Post Offices invaluable lifeline

I was extremely heartened by the announcement from Ed Davey, LibDem business Minister, that a ten year deal has been struck between the Post Office and Royal Mail. This will guarantee that the Post Office continues to transact all Royal Mail services, including first and second class mail and parcel delivery services. You can read more information on this article in LibDem voice. This, along with the £1.4 billion extra government cash being injected into the network, will give subpostmasters the confidence to invest in modernisation. Improving opening hours would be a great way of using this money, as many people can only get down to their local Post Office at the weekend. It is shameful that under Labour over 7000 closed. You can read my press release here.

Trafficking challenge successful

I was delighted that the 'Row for Freedom' team successfully completed the challenge to be the first all-female team to cross the Atlantic unaided. The challenge aimed to raise awareness about the impact of human trafficking and to raise funds for EPCAT UK which lobbies against child exploitation. You can read more about the challenge and the team on their website here. I had the privilege to meet the girls at a Downing Street event to mark UK Anti-Slavery day last year. Large scale sport events often attract more trafficking activity, so with the Olympics coming this year, it is the perfect time to be drawing attention to a topic that is often swept under the carpet.

Visit to Islington refugee centre

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting and giving a talk to students learning English at the Mary Magdalene Refugee centre in Islington. You can read more here. The centre is one of several in the area to have benefitted from the European Refugee fund, which has enabled it to offer English language courses. Not only does this help refugees assimilate easier and more effectively into the community but it also provides them with a great social network.

New data protection laws

This week the Commission proposed an overhaul of current EU-wide data protection laws. You can read the press release here. 1995 rules on this topic have been implemented in different ways across the Member States (including our own Data protection Act), and one single law will ensure more coherence, and lighten administrative burdens on companies while ensuring consumer protection. I believe that better rules will get us part way, but tougher enforcement is needed to change the lax culture around privacy which gave rise to the phone hacking scandal and cases like HMRC losing 25 million child benefit records.

Bill Gates visits Deptford school

It was great to see some London schoolchildren benefitting unexpectedly from the wisdom of Bill Gates. You can read more here. The visit came about via journalist Robert Peston's Speakers for Schools project, which gets high profile figures to come to state schools to talk to pupils. I am sure that hearing first hand Bill Gates' story and philanthropic aims to wipe out third world diseases will have inspired at least one Deptford child!

France criminalises genocide denial

I am strongly opposed to a law passed in France this week making it a criminal offence to deny genocide, with particular reference to an Armenian genocide. In fact the dispute that rages about how to classify the mass killings of Armenians under Ottoman rule in 1915-1916 can only be decided by an objective commission of historians. The French refer to this it genocide, but Turkey disputes this as they believe that it took place in the midst of conflict in which many Turks were also killed in the massacres. Last week Turkey did ask that the Bill be dropped, as you can see here although their position would in fact be stronger if there was more openness on the subject in Turkey. The suspicion is that Sarkozy will not veto it, for electoral reasons as there are half a million voters of Armenian extraction in France. Aside from the political repercussions, this law is not healthy for historical debate or freedom of speech. You can read a press release from my group ALDE here on the subject.

Political manipulation of immigration statistics

In last week's Daily Telegraph Tory Ministers Damian Green and Chris Grayling suggested that immigration has increased the number of people on unemployment benefits in the UK, writing under the headline that '370,000 migrants are on the dole.' The chair of the independent UK Statistics Authority, Michael Scholar, has written to Iain Duncan Smith to complain about the way the statistics had been used. He quite rightly pointed out that given that the statistics could be open to misinterpretation they should have been published in accordance with the statisticians' code of practice rather than as political commentary ahead of their full publication. Green and Grayling argued that these figures showed that immigrants were adding substantially to British benefit bills. In fact the 370,000 figure represents just 6.5% of the total number of people in the country receiving benefits. Matt Cavanagh, from thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research wrote an interesting article in the New Statesman on the story, which you can read here. I entirely agree with him on the point he makes that far too often 'dog-whistling' takes place on the issue of immigration, potentially undermining the legitimate debate to be had. It is vital that politicians are pulled up when statistics are taken out of context, especially when the subject is as inflammatory as the topic of immigration.

European newspaper project

The Guardian and five other European newspapers have joined together in an interesting project: 'Europa', which you can read here, aims to examine what benefits the EU brings and what it does. Media coverage about the EU does has always been sadly lacking and this means that the general population remains relatively ignorant about decisions being taken. This fuels Eurosceptic argument and means that papers like the Daily Mail can get away with printing headlines about new laws that are either grossly exaggerated or wrong! It is about time that a more balanced approach was taken, allowing for a healthier debate on the issue.

- but Daily Mail still peddles EU lies

With good timing, a first-class example of media dishonesty regarding EU policy can be seen in this Daily Mail story here. Reading this article you would be forgiven for thinking that the European Commission now has the power to dictate British criminal law. In fact the green paper (from last September, so it's hardly hot off the press!) is about how European-wide action can tackle the major cross-border crime challenges that face us. It explicitly mentions respect for 'subsidiarity', since EU laws aim simply to get the 27 legal systems to work together to catch criminals, not to change them. Any new such laws would have to be democratically agreed by elected MEPs and the 27 EU governments, themselves scrutinised and held to account (if they do their job properly) by national parliaments. The Daily Mail has a Europhobic agenda which no does of truth is going to change, unfortunately. They are of course the first to complain if 'law 'n order' fails, which it does if we fail to match the competence of organised mafia criminals in fraud, cybercrime, drug and people-trafficking.