Anne Milton - Guildford MP (and Dipstick)

Comment on the Leg and Reg Bill as follows:

(1) the Bill actually incorporates a surprisingly large number of
safeguards to traditional civil-liberties interests - for example, it
explicitly excludes increasing fines/penalties , powers of search,
imprisonment, and so on. So whoever said on your blogsite that "Ministers
are being given any powers they like to amend any statute they like" is
simply and factually wrong.

(2) That said, the Bill has been appallingly badly presented both within the
House and outside, and all the safeguards which I identify above are well
hidden in the text. So a lead medal to the Government's business
managers....

(3) A great deal of directly-acting EU Regulations - mainly agricultural -
have already been incorporated in UK law since 1973 by virtue of Section
2(2) of the 1972 European Communities Act, and I (for one) was for years one
of the UK civil servants in Brussels charged with getting this done. OK, we
directly, regularly and conscientiously consulted UK affected interests
until the cows came home (possibly the wrong metaphor !) and reported to
Parliament after the event, but Parliament in truth wasn't very interested.
Had we had to consult Parliament before the event, we would never have got
anything actually done. Democracy quotient: nil to one. Looking after UK
interests quotient: hopefully eight to nine.

(4) A few Tory MPs, such as Bill Cash and Eric Forth, are highly adept at
filibustering or 'talking out' otherwise well-intentioned Private Members
Bills - or even Government statutory instruments, given half the chance - as
this clearly gives them testicular satisfaction. The current government
Bill would remove many (but not all) of their chances to do this. So
'hooray' rather than 'boo'.

(5) I would no more try to explain all this to Anne Milton that I would
explain the workings of the Russian reflexive verb (the one that can produce
unexpected infinitive endings of 'sya' ) to somebody with O-level 'Fail'
grades in French. I doubt she would understand anything of the nuances involved ("Parliament
Needs A Hearse")

Hi, I got this from the UniS Russian Society this morning, and even though it's nothing to do with our favourite nurse, you've linked to Craig Murray over at your main site - which I'm not registered to.

Dear everybody,

Today, 15 th of March, Craig Murray, MP and former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan will be visiting UniS and delivering a speech for students, organized by Stop The War Coalition of UniS, at 6:30 PM in TB22.

Craig Murray was sacked from his position as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan after criticizing the human rights abuses of Uzbek dictator I.Karimov, then US and UK's ally in the War against Terror. Craig has continued to expose UK involvement supporting the Uzbek regime and collusion in torture.

Perhaps you would be interested in attending such an event. If so please come along.

I know he's not an MP but all the same.

The safeguards in the Leg/Reg bill are no use at all, I'm afraid. Because the Bill can apply to itself, the very first thing a Minister could do with it is remove the "suprisingly large number" of safeguards (actually 3).

There are a great many Acts of Parliament which this power should not be applicable to, and this should be encoded in the Bill, not left to the restraint of the government.