Jim Wallace’s response to the Government statement on Syria

Lord Wallace of Tankerness

Probably nothing is more important than the Government’s primary responsibility of security of the realm and its citizens. The Prime Minister acknowledges that in his Statement. Clearly, we do not have the evidence, nor would it be appropriate to share that evidence publicly, and therefore we must accept the judgement of the Prime Minster in responding to perhaps one of the most serious calls that has been made on him. However, it would be interesting to know whether this is a matter that the Intelligence and Security Committee will be able to look at.

There is also reference in the Statement to the legal basis. Having worked closely as a law officer with the present Attorney-General, I know that his judgement would be made with considerable rigorous legal diligence and bringing to bear his considerable personal and professional integrity. I do not call for the publication of law officers’ advice; that is not something that, as a former officer, I would readily do. However, the noble Baroness will remember that before the House debated chemical weapon use by the Syrian regime and a possible UK government response, and before we debated last year the position on military action in Iraq against ISIL, the Government published on each occasion a statement setting out the Government’s legal position. If it is felt possible to elaborate on what was said in the Statement by a similar note, I think that we would find that very helpful.

Brian Paddick: The Government has been trying to play catch-up on drug control (via The Huffington Post)

Lord Paddick

Writing for the Huffington Post, Home Affairs Spokesperson Brian Paddick has pulled apart the Psychoactive Substances Bill, highlighting the problems with the current legislation and the ways in which the Lib Dems are seeking to fix it. 

Liberal Democrats in the Lords are trying to rescue something from the car crash that is the government’s Psychoactive Substances Bill by tabling a series of amendments.

The Bill seeks to make it illegal to produce or supply any substance that affects someone’s mental functioning or emotional state, unless the government specifically exempts it.

This takes the “my substances of choice, like alcohol and tobacco, are OK but yours aren’t” approach to a new level.

On Tuesday we tried and failed to press the pause button while an independent, evidence-based review (posh phrase for ‘what works in practice?’) of existing laws was carried out.

The UK Bill is based on a similar Act in force in the Republic of Ireland for the past four years that has been so disastrous, the Irish are thinking of repealing it.

At the moment ‘head shops’ sell so-called ‘legal highs’ with impunity. The government has been trying to play catch-up, banning harmful new substances as they are developed, and losing.

They have now lurched, with Labour Party support, to banning everything.

The full article is here 

Anthony Lester: The public would trust judges more than politicians to maintain a fair balance between security and liberty (via The Times)

Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Writing to The Times, Lib Dem Peer Anthony Lester QC highlighted the mistake the Tories would be making in not following the recommendations of the Anderson Report:

Sir, As David Anderson, QC, underlines in his report, public trust is essential for the vital work of the security and intelligence agencies (reports, June 12; letters, June 13). We need a new legal regime that keeps pace with technology, is publicly accessible, and provides effective safeguards against the misuse of the powers of the state to infringe privacy.

The prime minister, the home office and the agencies should accept the need explained by Mr Anderson for surveillance warrants normally to be signed by judges rather than ministers. That is already the position in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The public would trust judges more than politicians to uphold the rule of law and maintain a fair balance between security and liberty. Ministerial accountability to parliament is necessary but not sufficient. Parliament amended the Justice and Security Bill to give judges rather than ministers the task of ensuring that secret trials are held only where necessary in the interests of justice. Parliament should do so again when approving the new legal framework in the proposed Surveillance Bill.

The letter is on The Times website here

Brian Paddick “The Government have all the hallmarks of an authoritarian, anti-libertarian, inward-looking Administration”

Lord Paddick

Speaking in the Queen’s Speech debate on home affairs in the House of Lords this week, Brian Paddick, Liberal Democrat spokesman for home affairs, paid tribute to Charles Kennedy and went on to warn that upcoming legislation showed that “the Government have all the hallmarks of an authoritarian, anti-libertarian, inward-looking Administration ”

The full transcript of his speech is below:

Letter of the Lords 2 February 2015

This week’s newsletter on the work of the Liberal Democrat group in the House of Lords

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Letter of the Lords – 26 January 2015

This week’s newsletter on the work of the Liberal Democrat group in the House of Lords

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Letter of the Lords – 19 January 2015

This week’s newsletter on the work of the Liberal Democrat group in the House of Lords

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Roger Roberts: May’s Counter-Terror powers could enable her to ban liberalism (via Lib Dem Voice)

Lord Roberts of Llandudno

Lord Roger Roberts gave the following speech expressing his concerns about the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill in the House of Lords at its Second Reading on Tuesday:

I was delighted that Lord Carlile mentioned, in his contribution to the debate, the four Albanians—two Muslims and two Christians—who walked together in the demonstration in Paris

Multi-faith groups exist in many places and people are able to say, “My brother, my sister, my family; we are one family”. We could really tackle a lot of these stresses before they become threatening. There is an opportunity in some way or another to encourage it.

However, the world is full of uncertainties. I am not the only one who remembers the time when it was better to be red than dead—so some said. Others said that it was better to be dead than red. Today it is the difference, between security and liberty. We are trying to see where is the line that needs to be drawn. This Bill seeks to draw that line. I sometimes measure our civilisation by Alan Paton’s (the author of Cry, the Beloved Country) values. In a lecture in 1953, he declared himself a liberal and defined the term thus:

By liberalism I don’t mean the creed of any party or any century. I mean a generosity of spirit, a tolerance of others, an attempt to comprehend otherness, a commitment to the rule of law, a high ideal of the worth and dignity of man, a repugnance of authoritarianism and a love of freedom.

Full article here

Paddy Ashdown: Paris attacks: We have experienced anarchy like this before. We should not over-react to it (via The Independent)

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon

They say that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. The “Charlie hebdo” atrocities of last week are many things; frightening, terrifying, atrocious, a horror, an attack on what we stand for. But, as a phenomenon they are not new, or exceptional or uniquely Muslim.

You do not have to be a young Muslim living in the 21 century to be subject to radicalisation. It has always, down the ages been possible to persuade young men (and a few – a very few young women) of all faiths and none to the believe that is noble to kill innocent people in pursuit of what they have been persuaded is a great cause. As far back as the first century, the Jewish Zealots did it against Roman rule. In the 11 century the Shia Muslim Hashashin added another word – assassin – to our vocabulary of terror by their attacks on the Persian Government of the day. In our own time we have had to deal with our own “home grown” so called “Catholic” terrorists of the IRA (who by the way killed and destroyed far more than the current wave of jihadist outrages) – as well as the outrages perpetrated by the anti-imperialist urban terrorism of  young middle class white Germans in the Bader-Meinhof Gang and its successor the Rot Armee Fraktion.

Perhaps the closest parallel to what we are seeing now is the Anarchist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. All entirely “home grown” and without any kind of formal command structures, they too were a collection of “lone wolves” inspired by texts and prepared to kill and maim to abolish states and replace them with borderless self-governed entities which, leaving aside that they were based on a political idea rather than a religious one, bear a striking similarity to the caliphate model of today.

Full article here

Letter of the Lords – 8 December 2014

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