New answers tagged united-kingdom
18
Your understanding is correct - there is no UK Prime Minister until one is appointed by the Queen. In the meantime, the Civil Contingencies Act (2004) gives the Monarch (in practice, government ministers) powers to make emergency regulations, and COBRA meetings can be chaired by any Cabinet minister - after 9/11, these were chaired by the Cabinet Secretary ...
7
WHO officials have criticised the UK government's approach to the COVID-19 pandemic
Actually the quoted criticism does not come from the WHO, nor from a current employee of the WHO. It comes from
Professor Anthony Costello, ex-director of maternal and child health at the World Health Organisation
The criticism is of the claim that the UK government ...
46
The ability to return to your country is considered a human right, Article 13(2) of the declaration of human rights and also Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
But cases of quarantine are one of the emergencies where freedom of movement may be restricted. So nations must eventually let their citizens enter, but they can ...
14
It's a balancing act. You want to save as many people from the virus as possible, but you also don't want to disrupt the economy any more than you need to. This isn't just people being greedy either, many people living paycheck to paycheck cannot handle a recession. Some of these people will, after losing everything, commit suicide. Others will turn to ...
2
Because you would potentially destroy some businesses
Understand that minor and temporary inconveniences can be absorbed by the market, but if those distortions last for long periods of time, they can carry serious consequences. For instance, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines is offering full refunds through the end of July
Effective March 6, 2020, the new ...
36
Shutting down schools, banning large gatherings and pushing people to do home office has a massive economic cost. Of course you never get the exact numbers on either death or cost but essentially you have to answer questions like: How many death does one need to prevent to make a 10% reduction of annual GDP worth it? This is a complicated ethical question ...
5
Note: This answer discusses including biological sex on an official ID card (like a passport). This answer does not discuss including gender. I feel that a good discussion about including gender would require establishing what gender is in a universally acceptable way, which would be a large topic in itself. (Also perhaps a separate topic, as some folks ...
66
Specifically with reference to the UK, an article in the Guardian reports that
Experts have warned about the risk that if tough measures are taken too soon, “fatigue” may set in, prompting the public to disregard the advice just as the virus reaches its peak.
Effectively the argument is that, absent some sort of enforcement squad if people are told to ...
0
That's right. Unitary systems are somehow centralized and presidents have more responsibilities. But it's about governors not mayors. They are local.
0
British PM unilaterally appoints the head of Scotland
Yes, that's the Secretary of State for Scotland, who is currently Alister Jack, and his department, the Scotland Office.
While the Scottish Government has administrative control over a lot of things, it's not totally devolved, and crucially the existence of the government is not constitutionally ...
4
I think the key difference is here how the NHS operates, compared to health care in most continental European countries. Being a UK resident is sufficient to qualify for NHS access, there is no additional paperwork required, a rental contract or even say bank statement mailed to you at a UK address suffices. This is not the case in most continental European ...
6
There are specific restrictions imposed by the EU, though most of these are based on historical taxation. Since 2001 sanitary products have been subject to VAT at a reduced rate of 5%
The BBC covered this in a reality check around the time of the Brexit Referendum.
Reality Check verdict: EU rules mean the UK cannot reduce VAT on goods and services below ...
1
I have collated this data by using the look-up table mapping from UK Parliament constituency to European Parliament constituency provided by the Office for National Statistics, as well as the official per-constituency results of the 2017 General Election, available from the House of Commons Library.
The results are below. Note that the calculated overall ...
2
Yes they do (in most cases).
When a state is unitary that means all power ultimately rests in the national government. In most such states the national government creates sub-divisions (counties, cities, regions) and give those sub division some power and in a democracy the local city councillors (or whatever else they may be named) are chosen by the people ...
3
No
Prior to 2011, the Monarchy did possess that ability (although it had not been used in quite some time), but the Fixed Term Parliaments Act officially changed that
Before the passage of the Act, Parliament could be dissolved by royal proclamation by virtue of the royal prerogative. This originally meant that the English, and later British, monarch ...
3
In large part what you're seeing here is the difference between a political theorist and a legal scholar. For a political theorist like Orwell, it's evident that people in Liberal democratic societies hold the law and constitution as something above any individual or group, including the state itself. This is foundational for a republican regime. Republics ...
1
There are two plausible explanations, the first being that they didn't want to contribute to further splitting the Remain-voting bloc, and the other being that they couldn't find a candidate in time.
To provide context to the situation alluded to in the question; originally the main Remain-supporting parties, the Greens, the Lib Dems, Renew, and Change UK ...
2
I think the difference has more to do with the times: in those 70 years, the very perception of the law by the British public changed, and Murkens refers to that.
Disclaimer: I'm not a British, and I infer my perception from 'external observations.'
Up until about Orwell's times and the rise of truly totalitarian regimes in modern Europe, Britain was for a ...
1
I think the first sentence would be better off without the "belief in".
Orwell's passage is arguing about the law as an abstract concept, and how "the Law" is seen by non-experts. A secular belief in something beyond simple earthly power. In his sentence "incorruptible" attaches to "law". It's the kind of sweeping sociographic statement Orwell makes a lot, ...
2
No, the two clauses are not identical.
The key thing to notice is that the Parliament Act 1911 excludes the House of Lords from further legislation, but the House of Lords itself was included in the legislation that lead to the Parliament Act 1911.
Therefore the first clause says that this delegated legislation is not valid on its own because it excluded ...
0
Many recurring taunts and putdowns in British politics stem either from the rules regarding the use "unparliamentary language", or as a result of libel laws. This is due to the fact that once a phrase is considered "acceptable", either due to precedent in the Chamber, or due to a decision of the courts, its use is considered fair game, and it will tend to be ...
1
There are three things that Johnson could have been referring to when he alluded to Bercow "stretching time". Firstly, and most likely, he was referring to Bercow's opposition to Johnson's attempt to suspend parliament, which went on to be challenged in the Supreme Court and be declared unlawful. Before beginning the proceedings to suspend parliament, Bercow ...
11
This is perhaps more of a legal than a political question. I am not a lawyer. The answer below is based on my lay understanding/interpretation of articles and rulings.
What could the UK do if it wasn't signed into the ECHR?
Departing the European Convention on Human Rights and thus the Council of Europe, which I haven't heard being proposed before, ...
24
Wade writes that a passport
is simply an administrative document. On its face it is an imperious
request from the Foreign Secretary that all whom it may concern shall
allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and shall
afford him assistance and protection. In reality it is an
international identity card, certifying that a traveller ...
3
I'll quote from Public Law: Text, Cases, and Materials (2019 4 edn). p 202.
Some sense of how revolutionary the enterprise was considered to be may be gleaned
from the UK government’s reaction to it. The United Kingdom was one of the greatest
supporters of improving human rights protection and, indeed, was the first state to sign
the ECHR. While it ...
0
The UK Government (as opposed to certain individuals within it) do not necessarily want to withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights however they do not wish their room to manoeuvre in this area to be constrained and they also have ideological objections to letting a group of foreign governments (the EU) mandate UK policy.
Brexit is above all ...
3
Adding to the other answers, introducing legislation that provides advantage to a single private organisation is likely to be seen as improper. It also has the potential for other private organisations asking for the Government to step in and introduce legal exclusions for their plans.
As an example, where I live, major developments are required to undergo ...
14
In a nutshell, the UK [Conservative public] wants to exit from the ECHR for the same "take back control of our laws" reason that has been a substantial motivator for Brexit. Some are probably surprised that the UK is still party to the ECHR despite Brexit, because ECHR is a CoE institution, which the UK joined two decades before joining the EU. Nonetheless ...
4
The quote you have provided is from 'Heathrow bosses' not members of the current government. The government will not be appealing the decision.
In fact, the court blocking the runway is a major let off for Boris Johnson who in 2015 vowed to;
“lie down in front of those bulldozers and stop the construction”.
That aside there are a number of reasons ...
14
Chiefly because pundits seem to agree that current government doesn't actually want the Heathrow expansion to proceed. It should be noted that the Government is not pursuing an appeal to the Supreme Court; the case is being pursued privately by Heathrow Airport itself.
The current Prime Minister, then Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, was conveniently ...
8
As is true most everywhere, the answer is likely political cost.
Courts are not inherently political bodies, and are thus insulated somewhat from the political process. There's no political cost to the UK courts ruling it cannot happen.
The same is not true for Parliament. While this is not a major case, there doesn't appear to be any political will to ...
12
There are two kinds of cases which the government has lost repeatedly over the past 20 years and wishes to reverse or win in future: immigration and torture.
The Article 8 right to family life is interpreted as meaning that people have a right to live in the same country as their family, especially spouses and children. The government disagrees - there is ...
10
The recent High Court judgement on the case in question can be found here, where it has decided that the fact finding judgement decided upon in December 2019 should be made public. In particular, it should be noted that this is not a criminal trial, but proceedings in family court, which has led to a so-called Fact Finding Judgement (FFJ). These take place ...
11
Sheikh Mohammed sued his wife for custody of his children, while both she and the children were in the UK. Naturally, the UK has jurisdiction. Princess Haya made various allegations in response (kidnapping, torture), which would plainly be criminal behaviour, if true. Sheikh Mohammed would have immunity from criminal charges relating to these but the court ...
33
Despite the ECHR not being an EU institution, the optics of a European court having jurisdiction over the UK should not be underestimated. This YouGov poll from 2014, shows that the British public favoured withdrawal from the ECHR - the full data shows that the convention is especially unpopular with Conservative and UKIP voters - and this is before the ...
20
The UK can't leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights without withdrawing from the convention. Whilst not an EU institution, it's a popular target for the largely right-leaning tabloid press. So the minimal change is we would adhere to the principles, and retain the Human Rights Act to allow UK courts to rule upon them.
Then there is the ...
7
The Chancellor is allowed to do this as a matter of tradition, as the OP's link says. There's also a practical reason: the Budget speech is often long and complex, and a boost to their morale during the process is reasonable.
Many of the details of operation of the UK parliament are traditions, rather than written rules. The tradition goes back to at least ...
4
Two reasons: (1) That is not its name, and (2) it doesn't like to be reminded of its history.
Its correct (English) name is the Scottish National Party, not "Nationalist." It was founded by the merger of the center-left National Party of Scotland and the center-right Scottish Party.
Until the 1960s the SNP did not have a clear ideology, beyond the vague ...
3
No, it's definitely not the first case. The Dutch government lost a case in 2015, upheld in the Dutch Supreme Court in 2019. It's generally known as the Urgenda case.
5
It is one method of defusing the ability of the opposition of calling them ethnonationalists - and being able to present the SNP as an alternative in Scotland to the Tory (and Labour too) party without being branded antisemitic for example.
I believe that Scotland, due to the oil industry, has a number of ex-foreigners who after, say, 30 years see ...
62
Nationalism today is mostly associated with ethnic nationalism, which the SNP as a center-left party does not wish to be associated with.
Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the SNP, has expressed displeasure with the name because of this:
Nicola Sturgeon has admitted she wishes she could change her party’s name because of the “hugely, hugely problematic” ...
6
There is still some functional purpose where the Speaker can request certain things of the Serjeant at Arms. Last year, there were many examples of a division taking a longer time than usual, and the Speaker would ask the Serjeant to investigate the reasons for this and to report back.
More seriously, the Serjeant can be called upon to enforce certain ...
7
While Change UK may have been the highest profile party to have lasted not very long at all, it's not alone in this regard.
The Trust Party was founded just a few weeks before the 2010 election, in the wake of the Parliamentary Expenses Scandal. While I cannot find an exact date of dissolution for this party, it was reportedly dissolved not long after the ...
3
As far as recommendations made by OLAF go, this case is, and remains, the largest single recommendation made by the body. However, it is not the first time an EU member state has been fined or prosecuted by the European Commission for failing to collect taxes and duties on imports.
This presentation goes into more detail about how the OLAF recommendations ...
2
To perform the analysis below, I've used the General Election 2019 data available from the House of Commons Library.
Spoiler Effect
I've defined a flippable seat as a seat which the Conservative party won, but where the total number of votes won by the Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green & Plaid Cymru candidates was larger. I've included Green & Plaid ...
0
My post suggesting that the EU does not need the UK was deleted. After the UK threat to end negotiations, the value of the pound has fallen significantly against the Euro. This is because people moved their money out of the UK economy into the EU economy. If they thought that the EU needed the UK the pound would have gone up against the Euro.
10
The European Arrest Warrant is an EU council framework decision which only applies to and between EU Member States:
The European arrest warrant is a judicial decision issued by a Member State with a view to the arrest and surrender by another Member State of a requested person, for the purposes of conducting a criminal prosecution or executing a ...
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