Many commentators have apparently missed the point about Abu Qatada‘s successful appeal against deportation. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) accepted the Jordanian government’s assurances that Qatada, if returned to Jordan for trial on...
In a lively discussion on the LabourList website of whether Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, lied when he allegedly told Andrew Neil that the SNP government had obtained legal advice that an independent Scotland...
It’s surprising, and disturbing, that the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, should have signed an agreement on the Scottish independence referendum to be held in autumn 2014...
I wrote the following letter to the Guardian minutes before leaving London for a river cruise up the Elbe from Berlin to Prague. The letter was published in the Guardian of 9 October, along...
This is a very rough transcript of how I remember Andrew Marr interviewing the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, on the revealingly named “Andrew Marr Show”, BBC1 television, Sunday 30 September 2012. I can’t of...
The following very informative letter was published in the Guardian on Tuesday, 25 September: Criminal justice and human rights Indeterminate sentences for public protection were introduced by David Blunkett in 2005 for 153 specific...
In her Guardian article today, Polly Toynbee quotes David Laws, now back in government, as saying: As a liberal, I feel uncomfortable at the idea of the state taking half or more of anyone’s...
The bad-tempered outburst by the Conservative Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell, against a policeman (or policewoman?) who wouldn’t open the gates to Downing Street to allow him to ride his bicycle through them, has predictably...
I have put on this website a list of documents on the Web referring to Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs). The list is of course by no means comprehensive. Some of them refer...
In a historic ruling today, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled that it is a breach of IPP prisoners’ human rights to keep them in jail indefinitely because there are no...