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NZ Herald
36 minutes ago
- NZ Herald
US Vice-President JD Vance's UK stay causes stir, manor owner apologises for disruption
It came as Vance interrupted his holiday with a high-stakes meeting to discuss a peace plan for Ukraine. The Vice-President and the Foreign Secretary held security talks on Saturday (local time) about a controversial Russian proposal under which Ukraine would permanently cede territory currently under occupation. Chevening House, the UK Foreign Secretary's Grade I-listed summer residence near Sevenoaks in Kent. Photo / Getty Images The White House is pushing for Europe to accept a deal. Security preparations In the Cotswolds, a number of people could be seen roaming the manor house's 2.4ha grounds, while a man in a black suit and tie with an earphone and a US/UK flag lapel badge stood at the entrance. Black trucks unloaded heavy duty boxes and marquees had been erected across the road at two locations, each housing a generator and chairs. A large antennae was erected behind the house, which locals mused could be a signal jammer, an anti-drone system or a telecoms tower to beat the haphazard phone reception. One resident said: 'It's humming constantly, I thought if I go near, it might improve my signal, but no luck.' Other antennae appeared on the manor house's roof. Vehicles marked with the branding of an event production company and blacked-out vans transporting people drove to and from the manor throughout the day. Workers could be seen arranging cushions on the furniture outside. A resident said the usual household staff had been relieved of their duties for the week. US Vice-President JD Vance (left) fishes with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy at Chevening House in Sevenoaks, England. Photo / Getty Images Asked about the Vice-President's impending visit, an American man moving bags of linen said with a wry smile: 'Who? I'm unsure who that is.' Vance, who is travelling with his wife, Usha Vance, and children Ewan Vance, 8, Vivek Vance, 5, and Mirabel Vance, 3, has previously had to cut holidays short and take extra safety precautions. In March, he ended his Vermont ski trip early after crowds turned out to protest a day after he 'ambushed' Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a bad-tempered meeting between US President Donald Trump and the Ukrainian leader in the White House. When the Vances visited Rome the following month, the Colosseum was closed early to accommodate them, which infuriated other tourists. 'The Hamptons of the UK' The people of Charlbury, which is home to two acclaimed pubs, The Bell and The Bull, were on Saturday (local time) bracing themselves for the arrival of the Vice-President. The manor in which Vance will be staying is said to have been built in around 1702 for Thomas Rowney, an Oxford MP. When the Hornbys bought it, they submitted planning proposals for a basement gym, second cellar and orangery. The Cotswolds have been described as the 'Hamptons of the UK', in reference to the upmarket New York State coastal resort. The areas has offered refuge to runaway Americans such as Ellen DeGeneres and hosted events such as the multi-million dollar wedding of the daughter of Steve Jobs, the late Apple founder. The manor is in the heart of the area populated by the 'Chipping Norton set', the group of political, media and entertainment figures of which David Cameron was a prominent member. Vance, whose wife studied for her Master's degree at Cambridge University, has built a close relationship with Lammy. They met while Labour was still in Opposition, as part of Lammy's 'charm offensive' targeting Republicans close to Donald Trump.
Otago Daily Times
7 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Europe stresses need to protect Ukrainian interests
European leaders have welcomed United States President Donald Trump's plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on ending the war in Ukraine. But they have stressed the need to keep pressure on Moscow and protect Ukrainian and European security interests. Trump plans to meet Putin in Alaska on August 15, saying the parties, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, were close to a deal that could resolve the three-and-a-half-year conflict. Details of the potential deal have yet to be announced, but Trump said it would involve "some swapping of territories to the betterment of both". It could require Ukraine to surrender significant parts of its territory, an outcome Zelenskyy and his European allies say would only encourage Russian aggression. US Vice President JD Vance met British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, and representatives of Ukraine and European allies on Saturday at Chevening House, a country mansion southeast of London, to discuss Trump's push for peace. A joint statement from the French, Italian, German, Polish, British and Finnish leaders and the president of the European Commission welcomed Trump's efforts, while stressing the need to maintain support for Ukraine and pressure on Russia. "We share the conviction that a diplomatic solution must protect Ukraine's and Europe's vital security interests," they said. "We agree that these vital interests include the need for robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity," the statement said, while adding: "The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine." The leaders also said "they remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force," and added: "The current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations." They said negotiations could only take place in the context of a ceasefire or reduction of hostilities. Zelenskyy's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, who took part in the talks with European leaders and US officials, said Ukraine was grateful for their constructive approach. "A ceasefire is necessary - but the front line is not a border," Yermak said on X, reiterating Kyiv's position that it will reject any territorial concessions to Russia. Yermak also thanked Vance for "respecting all points of views" and his efforts toward a "reliable peace." A European official confirmed a counterproposal was put forward by European representatives at the Chevening meeting but declined to provide details. The Wall Street Journal said European officials had presented a counterproposal that included demands that a ceasefire must take place before any other steps are taken and that any territory exchange must be reciprocal, with firm security guarantees. "You can't start a process by ceding territory in the middle of fighting," it quoted one European negotiator as saying. A US official said hours-long meetings at Chevening "produced significant progress toward President Trump's goal of bringing an end to the war in Ukraine, ahead of President Trump and President Putin's upcoming meeting in Alaska." The White House did not immediately respond when asked about the European counterproposals. British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke and pledged to find a "just and lasting peace" in Ukraine and "unwavering support" for Zelenskyy while welcoming Trump's efforts to end the fighting, a Downing Street spokesperson said. It was not clear what, if anything, had been agreed at Chevening, but Zelenskyy earlier called the meeting constructive. "The path to peace for Ukraine should be determined together and only together with Ukraine, this is key principle," he said in his evening address to Ukrainians. NBC News cited an unnamed US official as saying that the Trump administration was considering inviting Zelenskyy to join the US and Russian presidents at their Alaska meeting. A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this, and Russian and Ukrainian officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Macron stressed the need for Ukraine to play a role in any negotiations. "Ukraine's future cannot be decided without the Ukrainians, who have been fighting for their freedom and security for over three years now," he wrote on X after what he said were calls with Zelenskyy, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Starmer. "Europeans will also necessarily be part of the solution, as their own security is at stake." 'CLEAR STEPS NEEDED' Zelenskyy has made a flurry of calls with Ukraine's allies since Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff's visit to Moscow on Wednesday which Trump described as having achieved "great progress". Ukraine and the European Union have pushed back on proposals that they view as ceding too much to Putin, whose troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, citing what Moscow called threats to Russia's security from a Ukrainian pivot towards the West. Kyiv and its Western allies say the invasion is an imperial-style land grab. Moscow has previously claimed four Ukrainian regions - Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson - as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed in 2014. Russian forces do not fully control all the territory in the four regions and Russia has demanded that Ukraine pull out its troops from the parts that they still control. Ukraine says its troops still have a small foothold in Russia's Kursk region a year after they crossed the border to try to gain leverage in any negotiations. Russia said it had expelled Ukrainian troops from Kursk in April. Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said the current peace push was the first "more or less realistic" attempt to stop the war but she remained sceptical about the agreements being implemented. "There is virtually no doubt that the new commitments could be devastating for Ukraine," she said. Fierce fighting is raging along the more than 1000km front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russian forces hold around a fifth of the country's territory. Russian troops are slowly advancing in Ukraine's east, but their summer offensive has so far failed to achieve a major breakthrough, Ukrainian military analysts say. Ukrainians remain defiant. "Not a single serviceman will agree to cede territory, to pull out troops from Ukrainian territories," Olesia Petritska, 51, told Reuters as she gestured to hundreds of small Ukrainian flags in the Kyiv central square commemorating fallen soldiers.
RNZ News
13 hours ago
- RNZ News
What you need to know about Regulations Review Committee and the new law undermining it
Labour MP Arena Williams chairing Parliament's Regulations Review Committee. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith Among Parliament's many committees there is a small cross-partisan powerhouse that receives scant attention. Unlike the 12 subject committees, it isn't a regular forum for critiques of government bills or finance. Unlike Privileges it isn't about scandal and politics, unlike Petitions it doesn't regularly bring human emotion into Parliament. The Regulations Review Committee is small, calm and cooperative. It is like Parliament's off-field referee; a committee for the legal nerd and the constitutional swot. It inspects the government's use of its delegated powers to weed out government overreach. But the Regulatory Standards Bill proposed by ACT leader David Seymour would duplicate and likely undermine its role, by giving a regulation oversight role to a government-appointed group . Recently on The House we reported a briefing to the Reg's Review Committee (as MPs describe it), about the proposed law. As a follow-up we wanted to discuss the committee itself with the MPs that run it, so we met with the leaders of the committee to discuss its purpose, powers, history and how it's responding to the new challenge. By convention, Reg's Review is chaired by an Opposition MP-currently Labour's Arena Williams. The Deputy Chair is National MP Nancy Lu. Rather than acting as political rivals, they operate as a team. "Most of the committee's power is… because it's cross-partisan," Williams said. "I mean, that's what's important here, that we are able-me and Nancy-to work together, to chair the committee in a way which gets buy-in from everyone around the table." Regulations Review manages this cross-partisan approach because its fundamental drive is not about policy, but good law. "Basically, we want good lawmaking," Nancy Lu said, "and we want ministers and departments who have the power to make regulations, to actually make good use of their power and make good regulations for New Zealanders… Sometimes things come to us because there may be inappropriate use of the power (in making regulations), or there are complaints from New Zealanders. And therefore it is our job to look at it bipartisan[ly] and with one common purpose-which is better good lawmaking." National Party MPs Joseph Mooney & Nancy Lu in Parliament's Regulations Review Committee. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith When governments want to change the law in New Zealand they have to ask parliaments to do that. Parliament is sovereign, government is only a subset of Parliament. But primary legislation (the Acts that parliament agrees) can't possibly include all the necessary details for efficient government, so laws often delegate authority to ministers or their departments, to specify or update legislative details later. Those post-hoc details are regulations. "Most New Zealanders will come up against the law," Williams said, "but it'll actually be in regulations. "…So if you've ever tried to, say, install a toilet in your bathroom, you will have run up against what's in the building code. "It's not actually in the primary legislation, but that building code has a big impact on your life." The law that delegates that authority to make regulations is agreed by the House, but the regulations themselves are not approved by the House before coming into force. The Regulations Review Committee fills that gap. It tests existing regulations, and any proposed laws that give regulation-making power. Anyone can make a complaint to the committee about a regulation. The committee can investigate regulations and recommend that the House strike them down ("disallow" them). The committee was created in 1986 in the parliamentary reforms of Labour's Geoffrey Palmer. It was a Labour campaign promise, deemed necessary because Robert Muldoon's National Party government had been using vastly powerful regulations to achieve things that ought to have been approved by Parliament. Things like wage freezes, price fixing and carless days. "Regulation-making was getting to be seen by the public as an overreach in itself," Williams said. "The power of the Executive was seen as a bit out of control. Your fruit and your vegetables, your trip in your car. It was all heavily regulated." The solution was to bring Parliament back into the equation. Williams described the response in 1985 to "out of control" regulation as: "a power for elected officials (who get chosen every three years by their communities), to actually strike that [bad regulation] down. "And so that's what the disallowance power is about. …It was enabling this …pressure valve… to turn off some of that overregulation." In fact very few regulations have been disallowed over the years. This is because the committee - being bi-partisan - tends to opt for soft-power, getting ministers to change poor regulations without resorting to the House by spotting the potential for regulatory over-reach within bills under debate. Williams agreed that soft-power was opted for by the committee. "Ding, ding, bingo! …That's 100 percent true. Most of the committee's power is soft power because it's cross-partisan. "I mean, that's the importance here, is that we are able, me and Nancy, to work together, to chair the committee in a way, which gets buy-in from everyone around the table." Asked whether it might be bad for a new National MP's career-prospects to point out the missteps of senior colleagues who were Ministers, both Lu and Williams laughed. "Great question," Williams said. "Most of the feedback that we have received from our ministers and ministries have been actually quite positive," Lu said. "You know, mostly 'hey, thanks for letting us know. We didn't realise that, but now we know', and… 'we'll make it better next time'. "I think that's what makes the… committee powerful and very unique in its way," Lu said. "And I think it's needed, because we want to make sure that we are using our powers within the appropriate realms and to make sure that we're setting good laws. "So maybe hopefully by calling them out, or by investigation, we can make it better in that way." Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan in Parliament's Regulations Review Committee. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith Reg's Review is, on paper, one of Parliament's smallest committees, with just five MPs. Three from National and two from Labour. Despite the official membership, recent changes to parliament's rules allow MPs to attend and participate in select committees they are not official members of. A recent Reg's Review meeting included Labour's Vanushi Walters, and apparently Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan attended often. Williams, as Chair, had a more-the-better philosophy. "It's getting harder in an MMP environment, when we have minor parties that have more sway in any executive government agenda, or indeed, in opposition politics. "It is really great that we have Dr Xu-Nan from the Greens coming along to every meeting and participating in that. "We don't have an ACT member who comes to the committee. And we need more of this ability as parliamentarians to come together and go, 'hang on, does this regulation make sense? Let's do something about it if it doesn't.' " ACT's absence is notable. ACT's brand includes being the natural enemy of bad regulation, but they neither have representation on, nor attend the one parliamentary committee tasked and equipped to fight against it. ACT have instead chosen a different approach, one which may threaten Reg's Review. Their coalition agreement with National includes the passing of a Regulatory Standards Bill, something previous ACT parties have tried and failed to achieve. The bill would, among other things, create an external Regulatory Standards Board, appointed by the Minister for Regulation (currently David Seymour). At first glance, the Board's task appears similar to the current Reg's Review Committee, but it is not. The Board does not have the same powers - it cannot refer regulation to the House to be disallowed. It is a creature of the Executive, not Parliament, and so is on the government side of the governance relationship. It also has a very different idea of what bad law looks like. The new Board would evaluate legislation and regulation against a set of principles embedded in its enabling legislation. The principles consider the effect of legislation on: "existing interests and liberties, including the rule of law, liberties, taking of property, taxes, fees and levies, and the role of courts; and good law-making processes, including consultation, options analysis and cost-benefit analysis." The bill contains a much more detailed list of these principles. While the Board's inquiries could be self-determined, they would also be "in response to stakeholder concerns" and ministerial "direction". The Regs Review Committee also has a list of principles to judge good law-making against. The grounds for referring regulations back to the House are outlined in Standing Order 327. The grounds are that the secondary legislation: While there are concepts that appear in some form in both sets of principles, one set of principles appears focused on good legislative form within constitutional boundaries while the other includes more political philosophy. Regulations Review Committee Chair, Arena Williams said the committee had been "thinking deeply" about the proposed law's impact on the committee's powers, place and processes. She said the prospect of another competing entity was "pretty challenging". Arena said the two bodies appeared similar, but her committee "has this special constitutional place, and traditions that have been built up over many years around the way that we consider whether regulations are doing what they say they will do 'on the tin'." She said MPs had an advantage over appointed board officials, as they represented the affected community. "They get to put us back into Parliament (or not) every three years. …and it makes us all quite focused on… things like, 'how does this really affect someone's life?' "It will ultimately be this committee and the Standing Orders Committee (which proposes changes to Parliament's rules) which have to make some decisions and probably some accommodations …about how to work alongside [each other]. "But ultimately I would say that in our constitutional framework as it is now, that [Reg's Review] has a sort of system of constitutional preference about how it should engage in those issues." That constitutional preference comes from the fact that Regs Review is an instrument of Parliament (which is sovereign). The Regulatory Standards Board would be an instrument of the Executive, which is subservient to Parliament. "I really want to see the Regulations Review Committee as [something that] we can agree as parliamentarians, including ACT members, …is a special part of our constitutional framework. "I think New Zealand is on the good stuff here, when we've got parliamentarians …earnestly and diligently work[ing] through secondary legislation from the perspective of how it's affecting our communities. That's really special. "If [David Seymour] is [saying] there is too much regulation and that there's not a strong enough mechanism to disallow regulations, then this [committee] is the place where I think we should be focussing our attention. "[He should be putting that energy into improving the current] mechanism, so that it is parliamentarians-who are accountable to the people-who are ultimately making the decisions." RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk. Enjoy our articles or podcast at RNZ.
