Latest news with #LordFalconer
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
We feel duped and insulted by this Labour government
Lord Falconer's assessment of the government (Starmer's team seen as 'tired, same-again politicians', says Labour peer, 9 August) does not acknowledge the depth of feeling on current issues, and his advice for the future is itself 'same-again' and 'tired'. After the last general election, Keir Starmer promised us hope and an assurance that the 'broadest shoulders' would help to turn around the country after 14 years of disastrous and deeply damaging Conservative rule. However, the public clearly didn't think that axing disabled people's benefits or removing heating allowances from pensioners fitted the 'broadest shoulders' definition. Rather large 'fuck-ups', as Falconer puts it, in a handful of weeks. The pro-Israel, pro-US foreign policy agenda, while a terrible genocide unfolds in Gaza, has also proved deeply unpalatable. The public feel duped and insulted by this 'blue' Labour government, with its unashamedly authoritarian assault on democracy. I agree with the 'same old, same old' sentiment: same lower- and middle-income earners paying the same price for the same old financiers, political lobbyists, rightwing campaign groups, global corporations, arms manufacturers and their vested interests. Yes, the 10-year NHS plan is welcome, but the failure to tax the super-rich and initiatives such as the environmentally catastrophic planning reforms outweigh any positive steps. Falconer suggests No 10 should unapologetically drive through ideological change, but that approach is doomed. Less of the tone-deafness and failure to read the room, and more consultation, more humanity, are what the people BorgesStowmarket, Suffolk Charles Falconer's critique of Labour in government sums up the situation very well. I would just add that disillusionment and absence of hope combine to make this an unhappy, uneasy country. Yet our government apparently fails to see any link with increasing polarisation, conflict and crime. It's proving a costly failure for us all, but especially for the people who are marginalised and vulnerable. We should expect JonesLondon
The Guardian
29-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Palestine Action is part of Britain's proud history of protest. Proscribing it is an assault on democracy
The facts are not disputed. On 20 June, two activists spray-painted two RAF Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton, where flights regularly leave for RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. No person inside the compound was harmed. At worst, these actions may amount to offences around criminal damage and trespass. The former justice secretary Lord Falconer has stated that the action at Brize Norton would not justify outlawing the group. But that is exactly what is happening. The home secretary's decision to proscribe Palestine Action and to lay an order so swiftly in parliament on Monday will be viewed as a dangerous acceleration to authoritarianism. This means the full weight of the British anti-terrorism state apparatus, including its coercive elements, will be deployed against Palestine Action's leaders and potentially thousands of young British supporters, with devastating consequences for their futures. The actions used by Palestine Action are not new. They follow a tradition of protest that has been instrumental to civil rights movements throughout history. Indeed, these actions have shaped modern Britain and enriched democratic participation globally. As a veteran anti-racist civil rights campaigner, for nearly five decades, I continue to support scores of families seeking justice. These have included the families of Blair Peach, Stephen Lawrence, Zahid Mubarek and Victoria Climbié, who were not only traumatised by the way their loved ones were killed but faced a litany of institutional failures. During every campaign, we faced politicians who ignored or played down our lived experiences blighted by violent and state racism. They also chose to ignore the more subdued and normalised forms of protest that we organised. We were compelled to find creative ways to get the urgency of their message across. We shouldn't forget the real purpose of the action at Brize Norton – it was to draw attention to British military collaboration with the Israeli government, including its spy flights over Gaza. This is during a war that has led to an unprecedented level of mass killings of Palestinian civilians, near-complete destruction of Gaza's infrastructure, including hospitals, and a deliberate policy of starvation, all leading to official accusations of genocide and action on crimes against humanity. British complicity in Israel's war is a matter of public interest that is too often either ignored or under-reported. Palestine Action is a network of activists that organises peaceful direct-action tactics to expose and target property and premises connected to Israel's actions in Palestine. Since its inception, more than five years ago, it has primarily disrupted the operations of Elbit Systems. Elbit is Israel's largest arms company. The group claims that its campaign has successfully secured the closure of several Elbit factories. What Palestine Action understands – and this is borne out by my own experience – is that to bring about change in Britain there is an almost inexhaustible need to press the issue and raise attention. In the Stephen Lawrence case, the family campaigners had to devise extraordinary steps that included an unprecedented private criminal prosecution coupled with protests before the state acknowledged and the public realised the significance of failures in this case. Even then it did not guarantee justice for the family. The actions deployed were peaceful but all of us – the parents, their barrister and I – suffered the indignity of being spied upon by undercover officers who were tasked to sabotage the campaign I coordinated. The deployment of undercover officers in protest groups is now the subject of the undercover policing inquiry. The home secretary will be aware that protest actions have been organised for decades targeting military bases and aircraft. For instance, from 1981 to 2000, activists disrupted RAF Greenham Common – locking on to the gates, breaking into the grounds and climbing on top of missile silos. In 2003, five protesters known as the the Fairford Five were arrested and charged for disrupting military operations at RAF Fairford. One of the defendants, Josh Richards, was represented by Keir Starmer. Starmer argued that while the actions broke the law, they were justified as the protesters were trying to stop the planes from committing war crimes. Richards was acquitted because the jury failed to reach a verdict. The smear campaign against Palestine Action has already begun. It is accused of being funded by Iran or the mouthpiece of Hamas. These accusations are meant to malign a group that is made of ordinary citizens – teachers, nurses, students and workers. I have met many of them. The drastic move to outlaw Palestine Action would set a dangerous precedent where all civil disobedience actions could be classified as terrorism. Its real crime is being fearless and audacious in exposing the British government's complicity with the Israeli government at a time when it is being pursued by the international court of justice for genocide, and its leaders have had arrest warrants issued against them for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Above all, the move by the home secretary reflects the diminishing of a mature democracy. As a society, we cherish solidarity actions that make a real difference to defenceless people. Will parliament stand up to the home secretary and reject her proposal? History tells them to do so. Suresh Grover is founder of the Southall Monitoring Group and has led campaigns to help the families of Stephen Lawrence, Zahid Mubarek and Victoria Climbié
Yahoo
28-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Starmer defends benefits U-turn and says fixing broken welfare system a ‘moral imperative'
Sir Keir Starmer has warned Britain's benefits system is broken and fixing it is a 'moral imperative', days after a revolt by his own backbenchers forced him into a U-turn on welfare cuts. The Labour leader announced the climbdown late this week, in the face of potential defeat by Labour MPs over his plans. On Saturday he pledged Labour would not "take away the safety net" on which vulnerable people rely. But he added that he could not let welfare "become a snare for those who can and want to work" as he said that "everyone agrees" on the need for change. Earlier he faced calls for a 'reset' of his government, in the wake of the welfare debacle, by the Labour peer and party grandee Lord Falconer. The veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott also hit out at some of Sir Keir's advisers, calling them 'angry and factional' in an interview with the BBC's Today programme. Despite the climbdown the prime minister is also continuing to battle with some of his own MPs over the planned cuts, with reports some rebel MPs will attempt to put down a new amendment on Monday to delay the bill. On Friday Ms Abbott said that reports of the rebellion's death 'are greatly exaggerated'. Downing Street now expects its plans to pass their second reading in the House of Commons on Tuesday, however. In a speech to the Welsh Labour conference, Sir Keir said repairing the system had to be done in a "Labour way". "We cannot take away the safety net that vulnerable people rely on, and we won't, but we also can't let it become a snare for those who can and want to work," he said. "Everyone agrees that our welfare system is broken: failing people every day, a generation of young people written off for good and the cost spiralling out of control. "Fixing it is a moral imperative, but we need to do it in a Labour way." Sir Keir had been facing a humiliating defeat, with more than 120 Labour MPs having signed a rebel amendment seeking to kill the welfare bill. But leading economists have warned that, taken together, the U-turns on benefit cuts and winter fuel payments have blown a £4.5bn hole in the public finances that will 'very likely' be filled by tax rises in the autumn Budget. The Resolution Foundation said the prime minister's decision to protect existing claimants of disability benefits and health benefits would be far more expensive than expected. The Resolution Foundation said the change to Sir Keir's welfare bill, which will protect all those currently claiming Personal Independence Payments (PIP), will stop 370,000 people from losing the support. That will cost £2.1bn per year by 2030, while a separate move to protect the income of all those receiving the health element of Universal Credit, which will affect 2.2 million people, will cost up to a further £1.1bn each year. It will wipe out up to £3.2bn of the £5bn the government had hoped to save through the changes. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research said taxes will 'almost certainly' go up in the autumn. There is speculation the chancellor could raise the money through so-called 'fiscal drag' by freezing income tax thresholds, with Ruth Curtice, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, saying the 'most obvious thing' would be to extend the freeze for another two years. Ministers have refused to speculate on how the government will pay for the changes. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said Sir Keir had left the country with 'the worst of all worlds' after the U-turn.
The Guardian
05-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Sadiq Khan is right: Britain must decriminalise cannabis – or remain in the dark ages
Yet another attempt to inject sanity into Britain's archaic drug laws has failed. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, last month accepted Lord Falconer's modest proposal to decriminalise the possession of small amounts of cannabis. He was stamped on yet again by that citadel of reaction, the Home Office, and its boss, Yvette Cooper. Falconer's distinguished group of lawyers, doctors and academics did not suggest legalisation. They simply argued that treating people using cannabis as criminals served no purpose. It confused soft drugs with hard, was racially biased in its enforcement, diverted police time from more pressing matters and denied help to those who needed it. An old game of media interviews is to ask politicians if they have ever taken drugs. Prime ministers from David Cameron and Boris Johnson to Keir Starmer, as well as the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, have either admitted to taking them or refused to deny it. Politicians feel that what the middle classes do at university is harmless fun. If it happens on a council estate, however, it is a route to prison. The reality is that the divide in Britain is not between those 'in favour' of cannabis and those against. It is between those who care about the impact of criminalisation and those who don't, a subset of whom merely want to sound macho. Decriminalisation in one form or another has been proposed for a quarter of a century. In 2000 the Police Foundation committee on drugs, of which I was a member, advised downgrading cannabis from a class B to a class C drug and in effect decriminalising it – but politicians never followed through. This was despite a poll by the Mirror in 1997 showing that almost two-thirds of the public were then in favour of decriminalisation. In 2004 cannabis was reduced to class C but not decriminalised. Then, in 2009, Gordon Brown played tough and returned it to class B. The then home secretary sacked the government's drug supremo, Prof David Nutt, for even breathing the word reform. By 2010 there were 43,000 convictions a year for drug possession, more than half of them for cannabis. An internal government report recommended decriminalisation in 2016 but was suppressed. The government even denied a freedom of information request, as if national security were at stake. The more studies and inquiries recommended reform, the more Whitehall dug in. Courts and jails became increasingly clogged and have remained so ever since. The hottest market for cannabis in Britain is now his majesty's jails. The UK is adrift in the western world in still wasting billions on its 'war on drugs'. Half of US states have legalised and licensed cannabis, including cities such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. In California there are cannabis cafes, cannabis farming estates and even cannabis sommeliers. Of course there have been problems, not least with hard drugs in libertarian Oregon. New York's licensing system has not worked, with illegal outlets outnumbering legal ones. But no one wants to go back. As it is, more Americans today smoke cannabis than tobacco, including an astonishing five times more among those aged 18 to 34. There has been no noticeable collapse in American people's health. Even Donald Trump favours legalising cannabis for personal use in his home state of Florida. Other countries, such as Canada and Uruguay, have legalised cannabis. Many more have decriminalised possession, including Portugal, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Spain and, as of last year, Germany, where individuals can grow and use small quantities. Plenty of British police forces have also gone down the Falconer route to some degree. There has been de facto decriminalisation in Durham and a number of other forces, as well as a successful but not repeated Metropolitan police trial in Lambeth, south London, in 2001. Other countries have researched, experimented and innovated. They have found ways to handle cannabis without disaster. Many places, such as Colorado, have taxed it and seen a boost in local revenue. Strong cannabis, or skunk, is bad for you but large numbers of Americans are clearly finding cannabis preferable to tobacco. It is not going away, any more than alcohol or cheeseburgers. British home secretaries behave like the politics addicts they are. They close their eyes and ears and scream. The real issue in Britain is not drugs. It is the systematic ruining by the state at vast expense of tens of thousands of young lives each year. The damage is done not by cannabis, but by criminalisation, which draws young people into gangs that deal it and from there towards hard drugs and imprisonment. The result is that society suffers a monster misdirection of police resources. Violent crime in London has increased almost every year for the past decade. There has been a rise in sexual assault, car and phone thefts and petty fraud. Shoplifting in London rose by an extraordinary 54% last year. Imagine how much time the police would have were they not spending so much of it stopping, searching, and testing people for drugs. Volunteers struggling to combat drug use – defying the government by testing drugs at music festivals, combating Glasgow's drug problem and keeping children out of county lines – have known one thing for the past quarter century. Whatever needs to be done about drugs, the criminal law as enforced in Britain is a useless answer. Police forces and charities have tried to advance decriminalisation against rigid opposition from Whitehall. As for elected mayors and local discretion, forget it. Westminster's contempt for local democracy is unrivalled. The truth is that what is lacking is not more reports or more brains, it is more guts. On drugs, Britain is still in the dark ages. Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
Telegraph
30-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Poll of the week: Should cannabis possession be legal?
Sir Sadiq Khan has called for cannabis possession to be decriminalised. The Mayor of London backed calls for decriminalisation this week because of concerns that drug laws were having a negative impact on relationships between the police and ethnic communities. We asked Telegraph readers: Should cannabis possession be legal? A staggering 71 per cent of over 79,000 respondents voted it should remain illegal. Your reasons ranged from health concerns to its adverse effect on the community and anti-social behaviour. Sir Sadiq, who oversees the Metropolitan Police, Britain's biggest force, came out in favour of decriminalisation following an independent commission led by Lord Falconer, the former Labour justice secretary, which found current cannabis laws were 'disproportionate to the harms it can pose'. One reader, a retired police officer, has seen the impact of cannabis abuse first hand. Mark Kelly said: 'It should never be legalised. The paranoia and schizophrenic episodes caused by it are devastating to families.' Malcolm Fannon, a fellow retired officer, said: 'If I had a pound for every minute I spent rolling around on the ground with people supposedly mellow on cannabis, I'd be a very rich man. 'There is no such thing as a soft drug – the laws around all illegal substances should be strengthened, not diluted.' Many of you agreed, highlighting the adverse health impacts. Sue Procter noted: 'It is highly addictive and can cause depression, anxiety and in some cases extreme psychosis. These effects are permanent, and our liberal attitude to this drug is why our younger generation are all out of work because of their mental health.' A number of readers also pointed out that cannabis can be seen as a gateway drug leading to other substances. Janet McHugh said: 'Drug addiction often starts with this drug in young people who think it's safe.' Robert le Gaillard added: 'Having worked with drug addicts for 20 years, I can confirm that Khan is a fool. Cannabis is the gateway drug to hard drugs.' Others drew attention to the smell associated with the drug. Edward Thomas said: 'I'm sick of the smell of cannabis wafting from benches occupied by derelicts in my local park when I grab a moment in a very busy week to walk the dogs with the kids in the evening.' Some readers, who have tried cannabis themselves, agree that it should remain illegal. Sean Seekins shared an experience of having a 'space cake' in Amsterdam. Seekins said: 'Any substance that affects the brain in such a way will do damage in the long run.' One of our readers recently visited Portland, Oregon, where drug possession had been decriminalised. Peter Cumpson said: 'On the airport train, a couple got on and started snorting cocaine. Everywhere in the centre of town, you'd see dishevelled broken people looking a bit dangerous. I vowed never to go back.' Amid the uproar surrounding Sir Sadiq's proposal to decriminalise the drug, several Telegraph readers voiced support for his position. Some highlighted the potential for regulated sales to deliver a significant economic boost, while others emphasised the drug's medicinal benefits. Reader Donald Morris said: 'There is a simple solution here. Cannabis production should be regulated, and only consumption of regulated cannabis allowed.' In agreement, Cassandra Blackley commented: 'We should legalise natural cannabis. A well-regulated and well-taxed market for pre-rolled spliffs would mean that users could lawfully enjoy the recreational and relaxation benefits of cannabis in the privacy of their own homes. 'This would raise millions of pounds for the Exchequer, reducing the millions spent on pointless enforcement and gutting the black market for criminal gangs.' While Adrian Rainer said: 'I personally don't think anything natural should be illegal in the first place. But I do disagree with Sadiq Khan turning this into a race thing.' Reader John Crawley lives in Canada, where recreational cannabis use has been legal since 2018. He said there have been 'no problems with anti-social behaviour'. He continued: 'We can buy it in all forms and use it to help with sleeping, instead of using prescribed sleeping tablets. Cannabis has so many therapeutic benefits, including controlling epilepsy, insomnia and other medical issues.' Angela Smith, a UK citizen, has lived in California for the last 16 years. She said: 'There is overwhelming evidence demonstrating the incredible medicinal benefits of cannabis. Forcing people underground who benefit from it for various medical conditions serves no one but drug dealers. 'I believe it saved the life of my son, who had cancer at the age of 11 and was able to be given cannabis oil with the blessing of his oncologist. 'It dismays me that attitudes in my home country are so far behind the US when it comes to cannabis. We need to stop framing this as a dangerous recreational drug and start integrating it into medical treatment modalities. It's shameful that the UK is so slow to respond to science. 'Please wake up people — we have a very valuable medicine here that is being overlooked.'
