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Tag: House of Lords
ERG Conservative MP Steve Baker says the new PM must ‘carry through the current NI Protocol policy’.
He suggests that if the current policy is not carried through the “Eurosceptics would implode the government”.
#Ridge: trib.al/dwvcRFT
Labour to step up efforts to stop ‘reckless’ NI Protocol Bill in Lords
Friday 21st October, 2022.
Labour peers are to step up their campaign to stop the “reckless” Northern Ireland protocol bill being passed with demands for more than 20 changes.
Jenny Chapman, the shadow cabinet minister in the Lords, told the Guardian the bill was “an abomination, undermining the UK’s hard-won reputation as a responsible, trustworthy partner” and called on the government to “scrap this reckless legislation”.
When the committee stage begins in the Lords on Tuesday, Labour peers will put the government on notice that the bill will not proceed to the next stage until a variety of conditions are met. These include a promise that diplomatic efforts to end the row over the protocol are given a chance to work before any legislation is passed. The bill is one of Liz Truss’s flagship policies.
In a motion of regret, Labour will also ask the government to prepare and publish “an impact assessment outlining the likely consequences of the use of powers in this bill on the Northern Ireland business community”. The party wants the government to publish “indicative regulations, which may be laid using the powers in this bill”, as well.
The bill as it stands gives ministers powers to introduce new laws to undo Brexit arrangements with little scrutiny, something that has fuelled sharp criticism both in the Commons and the Lords.
The proposed legislation has also been criticised on the grounds it would breach the international treaty signed by the EU and the UK agreeing to the protocol as a means of preventing a trade border with customs posts and checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Lady Chapman said: “The government must not squander the opportunity of its negotiations with the EU. With hard work and compromise on all sides, a deal is achievable to end this damaging, self-inflicted standoff, and scrap this reckless legislation.”
Labour will table 22 “probing amendments” including several that would set strict conditions under which any laws could be used.
The party is suggesting the proposed legislation should make it “a statutory requirement for the government to seek a negotiated outcome with the EU and to exhaust legal routes under the EU withdrawal agreement before availing itself of the powers in this bill”.
Several amendments address fears raised by legal experts of the extraordinary powers the bill confers on ministers to create new laws. The government has claimed these powers are designed to undo EU rules on VAT and state aid but experts have said they would set a precedent that is dangerous in a democracy.
The controversial bill was tabled by Truss earlier this summer when she was foreign secretary, but when she became prime minister she agreed to give negotiations another chance.
In the last two weeks there has been a flurry of diplomatic activity involving talks between the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, and European commissioner and vice-president Maroš Šefčovič.
The Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, has also said he hoped for a diplomatic solution that would make the need for the legislation “redundant”.
With many thanks to the: Guardian
Lord Triesman expresses what he thinks of the DUP’s stance on the NI Protocol
Never heard of Lord Triesman before, but I think I like them.
DUP’s hard position on protocol ‘to prevent Sinn Féin First Minister’.
http://seachranaidhe-irishandproud.blogspot.com/2022/10/dups-hard-position-on-protocol-to.html
Lord Ken Clarke of Nottingham tells the DUP how it really is on the NI Protocol
UK’s Saudi weapons sales unlawful, Lords committee finds
Report finds UK arms ‘highly likely to be cause of significant civilian casualties in Yemen’
The UK is on “the wrong side of the law” by sanctioning arms exports to Saudi Arabia for the war in Yemen and should suspend some of the export licences, an all-party Lords committee has said.
The report by the international relations select committee says ministers are not making independent checks to see if arms supplied by the UK are being used in breach of the law, but is instead relying on inadequate investigations by the Saudis, its allies in the war.
It describes the humanitarian plight of Yemenis as “unconscionable”.
It is the first unanimous report from a parliamentary committee describing Saudi arms export sales as unlawful, and comes ahead of an imminent high court appeal by campaigners to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia on the grounds they are in breach of humanitarian law.
Although a patchy ceasefire holds around Hodeidah, Saudi airstrikes are reported by the Yemen Data Project to be at their most intensive since the four-year civil war began in Saada governorate along the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
The US Congress voted earlier this week to suspend US arms sales to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen, but the White House has signalled the president will veto the resolution if necessary.
The Lords’ international relations committee concludes following a short inquiry: “The government asserts that, in its licensing of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, it is narrowly on the right side of international humanitarian law. Although conclusive evidence is not yet available, we assess that it is narrowly on the wrong side: given the volume and type of arms being exported to the Saudi-led coalition, we believe they are highly likely to be the cause of significant civilian casualties in Yemen, risking the contravention of international humanitarian law.”
The committee also asserts that the UK “should immediately condemn any further violations of international humanitarian law by the Saudi-led coalition, including the blocking of food and medical supplies, and be prepared to suspend some key export licences to members of the coalition”.
It adds it is “deeply concerned that the Saudi-led coalition’s misuse of the weaponry is causing – whether deliberately or accidentally – loss of civilian life.
“Relying on assurances by Saudi Arabia and Saudi-led review processes is not an adequate way of implementing the obligations for a risk-based assessment set out in the arms trade treaty.”
The committee, chaired by the former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Howell, describes the British as supporters of the Saudis in the civil war.
The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has taken up the search for a peace settlement in Yemen as his single most important priority, apart from Brexit, and travelled to Warsaw this week to meet with Saudi, UAE and US ministers to discuss the state of the limited Yemen ceasefire negotiated in Stockholm in December.
The joint statement issued by the four countries following their talks was sharply critical of the Houthis adherence to the Stockholm agreement, but nevertheless agreed to do more to stabilise the Yemen economy in the north.
However, the peers urge the UK to be more active.
The committee, including senior former diplomats, says: “The government should give much higher priority to resolving – not just mitigating – this situation, particularly in light of the tension between its support for the Saudi-led coalition and its role as a major donor of humanitarian relief to those affected by the conflict.”
In its latest update on the war, the NGO International Crisis Group says: “Though the battle for the Red Sea port and city of Hodeidah is paused until the UN-brokered deal to demilitarise the area succeeds or collapses, fighting on other fronts has intensified, particularly along the Saudi-Yemeni border … Saada governorate has faced more Saudi bombardments than any other part of Yemen since the war began in March 2015, with the majority of strikes taking place near the border.”
With many thanks to: The Guardian for the original story
ULSTER UNIONISTS SUSPEND LORD LAIRD
The Ulster Unionists have suspended Lord Laird from their West minister team.
It follows claims that he agreed to carry out parliamentary work for payment.
Undercover Sunday Times reporters filmed three peers who appear to offer to help a fake solar energy company. Wwhich is illegal for a member of Parliament in the UK to accept cash for bribes.
Lord Laird, Lord Cunningham and Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate deny wrongdoing. BBC Panorama and the Daily Telegraph filmed Lord Laird discussing a retainer for parliamentary questions.
With many thanks to : BBC NEWS.
Related articles
- PR professional Lord Laird is no stranger to controversy (irishtimes.com)
- Lord Laird resigns party whip (newsletter.co.uk)
- Lord Laird resigns UUP’s whip (bbc.co.uk)
- Ulster Unionist peer Lord Laird resigns whip over cash for access lobbying allegations (independent.co.uk)
- Lord Laird loses party whip. (politics.ie)
- Peer resigns whip over cash for access (thetimes.co.uk)
- Lord Laird relinquishes whip ‘pending investigation’ (itv.com)
Create a PageBoston College Subpoena News
McConville death secrets in Boston archive
McConville death secrets in Boston archive
January 24, 2012 Leave a Comment
McConville death secrets in Boston archive
Newsletter
Published on Tuesday 24 January 2012
SEVERAL former terrorists did speak about Jean McConville’s murder on secret tapes held in Boston College, an American judge has dramatically confirmed.
The contents of the tapes were meant to remain in a vault at the US university until each paramilitary’s death, but the judge deciding whether they should be given to the PSNI has revealed some details of what they said.
The revelation comes as Northern Ireland’s former Police Ombudsman gave her backing to the detectives’ attempts to access the tapes – a bid that appears more likely to succeed in light of Judge William G Young’s written ruling.
Baroness Nuala O’Loan told the News Letter that police have a duty to pursue all avenues of inquiry when attempting to solve crime and that there should be no amnesty for terrorists.
The solicitor said that there was no legal basis on which academics or journalists could tell former terrorists that information about murders would be kept away from the police.
The secret recordings of former terrorists speaking candidly about their actions during the Troubles were given on the belief that they would be held in a vault at the American university until after each individual’s death.
However, a PSNI legal bid to access the archive in an attempt to solve the 40-year-old murder of Jean McConville is on the verge of being successful. A final appeal, lodged by two of those involved in the interviews, journalists Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre, is due to be heard in the coming days in what may be a final bid to prevent the tapes’ release after the college declined to appeal an earlier judgment in favour of the PSNI.
In his ruling, Judge William G Young said: “…only six interviewees even mention the disappearance of Jean McConville that constitutes the target of the subpoena.
“One interviewee provides information responsive to the subpoena. Another proffers information that, if broadly read, is responsive to the subpoena.
“Three others make passing mention of the incident, two only in response to leading questions. It is impossible to discern whether these three are commenting from personal knowledge, from hearsay, or are merely repeating local folklore.
“In context, the sixth interviewee does nothing more than express personal opinion on public disclosures made years after the incident.
“The court concludes that the full series of interviews of the five interviewees first mentioned above must be disclosed and that the interview with the sixth need not be produced.
“Moreover, two other interviewees mention a shadowy sub-organisation within the Irish Republican Army that may or may not be involved in the incident.”
However, Judge Young said that the references were “so vague” that it was almost inconceivable that UK law enforcement did not already have the information.
In the House of Lords, Baronness O’Loan – who sits as a crossbench peer but whose husband Declan was until last year the SDLP MLA for North Antrim – said that the Boston College tapes could be recovered by the police.
Baroness O’Loan raised the Boston College tapes in the context of the difficulties in “managing the past”. She cited it alongside the recent release of 1981 hunger strike Government papers which “appears to indicate that lives could have been saved”.
“Despite the facts that some of those involved [in the hunger strike] are still alive; there is no threat of prosecution; and that no amnesty is required – we do not have an agreed version of what happened,” she told the Lords.
“The second involves the recent controversy surrounding the British application for the tapes recorded by former IRA member Dolores Price and stored in an archive at Boston College in the United States.
“Since making that tape, Ms Price has indicated that she drove a number of the Disappeared to their deaths at the hands of the IRA. Police investigating the abduction and murder of Jean McConville, a mother of 10, require access to the tapes for investigative purposes.
“The Boston project was predicated upon assurances that the tapes would not be disclosed until after a period of 30 years, or the death of the individual.
“It is obvious that such assurances could not lawfully be given. Journalists and academics are subject to the rule of law, as the rest of us are, and material can and will be recovered by the police according to the law for investigation purposes.”
Speaking to the News Letter, Baroness O’Loan said that the police were right to ask for the tapes.
“The police are under a duty to seek evidence if it can be secured and they are complying with that duty,” she said.
“This is a perfectly proper request on the part of the police. I think that if we have rules of law then the application of that law should be applicable to everyone — that should be the beginning and the end of it. Let the courts decide.”
Baroness O’Loan also told the Lords that the Government needed to “establish the rule of law” so as to deter recruitment by both dissident republican and loyalist paramilitaries.
And she said that suggestions of a truth commission — something supported by Sinn Fein and the Eames-Bradley report — were deeply problematic.
“It is now being suggested that the only way to deal with the past would be a truth commission, with an amnesty for all individuals who appear before it.
“To suggest this is to ignore international law, which provides that you can have no amnesty for gross violations of human rights.
“The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is often held up as a model, would not satisfy the requirements of international law. If we did what it did, we would have to establish an amnesty committee that would sit in public, before which people would have to appear to seek amnesty, and in the course of which they could be cross-examined by victims and their families.
“In South Africa 7,000 people applied; 849 were granted amnesty. Such hearings in Belfast could hardly be expected to consolidate the peace process.
“The consequential truth commission would hear testimony from individuals who chose to appear. Experience to date suggests there would be a very low participation rate.”
Caught in a Tug of War
January 24, 2012 Leave a Comment
Caught in a tug of war
By Kevin Cullen
Boston Globe
JANUARY 24, 2012
Carrie Twomey left her home in Ireland to attend a court hearing about Boston College oral history project about the conflict in Northern Ireland for which her husband Anthony McIntyre was a researcher. She says her family will be in danger if the tapes are given to British authorities.
Carrie Twomey got off a train at South Station yesterday and walked down the platform of Track 5 enjoying, just for the moment, something she’d give anything to have permanently: total anonymity.
Her grandfather was from Lynn and her relatives worked at General Electric and the shoe factories. She grew up in California and married an Irishman named Anthony McIntyre and they made a life together in Ireland, first in the North, now in the South. She came to Boston because she believes the only way that life will be secure is if a bunch of tape recordings remain secured at the Burns Library at Boston College, and not turned over to the British government.
The fate of those tapes, in which former Irish Republican Army members discuss what they and others did during the war in Northern Ireland, has been cast as a legal drama, a precedent-setting case with potentially chilling effects on oral history and the peace process. But it is also very much about a family, about Carrie Twomey, her husband, and their two kids, a 10-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy.
Anthony McIntyre, who served 18 years in prison for IRA activity before getting his doctorate in history, was the researcher hired by Boston College to interview former IRA volunteers for an ambitious oral history project. He did this after BC guaranteed him and those he interviewed that those tape recordings would remain sealed until their deaths.
But last year, police in Northern Ireland started fishing for details in the BC archives about the IRA’s 1972 abduction, killing, and secret burial of Jean McConville, a Belfast mother of 10 accused of being an informer.
US prosecutors, acting on a British government request, demanded BC turn over the tapes. At first, BC said it wouldn’t. Then its lawyers claimed it had to, at least those of Dolours Price, a former IRA volunteer who told a newspaper that she had told BC that Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams ordered McConville’s slaying.
Adams has denied this, and whatever Price or anybody else told McIntyre for an academic project will not stand up in court, but that’s not what this is about anyway. It’s not about justice, it’s about revenge, and Carrie Twomey’s family is caught in the middle of pure politics masquerading as a search for truth.
US District Court Judge William Young occasionally holds motion hearings at local law schools, so students can get a sense of the real world. By sheer coincidence, today’s hearings, which include one on the BC tapes, will be held at BC Law School, and Carrie Twomey will be there.
She hopes part of that real world experience will include acceptance of the real possibility that her family is in danger if these tapes make it into the hands of British authorities and lead to either public disclosures or public prosecutions. For carrying out research for an American university that has been cynically turned into an intelligence-gathering operation for a foreign police force, her husband has been branded an informer by some in a culture where that can get you killed.
“Anthony’s been made into a hate figure,’’ she said. “Someone with a grudge, someone who wants to make a name for themselves, someone who’s unstable, that’s who we have to worry about.’’
She is not here to testify as a witness but to bear witness, to let the lawyers know there are real people involved. She says BC is too busy worrying about its institutional concerns to advocate for her family.
“I’m here to show that this isn’t just dusty old legal papers,’’ she said. “This is a real family.’’
Beyond the danger to her family, Carrie Twomey worries about the prospect of truth and reconciliation in a country where truth has become a political football, that Seamus Heaney’s poem about Northern Ireland will become self-fulfilling: Whatever you say, say nothing.
Complaint for Judicial Review
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURTFOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
———————————————————————xED MOLONEY AND ANTHONY MCINTYRE,Plaintiffs,-
vs. -ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., ATTORNEY GENERALOF THE UNITED STATES, and JOHN T. McNEIL,COMMISSIONER IN RE: Request from the UnitedKingdom Pursuant to the Treaty Between theGovernment of the United States of America and theGovernment of the United Kingdom on MutualAssistance in Criminal Matters in the Matter of Dolours Price.Defendant.:::::::::::::::::::
ECFCOMPLAINT FORJUDICIALREVIEW UNDERTHEADMINISTRATIVEPROCEDURESACT, FOR ADECLARATORYJUDGMENT, WRITOF MANDAMUSAND INJUNCTIVERELIEF
28 U.S.C. §220128 U.S.C. § 13615 U.S.C. §70228 U.S.C. §1331———————————————————————x
PLAINTIFFS’ COMPLAINT FOR JUDICIAL REVIEW UNDER THEADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES ACT, FOR DECLARATORYJUDGMENT, WRIT OF MANDAMUS AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF
Plaintiffs Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre, by and through theirattorneys, Dornan & Associates PLLC, and the Law Offices of James J.Cotter III, as and for a Complaint against the Defendants, the AttorneyGeneral of the United States, and the Commissioner so described, herebymove the Court for judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act,5 U.S.C. §702
et seq,
as well as a Writ of Mandamus under 28 U.S.C.
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