Sunday, November 7, 2010

Righting Wrongs: A Day of Dignity for Harlow

A very special afternoon. At the Netteswell Memorial Garden in School Lane, there was a remarkable ceremony - covered by the BBC - to mark the building of the new memorial to fallen soldiers who had died in action since the Second World War. It is a tribute to Harlow British Legion and Harlow Council that they ensured the Memorial was built.

For too long at Remembrance Services, only the names of those in action before or in the Second World War have been read out. In future, all those who have passed away since 1945 will be included. This wrong has now been put right.

It was very moving to see the families of the fallen, lay tributes to their loved ones. Many local residents also attended the event to show their support.

It was a day of Remembrance for our braved armed forces and a day of dignity for Harlow.

We shall never forget.

P.S. I learnt today that 1966 is the only year since 1939 where no member of the armed forces died in action.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

The Phil Woolas case will have profound repercussions on the way we fight elections - for the better

The Phil Woolas Case - whilst controversial - will have profound implications for the conduct of future elections.  Candidates will have to think twice before putting out deliberate mis-information.

Throughout the last election, the Labour Part put out  numerous leaflets which were designed to scare the wits out of pensioners, mothers and cancer sufferers.  In Harlow - as in other marginal constituencies - leaflets/letters were sent out suggesting that Tories would cut cancer treatment, close down Sure Start Centres, and take away free bus passes and the winter fuel allowances for pensioners.

Despite denials from Mr Cameron during the debates - and the embarrassment of Gordon Brown - millions of these kinds of leaflets were still given to voters all around the country.  Some of them were even endorsed by 'celebrities' and 'soap stars', with the aim of giving them an additional air of authenticity.

Election after election, it has been far too easy for Labour to frighten the most vulnerable in our society.  Mr Woolas's actions were no worse than what his party has been doing for many years. His case will at least make those who peddle falsehoods during election campaigns, think twice before doing it again.

by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com

Thursday, November 4, 2010

We don't need Quangos we need the FSB and BCC

One thing that has always amazed me is why so many quangos and committees have been set up in recent years - many in the Eastern Region - purporting to support businesses - and funded by taxpayers money. These unelected bodies have been given huge government grants and have the ability to pick 'winners' or 'losers'. Because they are funded from the taxpayer, they put other business organisations at a competitive disadvantage - as they have no access to taxpayers' largesse.

It is good that the Government are getting rid of these quangos - like the East of England Development Agency for example. Organisations like FSB Essex and Essex Chambers of Commerce do a far better job in supporting business, are genuinely representative and based on voluntary consent rather than taxpayer compulsion. FSB Essex for example does more for small business that any bloated bureaucracy. At least the new Local Enterprise Partnerships - which will have tiny budgets - have major representation from the FSB and other business organisations.

That is why I am very pleased to work closely with organisations like Essex FSB. They do a tremendous job in standing up for small businesses in Harlow and across the County. They are incredibly active in trying to get policy changes that will help their membership - which runs into the many thousands.

PS. On 21 January 2011, I will be holding a special Business Surgery - with Essex FSB - in the Harlow Kao Hockham Building. The aim is to meet local small businesses and hear their concerns about finance and the economy and reflect their views back to Government Ministers. It is great that the FSB have been so pro-active in making this happen.

You can see more details by clicking this weblink: http://www.fsb.org.uk/News.aspx?loc=101&rec=6743

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Wednesday, November 3, 2010

The EU Fritters away yet more money: This time on a failing mobile phone operating system



What's the worst mobile phone operating system (OS)?  Which one has mobile phone companies deserting in droves? The answer is Symbian - primarily used by Nokia. Whilst most consumers have gravitated to Android, Apple and Blackberry, Nokia has been losing sales because of its outdated Symbian OS (phones like the flagship N97 and N86 were riddled with bugs and the company suffered real damage to its reputation).
Unsurprisingly both Samsung and Sony-Ericsson have announced they will no longer use Symbian, preferring Android/Windows or their own OS.
So guess which mobile phone operating system the EU has decided to give €22 million to in the form of an EU grant? The answer is of course Symbian.
According to Mobile News:
"The EU project will become known as SYMBEOSE, meaning ‘Symbian – the Embedded Operating System for Europe’. Under the terms of the agreement with the EC, the Artemis initiative will match the investment made by the consortium, providing the other half of the required funding in order to meet the full cost of the SYMBEOSE development project".
The fact that the EU seeks to use €22 million hard-pressed taxpayers money to subsidise a mobile operating system is bad enough.  What makes it even worse is that it has chosen to subsidise the De Lorean of systems. 
How can it be right for the EU to waste our money in this way - and choose to give a taxpayer subsidy to promote one mobile phone system over another.  Surely this is an anti-competitive measure against other mobile phone companies?
Now, you may read the above as something just for geeks to consider.  But it is much more than that.  The EU's huge grant to Symbian, is yet another example of how the organisation is choosing losers and frittering away taxpayers' money on a grand scale. 
by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Stopping the Conveyor belt to Terrorism

For the past few days we have been pre-occupied with the horrific bomb plots involving cargo planes.  Thanks to the effort of our intelligence services, mass murder - planned by extreme Islamists - was thwarted once again.

When the terrorists fail, we are always reminded of the chilling IRA statement (made after the Brighton bomb):

"We only have to be lucky once, you have to be lucky always".

Despite the efforts of the Intelligence Services, the conveyor belt to Terrorism remains all too strong.  Extreme Islamism is being appeased on our campuses for example.  The 'underpants' bomber in Detroit, was 'nurtured' at UCL.  As highlighted in the November issue of Standpoint magazine, a recent UCL inquiry into the bomber, attempted to white-wash the issue, rather than confront Islamist extremism at the University.

Unless we can deal with the conveyer belt to terrorism: controlling fanatical Islamists in our Higher education groups, outlawing extreme Islamist groups and banning known Islamists from entering the UK, we will not succeed against the terrorists themselves.  You can't deal with the one without the other.

Fortunately, the Home Secretary Theresa May has shown real awareness and understanding of this problem.  Despite the best efforts of some senior civil servants in the Home Office - who believe appeasement is an adequate solution (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8071101/Theresa-May-should-sack-top-terrorism-adviser.html) - this Coalition government has made real concrete moves to try and get people off the conveyer belt.  No longer will Britain be a safe haven for extremists like Al Qaradawi or act as host nation for Hezbollah or Hizbut-Tahrir.

Yesterday, in the Commons, during a Commons Statement on the bomb plot,
I asked the following question:

Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con): I commend the security services for doing a remarkable job, but does not the incident involving the Detroit bomber show that other parts of civil society, such as our universities, are failing to get a grip on Islamist extremists? Does the Home Secretary agree that, for our fight against terrorism to succeed, we need to deal effectively with the conveyor belt to terrorism, just as we must deal with the terrorists themselves?

Mrs May: My hon. Friend has raised an important point. I hope that I can reassure him that, alongside our work on the incident at the weekend and on reviewing our counter-terrorism legislation, we are also looking at the development of extremism and the process of radicalisation. It is important that we ensure that people do not get drawn into a radicalised agenda that leads to extremism, violence and terror. That work is ongoing.
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An Internet Bill of Rights

Last week, many MPs joined me in calling for an Internet Bill of Rights.

In the wake of Google's Street View project, this would protect ordinary people against Internet companies, and give us some right to privacy.

A video of my full speech is HERE, and the Hansard text follows bellow.


MPs have accused internet giant Google of deliberately spying on households for commercial gain

 
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con): I begin the debate by thanking the new Backbench Business Committee for accepting my submission and agreeing to give parliamentary time to this important subject. As with the election of Members to Select Committees, the Backbench Business Committee is a small step in redressing the balance of power, moving it from the Executive to the legislature. It is therefore appropriate that one of the early Back-Bench debates should be on the subject of civil liberties.


In recent years, we have become increasingly focused on freedom. With every terrorist atrocity, our civil liberties have been curtailed, often in a somewhat draconian manner. I therefore welcome the coalition Government's determination to redress the balance by reviewing the anti-terrorism legislation, scrapping identity cards, abolishing the national identity register and the contact point database, and halting the next generation of biometric passports. However, I do not wish to talk about state surveillance this afternoon.
I requested this debate because of my concern-and that of many others, including hon. Members here today-about what I term the privatised surveillance society. By that, I mean the surveillance of individual citizens by advanced internet companies; ordinary people have no right of redress, and there is no possible sanction. I will set out what I perceive to be the problem, the reaction thus far of the authorities, and what steps I believe should be taken to deal with it.


My question is this: are we sleepwalking into a privatised surveillance society? How can we stop it? Before I examine the arguments, let me first declare an interest. I am no internet luddite, but rather a passionate advocate for its cause. I blog using Google and Twitter, and I am active on Facebook, where I am lucky enough to have 1,400 friends. In fact, I am an enthusiast for Google products. I run my Commons business using Google Mail; I have Google Sync on my BlackBerry, and I use a Google Android phone. I prefer Google Chrome to Microsoft Explorer. I am a huge believer in the power of the internet to do good, and to be, potentially, a force for democratic development, allowing citizen power at its best.
However, there is a great difference between advancement of the internet and the violation of people's right to privacy. Private companies seem to have acquired the right to photograph what goes on in people's gardens. That is a dangerous shift, because if no one has any right to privacy, we will soon be living-dare I say it?-with a privatised version of Big Brother run by some of the internet companies. That is the scenario slowly creeping up on us. I say that because many of my observations today will focus on Google's activities, such as street-mapping, accessing people's personal wi-fi addresses, and-as we learned from newspapers and Google's official blog a few days ago-the harvesting of personal e-mail addresses and passwords.


I acknowledge that Google is by no means the only guilty party. As The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted in a special series, there is a problem with what is termed scraping. Scraping is the process whereby internet companies such as Facebook and MySpace pass on user names and personal information to other companies for commercial purposes, without the consent of the individuals concerned.

The issue of civil liberties and internet privacy first came to a head not long after I was elected to this House in May 2010. The newspapers revealed that Google had been mapping people's personal wi-fi data without their permission. I found that an astonishing revelation, and subsequently tabled a number of early-day motions. I also wrote to the Information Commissioner's Office to ask its view on the matter, but I received what I can only term a lamentable response. The clearly standard reply stated:
"The ICO has visited Google's premises to assess samples of the "payload" data it inadvertently collected. Whilst Google considered it unlikely that it had collected anything other than fragments of content, we wanted to make our own judgment as to the likelihood that significant personal data had been retained and, if so, the extent of any intrusion. The information we saw does not include meaningful personal details that could be linked to an identifiable person...It is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data."


That raises two issues. First, did Google harvest meaningful personal data without people's consent? Secondly, did it capture a significant amount of that personal data?
In the view of the UK Information Commissioner, who examined the Google computers, there was nothing to worry about. I have subsequently spoken to the Information Commissioner. His view is that although he would have liked to take stronger action against Google, his office was constrained by the Data Protection Act 1998. Perhaps that is true, but why was it not said at the time? There is nothing in the Information Commissioner's first announcement about insufficient powers or the constraints of the Data Protection Act. That inertia seems all the more disappointing given that other groups were working hard to protect the British public.
Many privacy campaign groups, such as Big Brother Watch, have raised awareness of the issue in the media. Privacy International complained to the Metropolitan police in London, who opened an investigation into Google under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006. Why was that left to private groups and individuals? The Information Commissioner has said that the Data Protection Act prevented further action from being taken, but what was his view of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the Wireless Telegraphy Act? Why was Google not referred to the police?
The public whitewash was all the more surprising given the actions of many other Governments around the world. In Spain, there is a formal judicial inquiry and the threat of a substantial fine. In South Korea, the police have raided Google's headquarters. Serious investigations were undertaken in France, Germany, Italy, and Australia. Israel is considering the problem in its 32nd international conference on data protection and privacy commissioners, before Street View has even reached its shores. In Canada, the privacy commissioner has launched a legal inquiry on the basis that Google defied Canada's privacy laws. In Greece and the Czech Republic, Street View has been banned altogether. In America, Google faces a class action lawsuit over data harvesting, as well as a large-scale investigation backed by 38 states.
Let me return to the critical questions. Did Google harvest meaningful personal data without people's consent? Did it capture a significant amount of that personal data? A few weeks ago on 14 September, I went to visit the impressive Google headquarters in London and I asked some questions. I stress that the company has always been open to discussion, and courteous when dealing with my concerns. At that meeting, I was given the strong impression that the wi-fi details harvested were basic and did not amount to much. In other words, Google told me that the data were not meaningful, and that they were not collected in significant amounts. It was therefore strange to read what Google's vice-president of engineering and research, Alan Eustace, wrote on the company's blog over the weekend. He admitted that his company's Street View cars captured
"entire e-mails and URLs...as well as passwords"
on a mass scale. He added:
"We want to delete this data as soon as possible".
We have to take his word for it, but it is hard to do that when, contrary to what the Information Commissioner announced this year, and contrary to what Google said to me in September 2010, meaningful personal data were collected in significant amounts.
The issue is simple: either meaningful personal data were collected in significant amounts, or they were not. In July 2010, we were told that they were not; in October 2010, we were told that they were. I sincerely hope that this House, the Government, and the British public, have not been deliberately misled. I also hope that Google's U-turn is voluntary, rather than a scenario in which it admitted the truth only because investigations by other Governments gave it no alternative.


As The Daily Telegraph stated on 23 October 2010, Google admitted that it
"downloaded personal data from wireless networks when its fleet of vehicles drove down residential roads taking photographs for its controversial Street View project... Millions of internet users have potentially been affected."
Among the information gathered were millions of e-mails, passwords, and the addresses of websites visited by private households. That is unacceptable.
The problem should have been picked up by the Information Commissioner in the first instance. Major questions need to be asked. Why did the Information Commissioner assure the public, the Government and the House that all was well? Why did it take an admission of malpractice on the company's own blog to trigger a new inquiry by the Information Commissioner?
It is not enough to say that the whole thing was an innocent mistake, as Google has suggested. That was its line when Street View uploaded images of naked children without the consent or knowledge of those involved. It was its line when a Google engineer was able illegally to access children's private e-mail accounts and telephone records. Google took disciplinary action only after parents complained that the engineer had illegally used Google data to harass four of their children.

I find it hard to believe that a company with the creative genius and originality of Google could map the personal wi-fi details, computer passwords and e-mail addresses of millions of people across the world and not know what it was doing. My feeling is that the data were of use to Google for commercial purposes and that that is why it was done. Of course Google denies that, but for me the question is whether the company underestimated the reaction of the public and many Governments across the world once it was revealed what Google had done.


Even if Google had not harvested oceans of data without anyone's consent, and even if the Information Commissioner's Office had not been so lamentable in its response, I would still have concerns about Street View. In many ways, Street View is a brilliant innovation. I am sure that many of us in this Chamber have used it from time to time as a three-dimensional "A to Z", but street-mapping has been done without anyone's explicit permission. Millions of houses and gardens are photographed in micro-detail and put on the web. As I mentioned, there were episodes in which Google photographed naked children and uploaded the pictures to the web. Although the pictures were subsequently removed, they should not have been there in the first place. I am sure that hon. Members will have tales to tell of e-mails sent by constituents about similar situations.


One lady from a village in Cornwall e-mailed me about today's debate. Wanting to remain anonymous, she said:


"The camera must have been elevated to at least 10 feet high to get these shots. I live in a small hamlet, and on Street View it is possible for someone to see right into the rooms of our house. I am so angry at the infringement of our privacy but until now have had no-one to take up the cause."

I have no problem with Google photographing me in my garden, or my house, and putting those images on the web, but the point is that I want to give Google permission to do so. I want to opt in. Some people will respond that any citizen can walk up a street, taking pictures of people's houses. Of course that is true, but there is a difference of scale and of commercial interest. Google was not sightseeing; it was creating a product to sell advertising on a mass scale. No private citizen has the millions of pounds or dollars at their disposal to take a detailed picture of every house, street and company in Britain. That makes this case fundamentally different.

I welcome the moves by the German Government to give people a chance to opt out of Street View before the pictures are published. Nearly 250,000 Germans have opted out of Street View. That is roughly 3% of households.


Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con): What my hon. Friend has described sounds like a systematic pattern of behaviour, but it is worse than that. It is a systematic pattern of behaviour backed up, frankly, by systematic mendacity on the part of Google, which first says that it happened by accident, then says that it was a mistake and ends up saying, "Well, we will eventually get rid of the data." Does not that argue to my hon. Friend-he does not have to answer immediately-that we have to take quite firm legal action with respect to people's rights of privacy and their property rights regarding privacy and with respect to the penalties that ought to face a company as huge as Google, perhaps as a fraction of its turnover?
Robert Halfon: My right hon. Friend is a great defender of civil liberties and we are lucky to have him at the debate. I agree with him absolutely. Later in my remarks, I shall be able to give a more detailed answer to what he has suggested.


As Germany's Interior Minister said in September 2010,

"If companies do not adopt satisfactory new rules, we will create more restrictive privacy laws. However, a voluntary code of sufficient strength and scope could make special regulations unnecessary, at least in part."

In my meeting with Google to discuss Street View, it implied that blackening out houses in a street view would make things look "unseemly". My answer to that is, so what? If aesthetics are sacrificed in the cause of liberty, that can only be a good thing. This is an important principle. Either our home is our castle or it is not. Google's actions indicate an all-too-frivolous view of the rights of the individual against the advancement of internet technology.

However, as I stated in my opening remarks, we should not be worried just about Google. There are also reports that BT has been, allegedly, trawling people's Facebook accounts to check for critical comments about the company. Again, that is totally out of order. There must be a limit to what these companies do. We may accept that, in the present day, most of these internet companies have good and honourable intentions, but we are setting a precedent. If we permit this invasion of privacy today, what might it be used for tomorrow?

A case in point is scraping, which I mentioned. Thanks to The Wall Street Journal, we now learn that the internet has given rise to thousands of data brokers and middlemen. They gather information from property records, social networking sites and telephone listings and by scraping data from websites where people post information about themselves. The point is not that those data are publicly available, but that they are being aggregated on a mass scale in a way that threatens individual privacy.

If we accept that civil liberties are being violated in the way that I have described, we must also acknowledge that something must be done about it. In some ways, what is going on is much more dangerous than state surveillance, because at least the citizen knows his rights and there is some possibility of legal redress. Also, it is possible to sack a Government if we are unhappy with them. We are familiar with the idea that there is a social contract between Government and citizen, but what is the social contract between a citizen and an internet corporation?

Street View affects everyone. Its impact is not limited to Google's customers. When it comes to internet companies, the question of citizen rights is much murkier and less defined. That grey area has allowed firms such as Google to get away with what they have done. The reality is that a lot of privacy encroachment is going on that has yet to be uncovered.


Returning to the remarks by my right hon. Friend, I believe that there needs to be a robust inquiry, with teeth, into the role of the internet and its relationship to individual liberty.

Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this very important debate and on the eloquent way in which he is presenting his very important case. Does he agree that one of the frightening aspects of all of this is that we depend for information about what is happening and what the companies are up to on the companies themselves? As he pointed out, none of this would come to light unless the information was presented by the companies. Therefore, we do not know exactly what is going on. That is a key point, in terms of people knowing what is happening.

Robert Halfon: The right hon. Gentleman makes the extremely important point that in some ways we are becoming so dependent on the internet companies that that allows them to do what they are doing. He is exactly right.


I am not against private companies - I am a Conservative, after all. As I mentioned, I use Google a lot to run my parliamentary business, but this time it has gone too far. Indeed, there is a danger that one day, no one will have any privacy whatever-and this time the threat is not from the state.

I accept that, despite what I have described, there are no easy answers. When it comes to the advance of the internet, it seems that the rights and responsibilities are still unclear. I accept that it is very difficult for a nation state to deal with what is in effect a transnational company.

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con): I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that the problems regarding Google and the invasiveness of the internet arose before the capturing of the information that should not have been caught? One of the groups of people who have suffered as a result is young people and teenagers. A number of suicide sites have been established and information is passed via social networking mediums such as Facebook and other mediums to teenagers, who are particularly vulnerable and have been particularly badly hit by that. Perhaps it is time for us to examine how the internet has operated and invaded people's lives in an adverse way, and to start talking about some form of regulation that protects individuals.

Robert Halfon: My hon. Friend makes a good point which, although slightly different from what I am focusing on today, is relevant to the role of the internet. I think she will be pleased to hear what I say later in my remarks.

The time has come for the Government to set up a serious commission of inquiry composed of members who have expertise in civil liberties, the internet and commerce. The commission should suggest a new legal framework to redress the balance, giving citizens an affordable and speedy means of redress.

Perhaps the best means would be an internet bill of rights, which would give the citizen some notion of his rights. At first, such an internet bill of rights might be a semi-voluntary code, as currently proposed in Europe. The system would be self-regulating, in the same way as the British Medical Association can mediate over doctors' behaviour, or the Law Society can judge legal practice. If an inquiry finds cases in which a company has infringed upon people's privacy without their permission, perhaps there could be some sort of fine.

Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD): I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for securing this interesting debate. I am interested to hear how he develops some of his points.

The hon. Gentleman keeps talking about companies. Although he touched briefly on the role of the Government, would he not agree that, while infringement by companies is a serious problem, infringement by Governments-which has happened so often, through the former intercept modernisation programme, the Digital Economy Act 2010 and the huge amounts of data held by the Government-is at least as chilling, not least because so much more money and infrastructure back it up? How would he tackle that issue?

Robert Halfon: I was pleased to serve with my hon. Friend on the Public Bill Committee that considered the abolition of identity cards. He is also a huge defender of civil liberties, and has been so for many years. He is right, and raises an important subject, but one for another debate. Today, I am focusing specifically on the activities of internet companies and their role in curtailing our civil liberties.

Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con): I, too, join those congratulating my hon. Friend on orchestrating the debate today.

On regulation, specifically, does my hon. Friend think that there is any merit, or viability, in establishing an industry-wide data security mark of some sort. Is there not a clear commercial incentive for companies such as Google to ensure that they get this right, and to satisfy the general public that they are getting it right? What about a kitemark or some such security apparatus, which would allow the public to see the quality or otherwise of companies such as Google and their security infrastructure? Would my hon. Friend support something such as that?

Robert Halfon: My hon. Friend is exactly right. It is that sort of thing that I hope the independent commission of inquiry would consider. Although internet companies are global, nothing would stop the Government from fining their operations in the UK.

I stand before the Chamber known as Robert Halfon. However, if I took the advice of the Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, I might have changed my name by now. In August, Mr Schmidt suggested that people might have to change their names in order to wipe their personal histories as captured on the internet. His vision for Google is not just to monitor people, but to predict their behaviour. He has said that

"most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next".

In the future, Google will


"know roughly who you are...what you care about...who your friends are".
Mr Schmidt also said:
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
Therein lies the problem we have been discussing today. It is the nub of the whole subject. For Mr Schmidt and his company, Google, the burden of taking defensive action because of activity by internet companies lies on the individual. In fact, in my view and that of many others, it should be the opposite.


Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD): On that very point, would my hon. Friend not accept that it is almost impossible for the individual to take action. We saw that in particular, for example, in 2007, in the what I would call illegal trials by BT of the system of Phorm to identify internet users' advertising preferences, so that they can be targeted. The individual cannot protect him or herself.

Robert Halfon: In some ways my hon. Friend is right, but that is why we should have an independent commission and a bill of rights, because they would help. We will never be able to stop everything, but we would have some right of redress. It should be up to the internet companies to respect the rights of the individual, not the other way around.

I am calling for an internet bill of rights, a proper inquiry and an Information Commissioner who genuinely acts to safeguard our liberties. I hope that hon. Members and the Government will be able to support that.





by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com

Monday, November 1, 2010

English Votes for English Laws

Last week, I asked the Scottish Secretary:

"Does the Secretary of State recognise that residents in my constituency and elsewhere believe that alongside his plans for Scottish devolution, England deserves a fair constitutional settlement, with English votes for English laws?"

It seems wrong that Scotland and Wales can vote on their own affairs separately, but that we English have no direct say on our own laws.

My own preference would be English votes for English laws, so that there is fairness in our political system.

by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com