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That’s whose prerogative? – politicalbetting.com
That’s whose prerogative? – politicalbetting.com
Rather quietly, the government announced this week the death sentence for the unfairly unloved Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. In truth, it was not that bad a piece of legislation; one which took a power away from the executive and handed it to parliament, at least in small measure.
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Excellent and interesting header. Way above what I am likely to read in the newspapers later.
At Chez W, down the centuries, I've found it a source of marital harmony, calm, and indeed bliss to affirm the prerogative of Mrs Jack W.
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- deployment from 50 'hospital hubs': the larger hospitals, where people will go to be vaccinated
- more local 'vaccination centres'
- community vaccination via (some) GP practices
To get the first batch deployed as quickly as possible, and to avoid the technical complications or potential wastage around breaking the 750-batches, the initial deployment is via the hospital hubs.
Aside from the island's particular issues, what isn't clear is how the phase one method of deployment is going to be reconciled with the priority order, which puts the eldest and most infirm people at the front of the queue; those who it will be most difficult to bring into the 50 hub hospitals (existing inpatients excepted).
Possibly the reason that existing inpatients have very recently been bumped up to the top of the list is because they don't have to be transported (at least for the first dose).
Nudge, nudge (with a sledgehammer) Betfair,
We are not a republic, Miller does not and our courts do not have the reach vested to SCOTUS by Marbury, Miller decided these are questions for parliament not the courts.
A beleaguered PM, a Theresa May for example, should only be able to have an election if she can persuade a majority in the Commons to vote for it. If Parliament instead resolves to replace her with someone who can command a majority that is what would happen, Churchill style.
What the repeal should be looking to achieve is nothing more and nothing less than this: that an artificial barrier inserted to protect a minority partner in a Coalition is removed and Parliament once again regulates its own affairs unimpeded. We do not need prerogatives or any such nonsense giving powers to those who happen to be the executive at any particular moment.
Kay v. Goodwin (1830) 6 Bing. 576, per Tindal C.J.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeal#cite_note-1
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55194988
If that votes for Biden then BF will have another decision to make: do they plough on with the POTUS market until the 21st Jan when Biden is physically holding the blessed bible and swearing the oath?
16 General savings.
(1)Without prejudice to section 15, where an Act repeals an enactment, the repeal does not, unless the contrary intention appears,—
(a)revive anything not in force or existing at the time at which the repeal takes effect;
Interpretation Act 1978
But but
the contrary intention *does* appear in the Bill.
Is this the time to wonder what database they intend to use to try and make sure they reach everybody?
I'm minded to open a book on what will happen first - Betfair settling this market or Mrs Jack W signing a declaration of intent to not set foot in Bond Street ever again !!!!!!
I'm not hopeful ....
Don’t care what chicanery is used to repeal, just do it.
I agree that the issue of ousting the jurisdiction of the courts is doubtful.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-55167882
It doesn't contain more people than are resident though:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-tools-and-services/data-services/general-practice-data-hub/patients-registered-at-a-gp-practice
Edit, oops.. no, it does. I thought it was England & Wales.
- Keep the rules for election timing (although I'd prefer four years max).
- The House of Commons can dissolve itself with a simple majority, but the PM can't do it directly. No point setting the bar any higher if it can be circumvented anyway.
- Votes of no confidence have no legal effect. If you want to replace the PM, pass a motion asking HMQ to appoint a particular person. Don't make her guess at who might command a majority.
A court of law may not question—
(a) the exercise or purported exercise of the powers referred to in section
2,
(b) any decision or purported decision relating to those powers, or
(c) the limits or extent of those powers.
I think this section of the draft bill will receive attention and can't survive scrutiny.
The point nevertheless is that, if you're managing the exercise, the accuracy of the data - the number of duplicates, the number of omissions, and the number of errors - dead people, wrong details, people who have emigrated etc. - is reasonably significant in terms of how effective the whole exercise will prove to be.
My guess is that there are a lot of people still registered with GPs at locations some distance from where they currently live. Particularly younger people who are mobile and rarely need to trouble the GP.
Thankfully, the group most in need of mopping up is young and middle aged healthy men, followed by foreign residents and long-term visitors. They’ll mostly self-present, as soon as nightclubs, festivals and airlines want people either tested or vaccinated.
The ingredient that just about holds the UK's rickety constitution together is convention, which wasn't really touched on in the article. Supreme Court judges might go with convention in their decisions but if people are ripping up constitutional convention, judges have no choice but to go back to first principles.
Well, I despise politicians. Particularly this lot.
But I trust judges far less. One judge, making bizarre rulings on alleged blackmail, very nearly created a situation where a court had created a privacy law in defiance of parliament (and but for John Hemming, probably would have succeeded) merely because he had a personal horror of seeing salacious details of people’s private lives in the papers.
Similarly, the Supreme Court has made some very strange rulings in the last few years, notably on prorogation, and it’s difficult to escape the sense that they did so in order to feel important and to annoy a government they didn’t like.
If I don’t have the power to kick out dodgy judges, I don’t want them making laws on my behalf. At least with Parliament I can vote the bastards out if they annoy me.
(In the US it’s a little different, as the SOCTUS can strike down laws, rather than create them.)
Maybe Australia should move to [former] UK rules?
Indeed, the purpose of the Triennial Acts preceding the Septennial Act was explicitly to circumscribe the King's power to dissolve Parliament without replacement - so the very broad old prerogative power was replaced with a power under legislation to dissolve but with a requirement to hold elections.
So, in my view, and appreciating other legal views are available, it was always a "prerogative-LIKE" power, not a prerogative power. The text of the Act is therefore meaningless - there is no prerogative power to restore. I don't really understand why they haven't taken the obvious route of replicating the text of the Septennial Act as amended (it was a very short Act) and introducing it whilst repealing the FTPA.
But none of the parties liked it and the Brexit deadlock resulted in a rather ridiculous situation.
Similarly Brown v Board of Education, it ruled segregated schools under ‘equal but different’ unconstitutional.
That didn’t create new law by default, as SCOTUK did by declaring that the royal prerogative of proroguing parliament for more than a week had been eliminated by the decision of a Scottish judge in 1917.
It was an absolute nonsense to argue the power to prorogue was non-justicable, but the Government lawyers were forced to do it because no Government minister from the PM down would sign a witness statement saying that the reason for the lengthy prorogation was preparation of a Queen's Speech rather than simply to prevent Parliament sitting. That was because they'd have been nailed for perjury... even though the PM had told that barefaced lie in the Commons.
As David's excellent header implies the repeal of FTPA could be a dry run of what is planned to follow.
I accept my dislike and distrust of Johnson and his acolytes borders on the insane, but the damage they do to sustain themselves, appears tangible enough to me.
Come 2020 not only are the ERG complaining that they didnt understand said piece of legislation, Boris and HMG are saying its such a dud they need to break international law too!
Yet somehow its the judiciaries fault, not Boris Johnsons???
When a judge does something that is totally insane if not actually subverting the law, how do we deal with them?
I’d feel an awful lot more comfortable about judicial oversight if there was a way of removing judges who think they are the law, rather than the enforcers of laws made by others. A recall system or a two-thirds vote in Parliament, maybe.
People leave the country and don't tell their GP.
IIRC it's particularly a problem in areas with a ;lot of rented property, where people move frequently. There was a big effort a few years ago to remove inactive patients from GP lists and, again IIRC, there's supposed to be one every so often. Practices are supposed to write to people with whom they haven't had contact for so many years every so often, but it's often one of those jobs which is done every so often when someone gets round to it.
This might turn out to be one of those times of course. Accidental benefit.
So the issues around the revival or pseudorevival of the prerogative do matter, perhaps over the revival itself when IIRC neither party wanted to keep the existing Act. The government should not be petty because of the prorogation case for instance, and seek to grab more power than is needed.
But on the whole, it doesn't seem many people really minded all that much that PMs could in effect call a GE whenever they wanted, and given oppositions demand mandates when PMs change mid term few in politics can object to the principle of in effect restoring the ability to more easily hold a GE. So while the detail and process of restoring or reviving that ability is still important to debate, it's not as big a deal as it could be.
Just a dream.
Supreme Court Act 1981
Tenure of office of judges of Supreme Court
...
(3) A person appointed to an office to whichthis section applies shall hold that office during good behaviour, subject to a power of removal by Her Majesty on an address presented to Her by both Houses of Parliament.
Compare: You assent to being given heavy dose of a sleeping tablet, knowing that for some while you don't be able to do anything, but knowing also that you may be woken up, and when woken will be able to do whatever you were able to do before you were sent into sleep.
This is not an issue that is time critical either.
The irony is not lost on me.
Most of our periods of Govt between elections are 1 party dictatorships for a few years before that is renewed or another party takes over. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but in reality parliament, for the greater part, does not hold the executive to account. We actually had a period where that did happen. Admittedly it was a shambles, but that was primarily because it was all new. The added advantage was people were interested. The parliament channel was actually getting millions of viewers as people took an interest.
I appreciate that what I described was unusual because it was Brexit and for more day to day stuff we are not going to get the same level of interest by the public, but it might be better than what we have now.
Of course PR and coalition Govt also bring about that greater interest and debate in parliament rather than 1 party blasting through what it wants for the majority of the time, with a parliament pretending to hold it to account.
You can give the monarch a statutory power, but that isn't the same as a prerogative power, which is by definition a residual power in the absence of legislation.
So yes itll be a problem for us, but not really for that reason. Really we've had little historical relations with them at all compared to their neighbours.
'History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or is still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.'