Yesterday I marvelled at the notion that David Blunkett had the gall to suggest that victims of miscarriages of justice should be charged for ‘room and board’. That this has not featured on the front page of every newspaper in Britain is also shocking to me. It seems to me that when there has been a miscarriage of justice, the state should bend over backwards to make amends as fulsomely as possible and make lavish restitution for damages done both directly and indirectly for the life it has unjustly disrupted. If justice is administered ‘in the name of the people’ then surely amongst the endless litany of grotesque uses of the public purse that consume billions and billions of pounds, this would be a rare legitimate public charge that few would dispute.
However what is even more baffling to me that the Tory Party is not queuing up in the Commons to denounce Blunkett in the most extreme language allowed in Parliament. Why are they not trying to use this latest affront to common decency and natural justice and using it to paint the Labour Party as the party which tramples over civil liberties? They should be relentlessly calling for Blunkett’s head over this and what do I hear? The sound of silence. Anyone who harbours delusions that the party of Michael Howard will be their champion for civil liberties against the ever more authoritarian Labour government really needs to see them for what they really are.
Regardless of whether or not the government manages to get this measure accepted or not, the mere fact Blunkett can even suggest such a thing without sparking clamourous calls for his removal from office is both a damning indictment of the moral and political vacuity of Britain’s political parties and a chilling measure of state of Britain’s culture. I sincerely hope to be proved wrong and see a ground swell of anger emerging in the press and polity in the next few days but I am not holding my breath. It would be interesting to hear the views of some of Britain’s blogging Members of Parliament on this issue.
I thoroughly agree with you. It cannot be assumed that the Tories haven’t got hold of the story. Neither would I accept that attacking the recent Brown stuff (budget) should have priority. The same must be said for the press.
What’s problematic is the complete absence of the Conservative Party’s parliamentary membership from the world of blogging. Tom Watson may or may not harbor a concern for civil liberties himself, but he’s hardly to be expected to press his own government too severely on such matters.
but he’s hardly to be expected to press his own government too severely on such matters
My point is that if someone has any pretentions of being a moral agent, then they are forced to either damn actions like Blunkett’s latest outrage. Do I expect internal outrage? Well I am loath to call someone amoral or imoral unless they actually demonstrate that by their actions. For me all it would take is for a Labour MP to say ‘this is wrong’! for me to have an entirely different view of them.
Not merely did they charge him for the “Room and board”, but they also charged him interest on the amount unpaid for so many years!
I wonder if such a move by Blunkett is a step on the way for all convicts to pay for, or contribute to, their incarceration. Given that drug traffickers effectively “pay” through confiscation of all assets would this be that hard a law to push through Parliament?
Oh and by the way, there may not be that many Conservative Party MP’s with their own weblog, but I do know for certain that there are a number who regularly read, apart from others, Samizdata.net.
I have heard it recently described as “rather like bits of The Spectator, although without the Greek cocaine addict at the end”.
Drug traffickers have their assets seized, more often than not its the financial side of their activities that gives them away, the arrest does not always have to take place with the drugs in the hands of the traffickers.
As OAPs have their pensions docked for ‘hotel services’ while in hospital for protracted treatment, seems only fair that the ‘victims’ of the vast majority of ‘miscarriages of justice’ suffer this further ‘injustice’. Particularly some of the clients of Michael Mansfield QC (-:
In my long interface with the criminal fraternity, the vast majority of so-called ‘miscarriages of justice’ cases involved egregious crooks who were as guilty as hell but lucky enough to find loopholes in sloppy or corner-cutting police evidence; or in the defects of summing up speeches of senile judges; or who received the benefit of the arbitrary ‘percentage likelihood of conviction’ matrix of craven or crooked CPS shysters.
In view of that, Blunkett just might, for once , have a point.
Blunkett’s maneuver is actually profoundly conservative, because the only way you could do it with a clear conscience is a wholehearted belief in the monarchist doctrine of Rex non potest peccare – the King can do no wrong.
While the doctrine does have some usefulness in preventing tort litigants from staking a claim to the public fisc, it is a disastrous basis for public policy – I submit it’s the underlying premise of both socialism and absolute monarchism.
Don’t you all have lawyers only too ready to sue the government in a case like this? I used to think they were an unnecessary nuisance. Perhaps they are right, they do help keep prosecutors more careful.
So, Frank P wants to take people’s money when it turns out they were kidnapped by the state, because ‘he knows they were really guilty’, regardless of the fact he cannot actually prove it.
As Frank obviously has God-like insights into what is and is not The Truth, I suggest we just make him Lord Protector and have done with pesky things like due process.
Perry
‘As Frank obviously has God-like insights into what is and is not The Truth, I suggest we just make him Lord Protector and have done with pesky things like due process.’ ‘
Well, that might be an improvement on the current set-up, but don’t worry … I wouldn’t take the job anyway.
Actually, what I was trying to do was to emulate some of that stuff you categorise as ‘satire’ but obviously I failed miserably or a man of your perspicacity would have twigged it! Of course everyone who is ultimately acquitted is innocent. (-:
However, I must confess that term ‘presumption of innocence’ can be a little too all-embracing at times and there have been some occasions in my life when I thought the Scottish system of ‘not proven’ would have been somewhat more appropriate.
Sorry if I over reacted… I agree on the ‘not proven’ thing
No Blunkett is certainly not a conservative, unless you believe that all authoritarians are automatically conservatives. Blunkett is a man of the left, more Stalinist than anything else. Most of the most
authoritarian regimes known to history were regimes of the Left (USSR, PRC, National Socialist Germany, the Warsaw Pact states, Cuba). Conservatives
prefer to avoid authoruiarianism because you need a large and powerful state for it to suceed, though when conservative morals collapse, some reckon that some authotity to uphold morals is better thananarchy.
I don’t see a problem with it, as long as the compensation covers it. The clawback seems to be there to prevent people ‘discovering’ evidence of their innocence shortly before normal release.
Re the calculation of compensation and ” hotel ” charges.
I can give you a good reason why the Tories are not up in arms about it. Because it is inherent in laws they passed.
The whole idea of statutory ( rather than ex gratia ) compensation payments came into law with the 1988 Criminal Justice Act .There was a minor modification in 1995.
The basic thought is that compensation will be calculated in the same way as civil damages. OK, fair enough one might say. Loss of earnings, emotional and physical damage, loss of pension rights : these are all included.
However, we also have the 1982 Administration of Justice Act which provides as follows :
““in an action ….for personal injuries any saving to the injured person which is attributable to his maintenance wholly or partly at public expense in a hospital, nursing home or other institution shall be set off against any income lost by him as a result of his injuries”.
So, it appears that the current ( I haven’t seen a verdict, so I assume the case is ongoing ) case with Blunkett, against which you railed, is in fact a rare example of the current Home Secretary attempting to uphold the lsw as inherited from previous administrations.
I agree, it still stinks, but it ain’t Blunkett’s fault. Perhaps those who framed the original laws, perhaps the only two people who have held the office of compensation assesor ( Sir David Caldicutt and Lord Brennan ) , but not Davey Boy.
I mean, you do want the Home Secretary to uphold the law of the land,don’t you ?