Enfield Liberal Democrats

LibDem European justice & human rights spokeswoman Sarah Ludford MEP will today vote in favour of the agreement on transfer and use of air passenger data to the US designed to help combat terrorism and serious transnational crime. She said:

"This agreement is not perfect. But it's a great deal better than the existing framework and, crucially, than any of the alternatives. There is no chance of the US improving their offer."

Question for written answer E-011425/2011

to the Commission

Rule 117

Baroness Sarah Ludford (ALDE)

Subject: Iranian death penalty for drug offences and EU funding

Iran is one of 32 countries which apply the death penalty for drug-related crimes, including trafficking, cultivation, manufacturing and possession of illicit drugs. However, under Article 6(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights capital punishment should be reserved only for 'the most serious crimes', and the UN Human Rights Council has stated that drug offences do not fall into this category. It is estimated that Iran executed approximately 590 people for drug offences in 2010 alone[1].

London Liberal Democrat Mayoral Candidate Brian Paddick and candidate for Deputy Mayor, Caroline Pidgeon have unveiled plans to create a network of Youth Hubs across the capital as they launched the London Liberal Democrats' full election manifesto.

The hubs would be funded in two ways. We will work with the banks, helping them to improve their reputations by directly funding the hubs, and we will set up a Five-Star Fund from a voluntary £1 levy on 3-5* hotel stays in London.

Liberal Democrat European justice & human rights spokeswoman and London MEP Sarah Ludford is co-rapporteur of a new European Parliament report assessing the state of play on extraordinary rendition, secret detention and torture.

This follows up MEPs' 2007 report on complicity by European states in 'war on terror' abuses, which pointed to a dozen countries which had colluded in extraordinary rendition. They appear to have allowed CIA rendition flights to use their airports, harboured secret prisons or colluded in abductions. MEPs then urged EU states to carry out full inquiries, and are now reviewing what progress has been made in Europe and internationally. Today a hearing has been held in the sub-committee on human rights.

Commenting on the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that extradition to the US would not breach the rights of several terrorist suspects, including Abu Hamza and Babar Ahmad, Liberal Democrat European justice & human rights spokeswoman and London MEP Sarah Ludford said:

"The finding by the Court that there would be no inhuman treatment if extradition to the US took place still leaves open the question of whether the US is the right place to try all of these suspects."

David Walter

I was very sad to hear of the death of David Walter at the age of only 64. He was very active within the party, both behind the scenes and on the frontline. His prestigious career in broadcast journalism led to him being appointed Director of Communications for the party. More recently he was chair of Kingston LibDems. London regional chair (and journalist) Jonathan Fryer wrote an obituary for the Guardian, see here. David will be sorely missed.

Surveillance and open justice

Many Liberal Democrats including me were perturbed to hear of government plans to extend police and security service powers to monitor our emails, internet use and social media communications, see here. Protection of civil liberties is at the heart of Liberal Democrat principles and this was reaffirmed only last month at the Spring party conference by a motion calling on the Government to do more to restore individual freedoms, including in restricting surveillance, see here.

As several Lib Dem MPs pointed out in this letter to the Guardian yesterday, these proposals are too important to be waved through and if they were, would signal a disregard for civil liberties not sufficiently unlike that displayed by the last Labour Government. These new proposals may not amount to Labour's 2009 plan (which never materialised) to keep a central database of phone, text, email and internet use, but they are too close for comfort.

I took part in 2 conference calls on Tuesday evening, one of parliamentarians and the other of Federal Policy committtee members, and I'm delighted that Nick Clegg has now expressed caution about the plans and stressed the need to reassess the whole framework of safeguards. While we accept that there is a need for law enforcement to be able to track serious criminals, the access regime that Labour introduced - the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - is far too lax, notoriously allowing councils to monitor parents suspected of dodging school-catchment rules. Not only civil liberties objections but also practical ones -the costs to companies of storing communications, the technological barriers, and the fact that the bad guys will just retreat behind encryption walls - make tough scrutiny of these plans essential.

It's also good to see that following interventions from Nick there will be changes made to government plans to expand to some civil cases the closed court procedures currently only used in terrorism-related cases. I was quoted in the Daily Mail a month ago opposing this project. Nick is certainly right in his belief that only judges and not ministers should have the power to decide what evidence should be aired in open court and what is too sensitive, and that secrecy must not extend to inquests. The danger in all this is that ministers might just seek to shield themselves from scrutiny and embarassment. I remain personally - like the Westminster Joint Human Rights committee - unconvinced that any change at all is necessary beyond the existing 'Public Interest Immunity' protection for evidence that genuinely needs to stay secret on national security grounds.

Campaigning

There is now only 4 weeks to go until the Assembly and Mayoral elections, and there are also a whole host of council byelections happening!

I've been to Camden this week to lend a hand in the forthcoming Primrose Hill byelection: our byelection candidate Chris Richards is particularly busy given that he is also our GLA candidate for Barnet & Camden!

Dear friends,

We were particularly busy on consumer and citizens' rights in Brussels last week, as well as - very importantly - the interests of taxpayers. More on those stories later, first a word about the London Liberal Democrat conference last Saturday.

London LibDems

The regional conference was a great success, including speeches by Brian Paddick, Ed Davey, Tom Brake and Simon Hughes. Brian together with Caroline Pidgeon outlined the May 3rd manifesto with imaginative but practical plans to make London an even better place to work and live. These include actions to boost affordable housing, reducing pollution through switching buses and taxis to electricity and making policing localised and more responsive. Some of the ideas can be seen at http://www.brianpaddick.com/Ideas and the full version will be released in due course.

One proposal launched last week was the one hour bus ticket, a key component of the 'Fairer fares' pledge. Caroline Pidgeon and Brian Paddick kicked this off by hopping on a bus last week and touring round London to spread the word! Very appropriate given that the idea behind the one hour ticket is to make it easier and cheaper to hop between buses, see here. I am pictured with GLA candidates (from left Marisha Ray, Farooq Qureshi and Bridget Fox) promoting this excellent idea.


There was also an excellent speech at conference by Maajid Nawaaz, co-chairman of think-tank Quilliam Foundation which was established to counter extremism. He made the liberal point that, unless extremists actually break the law on terrorism or race hate, we should not ban them (displaying 'legal tolerance') but we should of course vigorously disagree with them (displaying 'civil intolerance'). That is precisely why Liberal Democrats have long argued against the banning of organisations such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir - besides the pragmatic argument that if they go underground it is harder to track them. The gathering in Denmark at the weekend of the far right English Defence League and its counterparts from across Europe is a reminder of the importance of Maajid's message. Their claim to be defending Europe from 'Islamification' is absurd - and personally I want defending from these nasty elements, not by them - but if we let them get on with it, the emptiness of their stance is displayed. I'm delighted to say that only 200 people turned up in contrast to their forecast of 4,000, and they were outnumbered 10 to 1 by protesters!

Roaming charge success

A deal has been reached between MEPs and EU Member States for yet a further cap on mobile phone costs abroad, to come into force in time for the summer holidays. This is the fifth year of the highly successful EU campaign against the Great Roaming Rip-Off. The eventual aim is to align roaming tariffs on domestic prices, and in the last 5 years we have narrowed the difference by 75% already.

Not only are there further cuts in the permitted costs of using a mobile phone abroad for calls and text. For the first time, Londoners on business and holiday will benefit from a cap on data roaming prices. From July these will be limited to 70 cents (around 60p) and fall to 20 cents per MB (around 17p) in 2014. Until now there has been no cap on the cost for using mobile internet options while abroad, causing bill shock misery for many on their return home. You can read more about the pricing in my press release here.

Talking about mobile use though, it would be good if London's providers (are you listening, O2?) could eliminate the black holes that exist in far too many spots in the capital!

Air passenger rights

Last week MEPs sent a strong message to the European Commission about the need for existing European rules on air passenger protection to be better implemented across the EU; my press release on the resolution can be seen here. Many passengers are unaware that, for instance, airlines may be responsible for up to £4000 in damages resulting from delays. There also needs to be greater clarity about when and what responsibility airlines have for passengers. Currently, claims for any compensation for delays or cancellations can often be rebuffed by an airline claiming an 'extraordinary circumstance.' The Commission needs to make clear what constitutes such a circumstance!

EU citizenship rights including same-sex couples

The Parliament's annual citizenship report was passed last week, see here. It assesses things such as facilitation of healthcare, freedom of movement and civil rights of citizens across EU borders. The report highlights the barriers that the LGBT community still face when moving and travelling across the EU. It demands full freedom of movement with legal rights for same-sex couples and an end to Member States' obstruction of a 2004 EU law meant to achieve this. The relevant paragraph highlighting this almost didn't make it through committee stage thanks to disarray in the European Socialist and Democratic group (S&D) which includes Labour MEPs, but ALDE pushed for a retabling of this amendment and won; my press release on this can be read here and here.

EU steps up cybercrime fight

The European Commission announced last week that a new Cybercrime centre will begin operating from the EUROPOL office in The Hague from January next year, see my press release here. As more people conduct financial transactions online and of course increase their social interactions via Facebook and Twitter, the scope for online crime increases. It's estimated that more than one million people are victims of this form of crime every day. Given the global nature of the internet, there has to be greater co-ordination so leads can be followed and hackers, paedophile and fraud rings can be stopped in their tracks.

Tackling organised crime

Again on the crime theme, MEPs last week approved the membership of a special committee set up to investigate organised crime, corruption and money laundering, and I am a member. This comes not long after a Commission proposal to improve the rules on confiscation of illegal assets was published, see more in my press release here. Crime rings are able to flourish because lax laws allow criminals to stash money abroad and tougher EU laws will allow states to target these criminals.

It would help if banks did their job. Last week saw the announcement that the FSA was fining Coutts - owned by RBS - nearly £9 million for failing to implement money-laundering rules after it was discovered that they failed to conduct checks on almost three-quarters of clients that held politically sensitive positions between 2007 and 2010. In 2005 I was involved in formulating an EU money-laundering directive which put the onus on service providers (such as banks) to ensure that when establishing a business relationship proper checks and verification of the customer are undertaken. I complained at the time that this should not mean lots of red tape for ordinary people opening bank accounts while fraudsters and dictators got away scot free. But this seems to be exactly what happened under Labour's lax regime.


European Citizens' Initiative

Yesterday (OK, so it was April 1st but this is not a joke!) saw the launch of the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI). This allows campaigners who collect at least a million signatures across a minimum of seven EU countries to bring proposals demanding a response by Brussels. This is a great opportunity for people to get involved in the EU, whether to seek reform or to highlight major issues that affect residents across borders; see my press release here. The obvious candidate for the first ECI is a demand to EU governments to stop our trek every month to Strasbourg, for only they can change the EU treaty to achieve this.


Sugar

I continue to campaign for fair treatment for cane refiners in their imports from outside the EU. The current discrimination compared to sugar beet production is having a dire effect on Tate & Lyle at their Silvertown processing factories and prejudicing 800 jobs. They rely entirely - as they have for well over a century - on imported sugar cane and they are being left short of their raw material. The rules are unfair on competition grounds as refiners using sugar beet can source as much raw material as they like at market prices. Gerald Mason and Ian Bacon from T&L were in Brussels last week and MEPs had a strategy session to plot our next steps in the campaign to change the mind of the EU Agriculture Commissioner. We were joined by the local MP for the Silvertown refinery, Stephen Timms.

The European Parliament has adopted its latest annual report on implementation of rights for European citizens under EU law. One of the issues highlighted was the barriers that still exist for same-sex couples.

The report demands full freedom of movement with recognition of legal rights for same-sex couples and an end to Member States' obstruction of a 2004 EU law meant to achieve this.

Sarah Ludford, Vice President of the LGBT+ Liberal Democrat group commented:

"Due to disarray in the ranks of the European Socialist and Democratic group (S&D) to which the Labour party belong, the key relevant paragraph got deleted at committee stage due to the voting power of the right-wing parties."

"Due to Liberal leadership, this has now been reinserted into the report by a plenary vote. We refused to let the discrimination that many same- sex couples still face when moving or travelling to some EU states be swept under the carpet. Once again the Liberal (ALDE) group has shown that it is the most dependable champion of LGBT rights both domestically and in the EU."

Notes to Editors

The Citizenship report assesses issues such as facilitation of healthcare, freedom of movement and civil rights of citizens across EU borders

The report can be seen here:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&reference=A7-2012-0047&language=EN&mode=XML

London Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford has welcomed the launch of a new initiative that will give London residents a greater say in what proposals are brought to the European Commission for EU action.

The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) comes into force on Sunday, and allows campaigners who collect at least a million signatures across a minimum of seven EU countries to bring proposals demanding a response by Brussels.