Labour and the Law

8.32.00am GMT Thu 13th Jul 2006

I have resisted writing much about the Home Office and its apparent inability to do, well, anything. However yesterday's news of Lord Levy's arrest, the collapse of the police mergers, the possible end to ID Cards and the debacle over the 'Natwest 3' extradition to the USA almost means I cannot not comment. This of course follows months of bad news from the Home Office. Although Lord Levy's arrest is nothing to do with the Home Office, just good old fashioned sleaze and corruption, this along with the Home Office problems (and the ongoing rumble from Prescott) we may have seen Blair's Black Wednesday yesterday (though we have thought that before).

Starting with Lord Levy, he was arrested and bailed yesterday in connection with the "cash-for-honours" inquiry by the Metropolitan Police. Levy denies any wrongdoing and accused the police of using their arrest powers "totally unnecessarily". The libel laws prevent me from straying too much beyond the published facts into opinion but what I can say is Levy was one of the key figures in the securing of multi-million pound loans to the Labour Party and the Police are examining whether honours were ever given as reward for financial help to the Party as part of an ongoing investigation into possible infringements of the Honours (Prevention of Abuses ) Act 1925 and recent election laws.

Despite the Home Office seeming not be be too concerned with foreign criminals being in the UK when they should have been sent back to their county of origin, them seem quite content to extradite three men to the USA despite the extradition treaty not have been ratified by the USA. The Liberal Democrats have been talking about this for a couple of weeks now, with Sir Menzies raising it at Question Time. Two days the House of Lords discussed the treaty and rejected it saying it should be suspended until the USA ratify. Although Blair defended the treaty again at yesterday's Prime Minister's Question Time the Liberal Democrats forced a debate in the House of Commons yesterday afternoon, Labour abstained(!) at the vote, I doubt we can save the 'Natwest 3' but this may stopped similar situations in future. After the debate it emerged that one of the witness has been found dead, it is still unclear by suicide is suspected (anyone seeing similarities with David Kelly here? I am convinced he died because of Government pressure however indirect that may have been). Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat MP that forced the debate said "The British people simply do not understand why we are stringently enforcing a treaty still not ratified in Washington, why three British citizens will be extradited on Thursday, when our own judicial authorities saw no reason to prosecute them here in Britain, and why there appears to be such an imbalance between the minimal information required to extradite a UK citizen to the US compared to the more substantive justification required to extradite US citizens to the UK."

The crazy plan to merge Police Forces, taking even more power away from the people, appears to have been scrapped (or at least on the backburner). The Minister for Police Tony McNulty has said that the plans to impose mergers had been "definitively" scrapped, after objections from most police forces and a failure to find ways to pay for the mergers, however there are lots of contradictory statements being made at the moment so we will have to see what happens next. The mergers gave Cameron his best line at Prime Minister's Question Time when he suggested that the Prime Minister should be charged with wasting police time, little did he know Lord Levy would be arrested later!

I have covered ID Cards elsewhere but it appears Blair still hasn't given up on this plan yet, but the Home Office have confirmed they cannot give a date when the first cards will be issued. I will update on ID Cards whenever anything exciting happens.