Sarah's bulletin: 11 June 2010

Published on Fri 11th Jun 2010

Dear friends,

Good justice means catching more criminals

This week the text of a new directive that I have shepherded through the European Parliament, on rights to interpretation and translation rights for people accused or tried in another EU country, was overwhelmingly approved by 38 to 1 in our Civil Liberties committee. (I suspect the 1 was BNP MEP Andrew Brons!) All that remains now is the full plenary vote in Strasbourg next week for the directive to become law.

This will be a huge step forward for criminal justice standards in the EU, as for the first time suspects and defendants will have the right to specific and concrete support so they can understand their trial and the case against them. While all EU states must observe the ECHR, in practice there are gaps as have seen in cases like Garry Mann and Andrew Symeou (see my bulletin last week) that I have taken up, so EU law is necessary to raise the quality of justice across the EU.

See my press release here on the committee vote - and watch out for news in next week's bulletin of how the final plenary vote went!

Londoners happier than ever - and with good reason!

The Annual London Survey 2010 has found that, on average, Londoners are feeling happier about the city than at any other time in the last 10 years. The survey specifically found that we are feeling safer, more optimistic and more satisfied than we have done in recent years. We are also apparently becoming more positive about the benefits of the 2012 Olympics! Top concerns are not surprisingly crime & safety and tackling traffic congestion. Loving London myself, I am delighted with these results as they prove London is a great place to live, study and work. I always hate those estate agent surveys which rank Swiss and Scandanavian cities way ahead of us - alright if you like deadly dullness I suppose!

Londoners have even more reason than usual to be happy as yesterday it was announced that a Danish wind energy company has been awarded a £250 million loan from the European Investment Bank for a new offshore wind farm in the Thames Estuary, supplying London. It will have a capacity of 630 MW when the first phase is in place (which should be in time for the Olympics) and once completed is tipped to be the world's largest offshore wind farm.

Anniversary of 'stolen' Iran election

This weekend marks one year since Iran held a now infamous election riddled with allegations of fraud which led thousands of protesters to take to the streets in anger. Iranian authorities used terrible violence to try and scare the demonstrators away, much to world's outrage, and sadly Ahmedinajad's regime lives on. In the run-up to this 1 year mark, Nobel peace prize winning Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi wrote this excellent comment piece for the Guardian. In it she highlights the role of women in the protest and reform movement, and the creative ways that they are using new technology such as the internet in the effort to bring democracy and human rights to Iran. I will be thinking of those women - indeed all brave Iranian democracy activists - this weekend.

Gaza, Israel and Turkey

I will cover this in next week's bulletin, on the basis of an expected and probably contentious resolution in the European Parliament. Just to say now that, while I believe Israel has acted in a way that is stupidly aggressive, illegal, and incredibly counter-productive to its real security needs - and has torpedoed the justification for any blockade of Gaza - sight should not be lost neither of the aims of Hamas which include Israel's destruction nor of the need to stop arms smuggling into Gaza.

I want to know the truth about what happened on the ship, including what weapons were used by those on board and the nature of the Turkish organisation involved. Israel is a democracy that is capable of an independent and impartial judicial inquiry, that's what Israel should do because if not, the calls for an international inquiry will become even louder.

Using your mobile abroad to become cheaper as ECJ rules against network operators

Last year the European Parliament in an unprecedented move voted to enforce a "price cap" on the amount that mobile network operators can charge British holidaymakers to make calls when abroad. Although four of Europe's biggest operators -- Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange and Telefonica O2 - challenged this decision in the European Court of Justice, I am pleased to report that the EU's highest court has stood firm in the defence of European consumer interests. The price cap remains, putting an end to those nasty post-holiday phone bills shock (or at least reducing the damage to a large degree).

Storing Google searches to fight sex offenders and paedophiles?

You may have spotted -- and have been justifiably taken aback -- by reports in the press (see here for example) that more than 300 MEPs have supported a plan to store people's web searches for up to 2 years - with the intention of creating an Early Warning System for potential sex offenders and paedophiles. I declined to sign this written declaration precisely because I was concerned about how this retention of data would infringe on our privacy, when in fact this would not have done any good as research has found that sex offenders do not use search engines but chat rooms and private communications. The storage of web search histories was not in fact mentioned in the original written declaration (only a reference to a different piece of legislation was made), and a number of those 300 MEPs that did originally sign have since withdrawn their names!

Dutch elections a liberal triumph

The Dutch went to the polls on Wednesday night and the VVD (the right of centre Dutch liberal party) topped the polls meaning that their leader Mark Rutte will become the Netherlands' first liberal prime minister since the WWI. We can look forward to excellent relations between him and our own liberal Deputy PM as Nick Clegg is as you probably know half Dutch and speaks the language fluently! The second, smaller liberal party, D66, also did incredibly well and tripled their MPs. All the parties (including the socialists who also did very well) have to sit now down and try and form a coalition. To many people's horror anti-Islam Geert Wilder's Freedom party got many more votes than expected but I strongly hope the mainstream parties will not go into coalition with Wilders who has in fact been charged with inciting hatred and racial discrimination and is facing trial later this year. May liberalism win the battle of ideas all over Europe!

The Freedom or Great Repeal Bill

The Queen made her ceremonial speech about 'her' government's plans for the year ahead a few weeks ago. The part of most interest to me was "legislation will be brought forward to restore freedoms and civil liberties through the abolition of identity cards and repeal of unnecessary laws". Music to my ears! This is the Freedom or Great Repeal Bill, which will reportedly include new restrictions on the DNA database to afford extra protection where innocent people's samples have been stored, restoring the right to peaceful protest, ensuring antiterrorism legislation strikes the right balance between protecting the public and protecting civil liberties and making sure that internet and e-mail records are only stored when there is good reason to do so. I look forward to a new era of civil liberties to come!

Government Office for London to be abolished

Another great consequence of our new Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition government: we are going to once and for all abolish the Government Office for London. The reality is that ever since the creation of the London Assembly and the reinstatement of the Mayor of London in 2000, the GOL has been an unnecessary extra level of bureaucracy. This move will not only save money but also improve accountability in governance in London.

Lambeth bylection

I will be in Lambeth tomorrow helping in the Tulse ward by-election scheduled for 1st July, and plan to go to Goresbrook ward in Barking and Dagenham the weekend after - their by-election is on 8th July. It is important that we get as many people out as possible in Barking as this is senior BNP member Richard Barnbrook's ward, and the fight against the BNP remains as important as ever!

Best regards,

Sarah Ludford