"…it is sad that at the very moment free will is becoming a reality for many of us, or at least for those of us living in Western democracies, the prevailing left-wing orthodoxy has become to condemn those who accept the consequences of that freedom."

Robert Crampton[1]

The Liberal Democrats cannot continue to suffer a drain of support such as that disclosed today in an ICM poll conducted for The Guardian. The poll shows Conservative support reaching 39% and Labour support recovering to 35%.  The Liberal Democrats have slumped to 17%.  In the past, ICM polls have tended to underestimate support for the Conservatives but have been kinder to both Labour and the Liberal Democrats.  There is not any reason to believe that this latest poll is any different, such that the haemorrhaging of support for the Liberal Democrats might be even worse.

Good results in individual contests have always been the method by which the Liberal Democrats have declared to the World that they are alive and kicking and “Winning Here!” Those results have provided a fillip to activist morale and convinced the voting public that they can really challenge the major parties and are a force to be reckoned with.  It is why they take by-elections so very seriously, calling in manpower nationwide and ensuring that every single ward in a constituency is fully leafleted, canvassed and on Election Day, every promised vote, delivered.[1] However, the ICM poll shows that the result of the recent Bromley and Chislehurst by-election, into which the Liberal Democrats invested such a considerable effort, has not brought an end to the party’s declining support amongst the electorate.

The Liberal Democrats are drifting in a way that would not have happened under Charles Kennedy.  Following Mr Kennedy’s expulsion from the leadership following a cabal by some of his “colleagues”, it seemed that Sir Menzies Campbell was the “safe pair of hands” that the Party needed and that he would “steady the ship.”  Notwithstanding the Liberal Democrats’ confident boasts and swagger, they knew that a resurgent Conservative Party under the leadership of Mr David Cameron would robustly challenge their tenure of Parliamentary seats in South East England.  So long as Mr Cameron’s star ascended, wiser heads amongst the Liberal Democrats knew that the time for advance was over and consolidation was the order of the day.  By that means and with the current electoral system loaded against an outright Conservative General Election victory, they would seek to force either of the major parties into a coalition Government.

Sir Menzies Campbell was the man for the job, or so it seemed.  In truth he has turned out to be a grave disappointment. His performances in the House of Commons have been average at the best,[2] and in the political world at large he is almost invisible.  His policy announcements have been incoherent and reactive to events. He has let it be known that he is “a man of the left” leaving the inevitable inference that he would seek a pact to form a Government with his Labour friend Gordon Brown in the event of there being no outright winner in the next General Election.  Thus we shall have the prospect of two Scottish MPs, each representing Scottish constituencies agreeing how an increasingly Conservative England is to be governed.  This is not something that England is likely to forgive the Liberal Democrats for doing.

The longer that Sir Menzies Campbell is allowed to ramble and meander along, the more damage will be done to the party, but Young Guns in the party cannot depose him.  The Liberal Democrats have already had one recent “night of the long knives”.  The public would never understand them having two such coups in one Parliament. However, they have a chance of salvation that would never be available to either Labour or the Conservatives.  If Sir Menzies Campbell can be induced to stand down, they can re-elect their old leader, Charles Kennedy.  He has already indicated that he is “not finished yet”. He is lucky, plucky, the public like him and in consequence he is a winner, but the Liberal Democrats must act quickly. Time is not on their side.  Sooner rather than later, Labour and the Conservatives will wake up as to how they must adequately resource their efforts in terms of manpower in order to stymie Liberal Democrat successes at both local and by-election level.  If not riding high in the opinion polls with a popular leader, deprived of their local authority and by election victory life blood, the Liberal Democrats will gradually fade away. 

[1] Forget the ridiculously misleading bar charts, disingenuous Focus leaflets and negative style of campaigning.  The Liberal Democrats win or are a close second in by-elections because they work harder and are better organised.  For Labour or the Conservatives, there is no such thing as a safe seat at a by-election. 

[2] The explanations that he does not look impressive in Parliament because for instance at Prime Minister’s Questions he can ask only two questions and cannot stand at the despatch box does not hold water.  The simple fact is that he does not hold the attention of The House and his authority is draining away as a consequence.  Some great Parliamentarians have made their presence felt whilst standing a very long way away from the despatch box and the front benches.

An article today by Sam Lister of The Times is enlightening in more ways than one.  Highlighted is an official report by The Healthcare Commission, the health inspectorate, which disclosed the serious failings by senior managers at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire that had allowed the hospital to become the site of one of the worst episodes of "super bug" infection Clostridium difficile, resulting in the deaths of sixty-five patients.  It was found that an unacceptable disregard for basic hygiene and inexcusable inaction by the managers was behind two major outbreaks.

Most telling is that,

 "…the Commission was particularly critical of Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust, saying that senior managers mistakenly prioritised Government targets (my emphasis) such as a maximum waiting time of four hours in Accident and Emergency and did not listen to staff.  They also failed to listen to serious concerns raised by hospital infection experts, who asked for isolation facilities."

The Government should take note.  The managers knew that they would be in big, big trouble if they did not meet the targets imposed upon them.  Thus they took their eyes "off the ball" and failed to perform their fundamental task of ensuring the provision of quality health care.  This is what happens when Big Government interferes where it does not belong.

So, the Government has finally announced what it had already decided as long ago as 2004.  The Child Support Agency (CSA) is to be axed.

The original scheme was the brainchild of the Conservative Government of Mrs Thatcher.  It was designed to bring some semblance of consistency to the making of child maintenance assessments, get lawyers out of the process and thereby reduce the cost to the Legal Aid Fund and generally.  It was also to ensure prompt and complete recovery of maintenance assessments made, something that the Court system (usually the Magistrates’ Court) was criticised for not having done effectively. A new concept was introduced too, that any child maintenance assessment made should reflect the actual financial cost of raising a child.

Extraordinarily, the coming of the Child Support Agency glided beneath the radar of most of those professionals who could have pointed out that the idea had some very basic but fatal, flaws.  The very factor that made the wheel fall off in so many Court enforcement proceedings was rearing to cause similar mayhem within the child support system.  The only difference was that the Court had considerable experience in dealing with recalcitrant payers.

It was so obvious that the Child Support Agency should prove so ineffective in recovering maintenance from “absent parents”.  It was even plainer that the Agency’s staff would become demoralised by their inability to make the system work and the criticism to which they became subjected from all quarters by reason of that failure.  What was not so clear at first was that the Agency should prove to be such a monumental waste of money.   Nevertheless, even before John Major’s Administration had quietly slipped beneath the waves it had become patently clear that the concept of a Child Support Agency was “broke” and yet Mr Blair’s Government persevered with it for nine more long years.

Today we were informed by  Work and Pensions Secretary, John Hutton that the Agency will be replaced by a new “smaller, more focused” body as part of a radical reform of the maintenance system, but not yet.  We shall have to await the publication of a new White Paper later this year “setting out in greater detail the Government's plans.” 

The Child Support Agency saga is an all too conspicuous example of how incompetent this Government has become. 

I have always felt that there was something of the wailing siren about Richard Brunstrom. Not the police variety of siren you understand; rather that of Broadmoor when someone has gone AWOL.

Perhaps he is just the victim of a bad press.  If so, no doubt he will set the record straight in his new blog.

Brunstrom's Blog

Michael Horsnell's article in The Times

Association of British Drivers

BBC News - Brunstrom: Road to controversy

Jasper Gerrard meets Richard Brunstrom

In any liberal democracy, an independent, strong legal profession is allowed to defend fearlessly and robustly those who the State charges with criminal offences.  No matter how heinous the offence or how unpopular with public opinion the defendants’ cause, as a matter of course their legal representatives are expected to vigorously test  the prosecution case and unflinchingly put their clients’ case.

Arani & Co is a firm of solicitors that represents very unpopular clients.  By all accounts, they represent them very well, or at least well enough to make the Police and other elements comprising the State to take umbrage.  Now we are told that some of our representatives in the House of Commons have demanded that the Law Society investigate this firm, to establish whether they have acted throughout with the necessary degree of compliance with amongst other things, professional ethics.  Of course, it is very important that any profession is policed to ensure that it maintains the very highest standards, but my concern is this. Government, particularly this Labour Government, does not like lawyers (save those who represent its interests, almost invariably against Joe Public.)

It would be a simple matter to make an example of one firm which is unpopular with the public, a signal of intent that the HM Government is not going to have any truck with any other law firm that defends causes that it considers unpopular.  Defend who we consider to be indefensible and you will be investigated.  The message is all too clear.

This article in The Times today by Nigel Hawkes says all that need be said.

Rosie Murray-West, the Business Correspondent of The Daily Telegraph reports today concerning the risk that Home Information packs will  'destabilise the housing market' and prevent first-time buyers from getting onto the property ladder.  Kirstie Allsopp, the presenter of Channel 4's Location Location Location, is reported as saying that,

"[Home Information Packs (HIPs) would not] do any of the things the Government promised it would such as getting rid of gazumping and speeding up transactions.  What is happening here is that a £600 million industry is springing up overnight and it is going to cost both buyers and sellers".

Charles Smailes, the President of the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) urged,

"…[the] Government to start paying attention to the concerns of its Opposition, the entire property industry and the public who, according to NAEA research, will not welcome the introduction of HIPs."

According to Mr Smailes, a recent survey by the NAEA suggested that 73 per cent of sellers would think twice about putting their property on the market if it required a pack, which would result in fewer properties on the market and a rise in already inflated prices.

A recent survey undertaken by the anti-HIPs campaign group SPLINTA was more telling.  SPLINTA members analysed 1,870 property transactions negotiated in February 2006. By the middle of May 2006, 1,272 (68%) had successfully proceeded to exchange of contracts. 352 (18.8%) sales had fallen through, leaving 266 (14.2%) properties withdrawn or still on the market. 137 (7.3%) of transactions were the subject of a renegotiation of the agreed price between acceptance of the original offer and exchange of contracts.

An examination of the figures disclosed that transactions had broken down for the following reasons:

(a)       the seller received a higher offer from another buyer - 16 (0.8%);

(b)       an adverse survey report - 41 (2.2%) ;

(c)       a lender’s adverse valuation inspection - 15 (0.8%);

(d)       the buyer could not secure a mortgage - 31 (1.7%);

(e)       a related sale or purchase did not proceed (a "broken chain") - 76 (4.1%);

(f)         a change in the circumstances of the seller - 65 (3.5%);

(g)       a change in the circumstances of the buyer - 108 (5.8%).

These figures established that a Home Information Pack might have helped to save only 25 (1.4%) transactions.

The Government continues to spin the line that HIPs will improve the buying and selling of property but it is manifest that these packs will do no such thing.  It compounds the offence by dismissing out of hand constructive criticism and repeatedly besmirching expert opponents as having a "vested interest". The Government is in a headlong rush to implement the scheme notwithstanding the very clear dangers. Nick Salmon of SPLINTA has urged the Housing Minister Yvette Cooper to "exercise good judgement and call the [HIPs] scheme in for review."  Some hope.

The Great Home Information Pack (HIPs) Swindle

Fran Yeoman reports in The Times today about a trial involving an alleged stalker namely a Maria Marchese, who is said to have terrorised a leading psychologist, Jan Falkowski, by bombarding him with threats and forcing him to cancel his wedding.  The Court was told that Ms Marchese ran a “prolonged and malicious campaign” against Mr Falkowski and threatened to kill the woman who was his fiancée, a Miss Deborah Pemberton.

I do not know anything about the case other than that which I have read in The Times report and for all I know, at the conclusion of the trial the jury might throw out the whole case against Ms Marchese. If the allegations are proven, the case is an example of how dangerously irrational a tiny minority of people can become when antagonised in some way.

We are told that part of Ms Marchese's campaign of harassment involved her making an accusation in January 2004 that Dr Falkowski had raped her at St Clement’s Hospital, East London, where he worked.  The prosecution discontinued the case against Dr Falkowski in August 2005.

I should like to know how and where Dr Falkowski's case appears in Home Office statistics.  I can make an educated guess.  It will be one of those cases recorded in that large catchall category "unsuccessful rape prosecutions"; a set of figures that are oft misunderstood by those of a lazy mind, myopic single-issue tendency or challenged critical faculty, as representing the mythical 94.4% of prosecuted rapists who escaped justice.

Frances Gibb reports today in The Times that,

 “Ken Macdonald, QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), wants a comprehensive review of prosecution policy because of public concern that killer drivers often escape with a fine.”

We are informed that,

“A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said that the review, including wide public consultation, was being undertaken because of continuing concern about the prosecution of road traffic deaths.”

The consultation is in conjunction with the passage through Parliament of the Road Safety Bill, which creates a new offence of causing death by careless driving, with a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment.

It is important to consider what is meant by “public concern” and “wide public consultation”.  In the main, if not exclusively, “public concern” is that unrepresentative but vociferous cacophony that is passed off as principled argument by our tabloid press, single issue, largely anti motorist organisations and a Big on Talk, Small on Delivery Government that has lost control of its own political agenda.  The Labour Government’s understanding of “consultation” is the process by which persons of a like mind meet to agree that something has to be done and discuss what is to be done and how.  It is in short, the usual partial consultation stating the “vice” to be corrected and inviting “friendly” responses as to how to deal with “the problem” and not to discuss whether there is any real issue to address at all.  One of the organisations likely to make representations is the charity  RoadPeace. As an organisation supporting families bereaved by road accidents and ostensibly promoting “road safety” it suffers from the flaws of a single issue group.  Concentrating on a small number of cases involving horrific circumstances, its prime raison d’être is to argue that motorists who kill and maim should be punished with long terms of imprisonment.  Such consultations patently do not admit of any balance.

In its pursuit of what it perceives to be popular opinion, the Government has identified two “problems”.  As it is too difficult to prove the charge of dangerous driving, we are told that too often the prosecution prefers the lesser charge of careless driving, which results in the defendant motorist being fined instead of imprisoned.  The second problem is that even when a serious driving offence is proven the prison sentence, if imposed at all, is short.  We return here to that old chestnut low conviction rates.  In essence we are being asked to believe that soppy juries will not convict drivers of dangerous driving (on the “there but for the grace of God go I” principle.)  This is nonsense.  Juries will convict if the evidence is strong enough. The obvious fact is that in the majority of cases though the carelessness is manifest, dangerous driving is not.  Besides, what makes the Government think that whilst a jury would not convict a defendant for dangerous driving because the sentence would be one of imprisonment, it would convict in a case involving the new careless driving offence where the sentence is still going to be one of imprisonment?  It seems to me that if the soppy jury argument is correct, the jury will be reluctant to convict for the same reason when dealing with careless driving cases.

In truth, a defendant walking free is considered by Government to be a failure of the criminal justice system rather than a success; an innocent man tried by his peers and the prosecution case found wanting.  It is manifest that the real problem is the Government, as part of the machinery of the State acting in its role as the investigating authority (in the guise of the Police) and prosecutor (the “Crown”) does not like to lose or be seen to lose.   When the result does not please the Government, it is because the judge/jury/law/rules of evidence are wrong.

In plain English, in the main the Crown cannot secure a conviction on the serious charge of dangerous driving (which is imprisonable) because that charge is not clearly made out on the facts.  However, a small number of unrepresentative pressure groups aided and abetted by self-appointed “populist” commentators who shout the loudest, take the view that because someone has died as a result of a motorist’s manner of driving, that motorist has to pay with the loss of his liberty.  This is nothing to do with Justice but everything to do with revenge.

At this point, perhaps we should remind ourselves of what careless driving entails.  According to s.3 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, a person is guilty of an offence if he drives [a vehicle] on [a road] without due care and attention or without due consideration for other persons using [the road]. The standard of driving is widely accepted as being that of a reasonable, prudent and competent driver in all of the circumstances of the case.  The standard has an element that is to be judged objectively (the reasonable, prudent and competent driver) and one that is subjective (the circumstances of the case.)  In the case of R v. Krawec (1984)[1] Lord Lane C.J. stated that:

 “The unforeseen and unexpected results of the carelessness are not in themselves relevant to penalty.  The primary considerations are the quality of the driving, the extent to which the appellant on the particular occasion fell below the standard of the reasonably competent driver; in other words, the degree of carelessness and culpability.  The unforeseen consequences may sometimes be relevant to those considerations.  In the present case the fact that the appellant failed to see the pedestrian until it was too late and therefore collided with him was plainly a relevant factor.  We do not think that the fact that the unfortunate man died was relevant to the charge.”

This is the whole crux of the matter.  A tiny error of judgment or lapse of concentration can lead to a person’s injury or even death.  The consequence of that minor error can be all out of proportion to the carnage caused.  It is unjust to render a motorist liable to imprisonment simply because his momentarily sub-standard driving causes death, but this is precisely the effect that the Labour Government’s new Road Safety Bill will have.  We all make errors of judgment when driving but most of us are lucky enough not to be involved in an accident. Only a few motorists are involved in an accident where someone is injured or even killed, but that motorist could be any one of us.

Prison should be the sentence of last resort when a driver has been convicted of a grave, inexcusable instance of dangerous driving.    It is completely unacceptable to attach the punitive penalty of loss of liberty for careless driving.  There was a day when only serious, hardened criminals faced the prospect of lengthy prison sentences for their wrongdoings.  Now it is proposed that we all should.

We are not convicting enough criminals! (So now, anyone will do!)