De overheid probeert om de Rekening van Rechten te misbruiken
De overheid en de Spreker van het Lagerhuis spannen proberen samen om de Rekening van de 17de Eeuw van Rechten te misbruiken de onthulling FOIA van de Overzichten van de Gateway OGC van het Programma van identiteitskaart- Kaarten te onderdrukken
Rekening van Rechten 1689 een historisch stuk van de Engelse Grondwet, die aan voorgenomen was bewaar de rechten en de vrijheden van het publiek en van Leden van het Parlement van misbruiken door de Uitvoerende tak van Overheid, wat, in de 17de Eeuw was:
Terwijl de recente Koning James de Tweede door de Hulp van diverse evillAdviseurs Rechters en Ministers imployed door hem deed inspanning te ontwrichten en extirpate de protestantse Godsdienst en Lawes en Vrijheden van dit Kingdome.
Als u de „recente Koning James de Tweede“ met vervangt. “ Tony Blair“ of „Gordon Brown“, woorden geschikte just as well.
Wij zijn verbaasd en woedend, dat deze Rekening van Rechten, in het Hoge Hof aan weasel uit het moeten te proberen de Overzichten van de vroege (en nu zeer verouderde) Gateway van het Programma van de Kaarten van de Identiteit van het Bureau van het Huis (aangezien het toen was, circa 2002/2003) wordt misbruikt onthullen, door de advocaten voor de Overheid Bureau voor de Handel van de Overheid, gesteund door, ongelooflijk, advocaten voor Spreker van het Lagerhuis, in hun Beroep tegen het Besluit van de onafhankelijke Rechtbank van de Informatie, die tot volledige onthulling, in het openbare belang opdracht gaf.
Zijn de Overheid en hun wanhopige advocaten, of kwaad?
Waarom helpt de Spreker van het Lagerhuis de Uitvoerende tak van Overheid, om vrijheid van toespraak en transparante open overheid, in een kwestie van reusachtig openbaar belang te onderdrukken?
Dagelijkse Post/Post op Zondag: 319 éénjarigenwet die door Spreker Michael Martin wordt gebruikt om identiteitskaart- rapport te knevelen
Wekelijkse computer: De overheid wil de kaartoverzichten van identiteitskaart begraven
[hoedenuiteinde aan Britse Vrijheid voor het bevlekken van dit vóór ons]
Rekening van Rechten 1688 („Akte dat een Statuut te zijn bij Akte 1689 wordt verklaard van de Erkenning van de Kroon en van het Parlement (c. 1)”)
Dat Freedome van Toespraak en Debatten of de Werkzaamheden in Parlyament niet zouden moeten in om het even welke Hof of Plaats uit Parlyament worden beschuldigd of worden gevraagd.
See the history of this long running Freedom of Information Act disclosure suppression in our OGC Gateway Reviews of the Identity Cards Programme blog category archive.
The lawyers for the Government, seem to be desperately clutching at straws, by claiming that the Information Tribunal, in its very thorough 4 day hearing, involving submissions from top barristers Queens Councils and specialist professors of Freedom of Information Act law, somehow made improper use of a publicly published report from a Select Committee of the House of Commons, the one which scrutinises the Department for Work and Pensions.
See the House of Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions report: Third Report - 7 July 2004 - Department for Work and Pensions Management of Information Technology Projects: Making IT Deliver for DWP Customers specifically paras. 110 - 123 Publishing OGC Gateway Reviews
If they are allowed to get away with this line of reasoning, then there is no point in any of the supposedly powerful Select Committees whatsoever, if their official public reports following their inquiries and investigations, cannot be used to scrutinise the policies and decisions of Central Government Departments or Agencies.
Incredibly, they are being supported by a lawyer acting on behalf of the Speaker of the House of Commons, to help the Executive branch of the Government (i.e. no longer the Monarch, but a Central Government Department, which was not the case in the 17th Century) to suppress the rights of the public in general, and of the two people who submitted the original Freedom of Information Act requests, which have been considered together by the Information Tribunal. One of those people is actually a Member of Parliament !
This bit of law is what is supposed to protect Members of Parliament from libel cases for what they say, with Parliamentary Privilege, in speeches or debates, in the Chamber of the House of Commons.
This fundamental constitutional law pre-dates the official record of the proceedings of Parliament i.e. Hansard, which started out as a private sector journalistic publishing venture, and the general acceptance of press and media reporting of the procedures of Parliament. Neither of these existed back in the 17th Century.
Provided that these reports use fair and accurate quotations, then these media reports are themselves protected by Parliamentary Privilege from being accused of promulgating what might be a libel, if it had not been uttered by an MP within the House of Commons. This protection against libel or other civil cases also extends to the official written Reports of Select Committees of the House of Commons, and the Lords or Joint Committees of both Houses of Parliament.
There are perverse consequences of this Parliamentary Privilege e.g.
1995 case of the then MP Neil Hamilton (”Cash for Questions”), trying to sue The Guardian newspaper for libel, and being unable to, because The Guardian would not have been able to get a fair trial in a UK Court, by not being able to quote any of his speeches or the rules of the House of Commons. This anomaly was later amended by specific legislation allowing MPs to waive their parliamentary Privilege on an individual, case by case basis, so as to sue for defamation..
See Defamation Act 1996 section 13 Evidence concerning proceedings in Parliament
The provisos in this section of the Act explicitly cover Select Committee evidence and reports.
Information Tribunal was not criticising, let alone libeling or even “Questioning” the Select Committee report. The Information Tribunal simply cited this publicly published Report as evidence, noting the arguments, both for and against publication of such Gateway Reviews.
para 23In the course of this hearing, the Tribunal was referred to the
inquiry conducted by the Select Committee on Work and Pensions that reported in 2004 on Management of Information Technology Projects: Making IT Deliver for DWP Customers. It considered, amongst other things, the arguments for and against publishing GR’s.
The “Questioning” by the Information Tribunal Judgement was of the Office for Government Commerce, part of HM Treasury, headed, at the time (May 2007) by the “control freak” Chancellor / Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
That is definitely not anything to do with the “Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament” which is what the Bill of Rights clause is on about !
How can the High Court, Judge Mr. Justice Stanley Brunton possibly decide that reading or mentioning a Select Committee Report contravenes the Bill of Rights, without also destroying Hansard, official Government Press Releases, the wider Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press ?
How can he ignore the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840 ?
The Speaker of the House of Commons should not be colluding with the Government and the civil service bureaucracy, he should be Ordering them, under threat of Contempt of Parliament, to obey the several cross-party Select Committees such as the Public Accounts Committee, the Home Affairs Committee, and the Work and Pensions Committee etc. have not even been allowed to see copies of Gateway Review reports, even in closed evidence sessions.
That is the scandal which the Speaker of the House of Commons should be employing lawyers to remedy.
He should not be helping to suppress proper public and Parliamentary scrutiny of massive Government IT projects, involving millions of pounds of public money, which will affect every person in the UK, individually.
The publication of the High Court’s Judgment could take several weeks or months. We await the result, with mounting despair and resentment of the English legal system, which is stacked by the Government so heavily against normal individual citizens, and which fails to uphold their fundamental human rights, in a speedy and just manner.
See More:ID CardsHave Your Say: Government tries to abuse the Bill of Rights
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This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 12:21 am and is filed under Surveillance, Civil Liberties & Human Rights News, General, Human Rights . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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