Category: Laws & Regulations

Competing for Asylum Expulsions and Book Review on American Revolution

The political news is positive for a change. Settlement of the war in Gaza does seem possible, although there is a lot of work yet to be done on that. Meanwhile the Conservative and Reform Parties are competing on who can be toughest in halting excessive immigration. The Tories will definitely withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if elected to govern which I consider a good thing – for too long judges have presumed to settle English law instead of Parliament deciding. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp gave a good interview for the BBC on this subject yesterday. I always thought he could go far and might make a better leader than other candidates.

A book I have been reading lately is “The Fate of the Day” by Rick Atkinson – all 850 pages of it. It’s a history of the American war of independence and covers the years 1770-1780. It’s too long but is revealing on the wonders of how the Americans managed to win the war when Great Britain had the largest navy in the world and a large land army also. British politicians thought it would be easy to bring the Americans to heel but found otherwise in reality. Political will is what made the difference.

It’s a shame that Americans did not learn from their own history when deciding to go deeper into the war in Vietnam.

One interesting section covers the activities of US Naval Captain John Paul Jones who attacked Whitehaven and stole the local gentry’s silver plate. He died at quite a young age and was buried in Paris. But many years later his body was disinterred for reburial in the USA when a medical examination showed he was suffering from a kidney disease – probably IgA nephropathy which I also suffer from. He remains a hero of the American Revolution despite a chequered career.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://x.com/RogerWLawson  )

You can obtain notifications of new posts in future by following me on Twitter (now “X”) – see https://x.com/RogerWLawson where new blog posts are usually mentioned.

The Impact of Reform and Kent County Council

The Reform Party are certainly having a big impact on both national and local politics. The Labour Party annual conference was dominated by attempts to smear Nigel Farage and those who vote for Reform (like me).

Another example are the events at Kent County Council (KCC) – Bromley where I live used to be part of Kent although technically it’s now part of a London borough and hence part of the Greater London Authority. Many local residents would like to depart from London and the dictatorship of Sadiq Khan.

Recently KCC have voted to rescind a climate change declaration and now have plans to cancel Net Zero targets. With KCC now dominated by Reform Councillors they won the vote by 50 to 21. More details here: https://localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/environment/766-environmental-news/62285-county-council-rescinds-climate-change-declaration-and-lays-out-plans-to-cancel-net-zero-targets

Why are people voting for Reform? In essence because they would like to see new ideas and policies implemented while feeling that the Labour and Conservative parties are stuck in the past. They also feel that both Conservative and Labour parties have broken promises to tackle excessive immigration and the latest proposals are still too weak, while leaders of both parties are seen as ineffective.

It’s certainly time for some changes!

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://x.com/RogerWLawson  )

You can obtain notifications of new posts in future by following me on Twitter (now “X”) – see https://x.com/RogerWLawson where new blog posts are usually mentioned.

Government Commits to Digital IDs

Keir Starmer has announced that the Government will push ahead with a digital identity scheme. He says everyone will need a digital id if they wish to be employed.

It does not worry me as I have multiple forms of digital identity already including some held by government bodies.

The oddity is that everyone who is employed already needs a National Insurance number so that tax can be collected so in theory you can’t get a job without one. But in practice this is not enforced or it is trivial to obtain an NI number if you don’t already have one. So what will change in future?

Without enforcement no system will stop illegal immigration.

As someone who is long retired I presumably won’t legally be required to obtain a digital ID. But this is a very academic issue because I already have an HMRC identity for tax purposes. Hopefully I will just be able to convert this to the new system.   

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://x.com/RogerWLawson  )

Digital IDs and VPNs – Do We Need Them?

The FT and other media have reported that the Prime Minister is planning to bring in digital IDs. It is hoped that this will help to reduce illegal migration. Everyone in the UK would need to have a passport or other digitised identity document.

Reportedly a Government spokesperson said “We are committed to using tech to make it easier for people to interact with the state, learning from other countries on how best to deliver this for citizens”. The UK is one of the few countries that does not have a secure digital ID scheme. Most of Europe does for example.

There will undoubtedly be strong opposition to such a scheme from a minority of the population who are paranoid about concealing or protecting their identity. But what’s my view? I think it is time to introduce digital IDs. They would help to prevent identity theft and fraud and we already have numerous forms of digital identity held by different organisations, including the Government. Having a unified system would assist immigration and law enforcement operations and protect my personal identification.

A related issue that has arisen recently is the use of VPNs (virtual private network software) to conceal your digital IDs on the internet. This is not something new – I have had some VPN software on my laptop for over 10 years to hide my id when using it in a public place such as a hotel. It prevents interception of my emails and web browsing data.

There is a petition on change.org that supports the use of VPNs – see https://www.change.org/p/protect-the-right-to-use-vpns-in-the-uk?

And this quote is in it from Tom Wiersma: “VPNs are the only way in which data to and from my systems becomes more difficult to hack. That data may contain financial, health or other private data which no one has the right to access. VPNs essentially make my on-line activity safe.”

It would be a shame if the Government tried to ban or restrict the use of VPNs.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://x.com/RogerWLawson  )

You can obtain notifications of new posts in future by following me on Twitter (now “X”) – see https://x.com/RogerWLawson where new blog posts are usually mentioned.

The Lawfare Problem – from Chris Philp

There were some interesting comments recently from Chris Philp, Shadow Home Secretary, on the problem of lawyers blocking democratic initiatives. They included these:

Constant lawfare from unscrupulous lawyers, using, or misusing, ECHR protections to thwart democratic mandates.

We’ve seen it with courts preventing successive governments from deporting foreign criminals and illegal immigrants. We’ve seen it with courts forcing governments across Europe to adopt stringent climate change measures that harm economic growth. We’ve seen it with the constant lawfare being used against our veterans, betraying those who’ve served our nation in uniform.

In short, we’ve seen judgements being handed down that undermine democratic mandates.

The Conservatives plan to set up a Commission to look into these issues and how UK law and the ECHR could be reformed.

This seems to be a very good idea to me. See Kemi Badenoch talking about these issues on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGm6IBgl_M4&t=51s

But as usual the problem is being driven by money. Stop the financing of trivial legal cases and the problem would quickly disappear.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://x.com/RogerWLawson  )

You can obtain notifications of new posts in future by following me on Twitter (now “X”) – see https://x.com/RogerWLawson where new blog posts are usually mentioned.

The Good News and the Bad

There are a couple of recent news stories worth commenting on:

Firstly Neil Woodford has been fined £5.9 million by the Financial Conduct Authority and his investment company £40 million for failings in managing the Woodford Equity Income fund which collapsed in 2019. Retail investors lost £billions as a result.

I fortunately was not invested in that fund and the result just seemed to be a case of poor risk management. Bearing in mind what Neil Woodford probably extracted from the fund in management fees during the period of his involvement he has surely got off lightly. He apparently intends to appeal the judgement of the FCA.

The other big news story was the decision by the FCA to launch a consultation on an investment scheme for those who might justify some compensation for car finance policies where the dealer’s commission was not disclosed. Drivers, including me, might get as much as £950 in compensation according to an article in The Times (I did finance the purchase of my previous Jaguar XF but not for my latest Jaguar).

But whatever is eventually agreed, it would be very damaging to those companies that provide car finance. Now I hold shares in several insurance companies so I could take a negative hit from that to offset any claim on my past car purchases. To my mind this is just ridiculous that suckers who overpaid for their car finance or insurance should be compensated.

I shall respond to the FCA consultation accordingly when it is issued.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://x.com/RogerWLawson  )

You can obtain notifications of new posts in future by following me on Twitter (now “X”) – see https://x.com/RogerWLawson where new blog posts are usually mentioned.

Supreme Court Decision on Car Finance Welcomed

The Supreme Court (the Highest UK Court) has issued a decision on some of the claims where it is alleged that car finance and insurance was mis-sold. The claims were mainly based on the fact that those who purchased cars from dealers were not advised of the amount of commission they were paying to arrange it. The car dealers were simply taking the opportunity to sell an additional service to the car purchaser (the buyer did not have to take it as they could have arranged finance and insurance elsewhere).

The claims were potentially going to amount to billions of pounds and would have been very damaging to major insurance companies. I welcome the Supreme Court decision and I actually said this in a previous blog post: “It is surely daft that customers who bought insurance with their eyes wide open should be able to claim anything. They presumably were happy with the costs and level of cover, so the fact there were undisclosed commissions is irrelevant”.

One commentator on that blog post suggested that the car dealer was acting as an agent for the car owner so had a fiduciary duty to advise the owner of the terms of the deal and the commission being paid. But the Supreme Court said no fiduciary duty was owed which hopefully kills off most of the dubious legal claims.

Unfortunately the Court decision is not quite as clear cut as it might appear and there might still be room for some claimants to pursue their cases. Claims management companies were actively pursuing the recruitment of millions of claimants and some appear to be still doing so.

It is surely time for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to kill off any suggestions of a “redress scheme” in this case and to clarify the legal position going forward – by new legislation if necessary.

In general the Courts should not be inventing new legal principles or protecting the ignorant against their own mistakes retrospectively.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://x.com/RogerWLawson  )

You can obtain notifications of new posts in future by following me on Twitter (now “X”) – see https://x.com/RogerWLawson where new blog posts are usually mentioned.

Blocking Porn and the Use of VPNs

The Online Safety Act now requires digital platforms to verify the ages of their customers. The intention is to block minors from accessing pornography. But the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) is a simple way around the issue that can be used by anyone with some basic knowledge.

Now I do have a VPN product on my laptop which was installed years ago. This was a product supplied by Norton as a package with other software security products. This was obtained to protect me from security issues when using public internet networks in hotels or elsewhere. It enables me to pretend to be in another country for example and can hide my IP address.

Does that mean that age verification systems used by porn sites can be bypassed? Yes it does from my simple tests. That might explain why the number of downloads of VPNs has rocketed of late. But apparently there are potential risks with some VPNs.

To quote from a recent British Computer Society newsletter: “Daniel Card, a BCS member with significant expertise in cyber security, spoke to BBC News about the hidden risks: He said: Many of these free VPNs are riddled with issues. Some act as traffic brokers for data harvesting firms, others are so poorly built they expose users to attacks.”

I think the message is if you are going to use a VPN then acquire it from a reputable provider and expect to pay a small fee for it.

The OnLine Safety Act has been criticised for other reasons – see https://consoc.org.uk/the-online-safety-act-privacy-threats-and-free-speech-risks/. It will certainly not prove effective in blocking access to pornography and even Apple have complained that their security systems may have to be relaxed to meet Government requirements for access to encrypted data – see this BBC report: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgj54eq4vejo

It appears the legislation may have been invented by lawyers with little knowledge of the technical environment.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://x.com/RogerWLawson  )

You can obtain notifications of new posts in future by following me on Twitter (now “X”) – see https://x.com/RogerWLawson where new blog posts are usually mentioned.

Digitised Share Registers and surrounding myths

The Investors Chronicle have reported that the Government has announced its intention to accept the recommendation of the Digitisation Task Force to proceed to a staged transition to remove paper share certificates. To quote: “The first stage of this process will see existing paper share registers replaced with digitised versions, which should be completed by the end of 2027”.

It astonishes me that there are any paper share registers still in use. Are there companies really still using leather bound paper share ledgers to track their shareholders? Surely most are now at least using spreadsheets to record their shareholders.

For publicly listed companies (which is all we are concerned with) they are typically using a few professional registrars who all have digital systems. So setting an end-date for completion of this step of 2027 is surely quite ridiculous and shows how little knowledge there is of the work required to remove paper share certificates.   

P.S. Some people think that the fact you are holding a paper share certificate is indisputable evidence that you own the shares. This is mistaken. The ownership is confirmed by an entry in the company’s share register alone.                                                                           

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://x.com/RogerWLawson  )

You can obtain notifications of new posts in future by following me on Twitter (now “X”) – see https://x.com/RogerWLawson where new blog posts are usually mentioned.