The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[snowychap]

The effect of the changes in personal allowance and increase in higher rate threshold would seem to be:

£12,500 to £46350: £130 up

£46350 to £50,000: £130 to £730 up

£50,000 plus: £600 to £730 up

Unless I've worked that out wrong*. If I haven't then I'm not sure quite how well that will fly when fully digested.

^Edit: I did. Should have included the personal allowance amount in the incomes from £46,350 upwards. So max is £860 not £730, I think.

Edited October 29, 2018 by snowychap

[chrisp65]

It'll incentivise people not to be poor lazy scum.

[snowychap]

House of Lords Constitution Committee:

Quote

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Introduction

1.The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill was introduced into the House of Commons on 6 June 2018 and passed third reading on 11 September. It was introduced to the House of Lords on 12 September and received a second reading on 9 October.

2.The Bill amends and extends certain terrorism offences; adjusts the sentencing framework for terrorism-related offences, including by increasing the maximum penalty for certain offences; and extends police powers to investigate and prevent terrorism. The Bill also provides for a new power aimed at countering hostile state activity.1

3.In this report, we draw attention to several constitutional implications of the Bill. Those implications intersect to some extent with a number of the human rights concerns that the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) raised in its two reports on the Bill.2 We confine ourselves to issues raised by the Bill that are specifically constitutional in character.

Access to legal advice

4.Schedule 3 to the Bill establishes a system whereby people at ports and borders can be stopped, searched, questioned and detained (for up to six hours). The Bill provides a right to consult a solicitor in person,3 but this is subject to significant limitations. In particular, the right arises only if the person concerned is detained, yet it is possible to question a person for up to one hour without formally detaining them. As a result, the entitlement to confidential legal advice is triggered only after questioning has begun. Moreover, while access to a solicitor is available only on request, there is nothing in the Bill that requires a detainee to be notified of the right to consult a solicitor.4 Questioning may continue pending the arrival of a requested solicitor “if the examining officer reasonably believes that postponing the questioning until then would be likely to prejudice determination of the relevant matters”.5 Consultation with a solicitor may sometimes be permitted only in the presence of an officer, thus denying the right to confidential legal advice.6

5.The JCHR concluded: “The vital safeguard of access to a lawyer is not adequately protected.”7 In its response to the JCHR,8 the Government indicated, in effect, that those being questioned under schedule 3 powers will often be treated more favourably than they will be strictly entitled to under the Bill. For instance, while the Government acknowledged that a person has “no entitlement” to legal advice during pre-detention questioning (i.e. for up to one hour), it assured the JCHR that a code of practice “will make clear that where reasonably practicable, the examining officer should permit them to seek legal counsel”. Similarly, although nothing in the Bill requires detainees to be notified of their right to request access to legal advice, the Government told the JCHR that “the examining officer will explain that [the detainee] may, if they so request, consult a solicitor as soon as is reasonably practicable, privately and at any time”. More generally, the Government said that the schedule 3 provisions for the treatment of detained examinees is “modelled on” provisions in the Terrorism Act 2000,9 such that the schedule 3 arrangements are “not new or novel”, and that “the police are experienced in exercising them only where necessary and proportionate”.10

6.We are concerned that the Government’s justification for these provisions relies on the assurance that the powers will be used more benevolently than the text of the Bill requires. Such assurances are insufficient, particularly when civil liberties issues are engaged. They do not bind the Government and therefore cannot be relied on. Moreover, to the extent that the Government’s assurances on the operation of the Bill rely on the content of the proposed code of practice, questions arise concerning the appropriateness of leaving such matters to supplementary materials. We address that issue below.

7.We agree with the Joint Committee on Human Rights that access to confidential legal advice—a fundamental constitutional principle, acknowledged at common law—is not adequately protected by the Bill. We recommend that the Bill is amended to require detainees to be informed of their right to consult a solicitor; to remove the power to delay consultation with a solicitor; and to remove the power to permit consultation with a solicitor to occur only in the sight and hearing of a qualified officer.

The rule of law and legal certainty

Extra-territorial jurisdiction

8.Two aspects of the Bill give rise to concerns related to the rule of law and legal certainty. The first is the extension of extra-territorial jurisdiction over terrorism-related offences—including offences committed by foreign nationals.

9.Extra-territorial jurisdiction over criminal matters creates the possibility of criminalising conduct that does not, in the country in which the conduct occurred, constitute a criminal offence.

10.The rule of law—in particular the principle of legal certainty—requires that people have a fair opportunity of understanding what the law is, in order to make informed decisions about how to stay on the right side of the law and thus avoid punishment for its breach. In the light of this, the possibility of people being ‘caught out’ by laws about which they could not have reasonably known is to be deprecated. Yet this possibility inevitably arises when, as is already the case in respect of certain terrorism-related offences under UK law, extra-territorial criminal jurisdiction is asserted over both UK and foreign nationals, the latter being unlikely to know—and unlikely to have any reason to inform themselves—of the content of UK criminal law. This problem becomes particularly acute if UK criminal law is especially broad in relevant respects, in which case there is a heightened risk of someone who travels to the UK being convicted for conduct, possibly lawful, committed in a foreign country in circumstances in which it was not reasonable to anticipate that criminal liability may ensue.

11.The Bill extends extra-territorial jurisdiction to criminal liability under section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000. At present, that provision creates an offence for someone in a public place to wear an item of clothing or to wear, carry or display an article so as to “arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation”.11 The Bill amends section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to create an additional offence of publishing an image of an item of clothing or any other article so as to “arouse reasonable suspicion that the person is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation”.12

12.The JCHR concluded that the application of extra-territorial jurisdiction to offences with no equivalent in the country concerned raised issues of natural justice and foreseeability of the legal consequences of one’s actions. It pointed out that “a foreign national, with few links to the UK, could be prosecuted in the UK if he/she attended a protest or waved a flag overseas, in support of an organisation that is lawful within that overseas jurisdiction, if that individual then travels to the UK.”13 The JCHR proposed amendments either to remove extra-territorial jurisdiction altogether, or to provide that extra-territorial jurisdiction applies only where the relevant conduct is criminal in the country concerned or the individual in question is a British national or has lived in the United Kingdom for a continuous period of six months in the last ten years.14

13.We are concerned that the extra-territorial extension of these offences risks individuals being prosecuted in the UK for criminal offences that do not exist in the country in which the relevant conduct occurred and in circumstances in which the imposition of criminal liability might not reasonably be foreseen. This breaches the requirement, deriving from the principle of legal certainty, that people should have a fair opportunity to know the laws (particularly criminal laws which on conviction carry criminal penalties) which apply to them. We agree with the JCHR’s proposed amendment that extra-territorial jurisdiction should apply only where the relevant conduct is criminal in the country concerned or where the individual has sufficient links to the UK.

‘Hostile activity’

14.Legal certainty also requires that the law is clear in how it will apply. In this regard, the Bill’s definition of ‘hostile activity’ is problematic.

15.Schedule 3 creates new powers that will allow people to be stopped, questioned, searched and detained at ports and borders15 to determine whether they are or have been engaged in ‘hostile activity’. The powers are not constrained by requiring, for example, reasonable grounds for suspecting that the person concerned is or has been engaged in hostile activity. The circumstances in which a person is ‘engaged in hostile activity’ are broadly defined: they arise if the person “is or has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of a hostile act”—meaning something that threatens national security, threatens the UK’s economic well-being or is an “act of serious crime”—that is carried out for or on behalf of, or is otherwise in the interests of, another state.16

16.The JCHR expressed concerns about the powers and their implications for human rights and concluded that “serious consideration” should be given to circumscribing the powers by “(1) clearly defining ‘hostile activity’; (2) requiring a threshold test of reasonable suspicion; (3) explicitly providing that the power must only be exercised where necessary and proportionate.”17

17.We are concerned that the broadly defined concept of ‘hostile activity’ not only engages human rights considerations, but also has implications for the rule of law and legal certainty. We support the JCHR’s recommendations to circumscribe the powers.

Supplementary materials and parliamentary scrutiny

18.The Government sought to assure the JCHR that the exercise of powers defined in relation to ‘hostile activity’ would be made more predictable by issuing guidance:

“The decision to stop an individual will be informed by considerations such as the current threat to the UK posed by hostile states, available intelligence, and trends of patterns of travel of those suspected of being involved in hostile activity. Guidance as to the selection criteria will be set out in the Code of Practice, which we intend to publish in draft in advance of Committee stage of the Bill in the House of Lords.”18

19.The application of the definition of ‘hostile activity’ should not be left to a code of practice given the seriousness of the offences to which it relates. Our concern is compounded by the Government’s failure to publish a draft code of practice for the majority of the time during which the Bill is before Parliament.

 

[PompeyVillan]

The 'end to austerity ' is cynical nonsense. They set artitrary, irrelevant targets years ago that they haven't met, punished the poorest and society for years in end and continue to do so and for some reason expect people to be delighted that they've so graciously 'ended' austerity. And they do so by providing a blackmail budget that they will use as a stick to beat anyone that opposes their ridiculous Brexit plans in a 'meaningful vote' in parliament. 

 

[Davkaus]

 

 

Edited October 29, 2018 by Davkaus

[peterms]

 

[peterms]

2 hours ago, snowychap said:

The effect of the changes in personal allowance and increase in higher rate threshold would seem to be:

£12,500 to £46350: £130 up

£46350 to £50,000: £130 to £730 up

£50,000 plus: £600 to £730 up

Unless I've worked that out wrong*. If I haven't then I'm not sure quite how well that will fly when fully digested.

^Edit: I did. Should have included the personal allowance amount in the incomes from £46,350 upwards. So max is £860 not £730, I think.

 

[chrisp65]

trickle down

trickle dow

trickle do

trickle d

trickle

trickl

trick

[peterms]

Thing is, a gain of a couple of hundred quid for people in the top 30% is nothing.  They won't even notice it.  Some will have spent that on a bottle of wine, and many more will have spent that on dinner.

The tories are giving them this at the expense of poorer people not even because they expect some electoral gain from it, only because they are hardwired to reward the already rich and punish the poor. 

[Xann]

Public services f***ed across the board and he's cutting taxes as a bribe.

[Xann]

Interesting that the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, has taken 32K of donations from a man that wants to dismantle the NHS and funded climate change deniers.

[Xann]

Mind's response to Esther McVey's lies on Twitter are worth a look.

[Chindie]

1 minute ago, Xann said:

Mind's response to Esther McVey's lies on Twitter are worth a look.

Lucky they didn't sign the agreement to not criticise her on pain of penalty.

[WhatAboutTheFinish]

On 29/10/2018 at 23:06, peterms said:

 

If those numbers are correct, and I’ve no reason to believe they are not, it means the top 10% are only earning £90 something k a year on average. That seems surprisingly low to me and perhaps indicates that income isn’t as disproportionately distributed in this country as is sometimes made out.

[Seat68]

18 minutes ago, WhatAboutTheFinish said:

If those numbers are correct, and I’ve no reason to believe they are not, it means the top 10% are only earning £90 something k a year on average. That seems surprisingly low to me and perhaps indicates that income isn’t as disproportionately distributed in this country as is sometimes made out.

I would dispute them figures or at least question them, those figures are per household, if what you say is correct, then 90k is is easily achievable particularly in London per household and nowhere near the top 10%.

[Chindie]

"only"

[Davkaus]

13 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

I would dispute them figures or at least question them, those figures are per household, if what you say is correct, then 90k is is easily achievable particularly in London per household and nowhere near the top 10%.

It's not the top 10% in London, but averaged out across the country? Yeah. The median household income is £26k, you're surprised that 3.5 times the median puts you in the top 10%?

[lapal_fan]

1 minute ago, Davkaus said:

It's not the top 10% in London, but averaged out across the country? Yeah. The median household income is £26k, you're surprised that 3.5 times the median puts you in the top 10%?

I thought the average personal income was 26k, not household income. 

[Seat68]

1 minute ago, lapal_fan said:

I thought the average personal income was 26k, not household income. 

This is my point, if it is personal then yes, its a very broad 10%, but its not, its per household and although here in Staffordshire this household isnt in that, we arent a million miles away from it.

[Davkaus]

Just now, lapal_fan said:

I thought the average personal income was 26k, not household income. 

They're very similar numbers.

My number was actually quite a bit out  of date, the average household disposable (as in after tax and other deductibles) is £28,400 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/nowcastinghouseholdincomeintheuk/financialyearending2018

The average salary is pretty similar to that, at about 28k https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2017provisionaland2016revisedresults#main-points

The average household is lower than you might expect for a few reasons. Salary is usually pre tax, whereas household disposable income is post. Also looking at the average salary doesn't take in to account unsalaried workers who often earn significantly less, as well as households where there's only one worker.