Friday, 21 December 2018

Brexit and my MP - Part 36

Here we go again:



Dear Mrs Milton,



My previous email to you was sent before the government announced details of its no-deal contingency plans. These can be seen as nothing but complete and utter admissions of failure.

3,500 troops on standby!

A dedicated NHS ‘plane!

Space rationing on cross-channel ferries!

Emergency purchases of ‘fridges for the NHS!

Expenditure £4.2bn!

These are not the action of a “responsible government”; they are the knee jerks of a rabbit in the headlights. Why on earth is the government even contemplating a no-deal exit? It would constitute a massive act of self-inflicted harm. And it is one that is totally avoidable by a simple announcement that the government will not let it happen by pledging to extend or rescind Article 50 should there be a failure in Parliament, as seems likely, to approve the Prime Minister’s interim deal.

How can you bear to be associated with this shambles?

I suggest that now is the time for all right-thinking MPs to take action to avoid this potential catastrophe. If Parliament is really unable to come to any sensible agreement then, much as I dislike the idea of a further referendum (my earlier communications about the nature of a representative democracy refer), then the only route out of this mess is to put the deal to the people; with Remain as an alternative.

I urge you to do all you can to obtain this outcome. If you feel your Minister of State position is an impediment then there is a simple solution: resign. If pressure from your party colleagues would similarly put a block on action then resign the whip. But, please, have at the forefront of everything you do the best interests of the country in general and of your constituents in particular.



Yours sincerely



Richard Bawden

Thursday, 20 December 2018

Solar Proposals Are Nuts

I think Brexit has addled brains throughout Westminster. HMG is proposing to do away with the export tariff for new domestic solar installations from April 2019. That's right - any excess generation will be provided free to the grid so power companies will not have to purchase that energy they will, in fact, be subsidised! With the country and the world currently failing to be on track to limiting warming to 1.5C where's the incentive for people to act?

There is a second blow for solar producers. Ofgem has announced that it is proposing to change access charging in a way that will increase costs for domestic solar systems. Thanks Ofgem!

Wednesday, 12 December 2018

Brexit and my MP - Part 35

So this is the response I received.

Gosh! Thanks!



Draft EU Withdrawal Agreement (6 December 2018)

My thanks again to everyone for continuing to keep in touch with me about Brexit. You may well have had an email before, but just to sum up, the people who have contacted me fall into 3 broad categories: those who are happy to leave without a deal, those who support the current draft Withdrawal Agreement, and those who would like a second referendum.

I know some people believe that leaving the EU on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules would be a price worth paying and that, although the economy would face a downturn, the recovery would not take as long as some are forecasting. Although I do not believe all the economic forecasts (economists often give quite a wide variation of views), I am yet to be convinced that this would be a responsible path to take. I remain of the view that leaving without a deal would create an economic downturn, and the subsequent social cost would be too high for some parts of the country to bear.

I now understand that it is likely to be possible to rescind Article 50 and return to the situation prior to the referendum of 2016. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is yet to make a decision on whether the UK can do this unilaterally, i.e. without the agreement of other Member States. However, the Advocate General issued his opinion this week that: ‘the Member State which has activated Article 50 TEU in order to withdraw from the European Union may ‘deactivate’ it when its will changes’. I understand that this is only advisory, however it is likely that the UK will have a clear statement over the coming days from the ECJ about whether it can unilaterally rescind Article 50.

I continue to have grave concerns about a second referendum. However, if Parliament were unable to form a majority view then a second referendum may be the only responsible way forward. A second referendum could include: the opportunity to rescind Article 50; leaving the EU on WTO rules; or indeed the draft Agreement we have before us today. I have doubts whether the enabling legislation could get through Parliament until, and unless, Parliament is deadlocked, and another referendum would undoubtedly infuriate many.

However, I feel Parliament has a duty to try and resolve this matter. There is much speculation about what will happen over the next week and I will endeavour to keep you in touch with events as they emerge. Do always use the link www.parliamentlive.tv/Commons if you would like to follow the debate. There are 8 hours of debate each day and depending on whether there are urgent questions or Government statements, the debates will start at: 10:30am on Thursday; 3:30pm on Monday; and 12:30pm on Tuesday.

Many people have raised concerns about the so-called backstop in the draft Agreement, in particular about the open-ended nature of the backstop and also concerns about Northern Ireland. I understand that the words “best endeavours” have a long legal history. However, there is still some question about what would happen next. It is possible that it isn’t in practise enforceable in any meaningful way. The advice that I have been given is that the backstop is not a comfortable position for both the UK and the EU, and that this will be sufficient to ensure we do not stay in the backstop for long.
I have little optimism that the EU will agree variations on the draft Agreement that would be meaningful. So even if the EU agreed to an extension to Article 50 it would be unlikely that this would be for the purpose of changing the deal currently on offer.

This is the most important vote the House of Commons will take in my time as an MP. I will take my time to decide how to vote, bearing in mind the views of the people in Guildford, and the best interests of the country. My position in Government will not affect how I vote. I will accept the consequences whatever they might be, to do what I think is right. I have asked and will continue to press for a free vote on the draft Agreement.

There is no doubt that how I vote will not please everyone, but I can assure you that I am giving this issue a great deal of attention and time, to make quite sure I have all the best information available from the Government, the views of my constituents and any independent advice that is available to me.

Monday, 10 December 2018

Open Access Scientific Publishing

The whole saga of scientific publishers profiting by charging for papers describing publicly-funded research has bubbled to the surface again with the actions of cOAlition S. I was fortunate enough to be a co-author of a paper published in the Faraday Society Transactions in 1973 (J. Chem. Soc., Faraday Trans. 2, 1973, 69, 1839) so I thought I'd check out its current availability. A quick search of the net revealed that it may be purchased for £42.50. Really? For a paper that's 45 years old? That's wicked. Good job I still have a copy for the family history archive.

Sunday, 9 December 2018

Client Earth

Pinched from Rod Janssen's Energy in Demand Blog:-


Reviewing the work of the environmental lawyers Client Earth


Anyone involved in the decision-making process in the EU and many countries will have seen the impact of Client Earth [https://www.clientearth.org/]. But few fully understand the full role of the organisation.  Anke Rasper interviews James Thornton, CEO of Client Earth, in an article on the Deutsche Welle website.

Client Earth: Changing environmental law, the world over

James Thornton, head of public interest law firm Client Earth, holds governments around the world accountable for environmental damage. He tells DW how the law can be harnessed for the good of people and the planet.

DW: You’ve been called one of the 10 people that can change the world. What’s your master plan?

James Thornton: The thing that allows a really small group of people to change the world is using the enormous power of the law. Legal systems encapsulate, really, what a society thinks about itself and the rules that people in the particular society have mutually agreed to be governed by. It always includes enforcement mechanisms.
If, for example, a government has passed a law about air pollution or water pollution and then it doesn’t do the right thing and protect the people like the law says, we — using the power of the law — can go to the courts and force the government to do the right thing. That’s an example of how just a few people can actually make a big difference.
You’re currently suing a number of cities and in a couple of cases courts have already ruled that diesel vehicles should be banned. Berlin is one of them — how many more do you think will follow, and what immediate effect do you hope these bans have?
I think many, many more will follow. We’re now beginning to see that when we simply write a letter to the politicians, they decide to make the changes themselves. It doesn’t always happen, and then we have to sue.
After our case went up to the highest court in Germany and we won, the mayor of Rome — who had only had a polite letter from us — she announced that she wanted to protect the health of the people by banning diesel.
What we hope is, as we bring these cases, the governments will decide on their own to follow the law. It’s not actually asking very much to have governments follow their own laws.

How do pick your battles and win as many cases as you do?

We always start by studying the science. Setting up Client Earth, one of the very first things was to ask climate scientists: ‘If we could do one thing to help slow down climate change, what would it be?’ They said, ‘Stop any new coal-fired power stations from being built in Europe and then start closing down existing ones.’
Sometimes you need to use very different sorts of laws to get to where you want to go.
I’ll give you an example: We just brought a very cool case in Poland a few weeks ago as the first case of its kind in the world. A big energy company called Enea, wanted to build a coal-fired power station.
Energy analysts said that this would be a bad investment. They wouldn’t make money from it because coal is no longer a good investment. But the government is the biggest shareholder, and for political reasons it wanted to move ahead. So we bought shares in the company.
We sued the officers and directors of the company saying that they were violating their duties under corporate law by not taking the interests of the company and the shareholders into account by investing in this bad, bad investment.
I think companies all over the world are going to notice, and of course we’ll bring more of this type of case and we will change their behavior.

Your work only makes a difference if the legal systems work. What do you do in countries where they don’t?

There are some countries where it would be impossible to do our sort of work. We’re always building the rule of law wherever we work. We’re building the rule of law in the EU. In Africa, we are working in five countries.
In Gabon, for example, we had to bring together all of the forestry law. We published what’s now the official Forestry Code of Gabon.
We started by working with NGOs and lawyers in the countries to explore what the legal rights of forest-dependent communities are, so we could protect those rights. And with African lawyers, we studied what the system of rights was in each country to see what rights were missing.
Then we supported the NGOs in going to the governments and saying, ‘We need more of this or that right.’ That’s actually been quite successful.
In each of the countries, the governments then came to us and said, ‘Well actually, we understand what you’re doing and it’s quite helpful. Could you also talk to us?’ We said, ‘Well, of course.’ Then changes in the law came.

You’re also working in China. What are you doing there?

China is very exciting. We’ve just been discussing how in Western Europe sometimes we have to fight governments. We also help them.
In China, the invitation was from the Supreme Court for me to give a seminar to members of the Supreme Court because they were hoping to write a law to allow citizens to sue companies that polluted.
They set up a system of environmental courts, from the Supreme Court all the way down to the provincial level. There are something like 3,000 environment court judges in China who are becoming experts in deciding environmental cases and it’s been a real honor that the Supreme Court invited us to help train these judges in how to make environmental decisions.
Since we’ve been working with them for a few years now, the prosecutors have brought 2,000 enforcement cases in the courts.

You’ve been criticized for this because you’re focusing on the environment and leaving aside human rights and social questions. What’s your response?

Let’s think about it this way: The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] very recently told us that we have 12 years to seriously shift the direction of society if we want a human civilization in future generations. Twelve years — that’s not very long. So if I were to sit here and say, ‘Well I’m not going to help the Chinese improve their environmental work until they’ve completely changed their human rights position,’ 12 years might come and go many times and the world might not survive from an environmental perspective. I think one has to be pragmatic and one has to actually help the world’s biggest polluter and the world’s largest population.

Your court cases often take many years. Is the law too slow?

When people ask me the question is the law too slow, I say, ‘As compared to what?’ Let me just give you the example of air pollution: We sued the UK government in 2010 — which is when they needed to have complied with the law.
So we went to court and we forced them to come up with the plans and now we’re holding them to the plans. By 2025, certainly, most of the UK should actually be complying with the limit. That’s pretty good compared to never getting there.

What does it take for you personally to do this kind of work?

You need to believe that what you’re doing makes sense. I don’t know anything that I could be doing with myself that is anywhere near as interesting. Also, I am a Buddhist and in Buddhism, you take a vow to save all sentient beings. And I have a very literal-minded interpretation of that.
James Thornton is the CEO of environmental law firm Client Earth. Having fought environmental cases in the US, he helped change European law, making it easier to sue of environmental damage. Headquartered in London, Client Earth has offices in Brussels, Warsaw, Beijing — and now Berlin. Thornton is also a Zen Buddhist priest. While taking a break in nature, he likes to set his out-of-office autoreply to “I’m not in the office now. I’m visiting my client.”

Brexit and my MP - Part 34

I have been biting my tongue as far as communicating with my MP on Brexit is concerned. However, needs must...……….



Dear Ms Milton,



I have refrained from writing to you upon the subject of Brexit for some time not because I have little to say; nothing could be further from the truth; but because the unedifying sight of government members bickering among themselves and the demonstrations of apparent ineptitude, ignorance and lack of judgement on behalf of some ministers and other MPs have so angered me that I feared any missive from me might descend into mere invective.

However, the UK now stands at another crossroads and it is right that you should hear the opinions of your constituents.

It is quite obvious that the transition deal and the vague, wishy-washy political statement about long-term relationship attached to it, promise an outcome manifestly worse than the UK’s present arrangements with the EU. A no-deal Brexit would be even more damaging.

I am reminded that item III.6 of the House of Commons Code of Conduct reads “Members have a general duty to act in the interests of the nation as a whole; and a special duty to their constituents”. I have yet to hear a cogent argument explaining how opting for the so-called “least worst” position, i.e. Mrs May’s “deal”, fulfils that duty, particularly in a remain-voting constituency like Guildford.

Please don’t respond with rationalisation along the lines of “the will of the people” and “protecting our democracy”. I recall that even Mrs Thatcher was inclined to agree with Lord Atlee that a referendum is a device of dictators and demagogues. The 23rd June 2016 referendum had little to do with our representative democracy and a lot to do with naked political expediency.

I believe that now is the time for MPs to exercise that duty outlined above and to ensure that the whole sorry saga of Brexit is called off. To do so would be a true demonstration of our representative democracy. If you and your colleagues are unwilling to do so you should at least ensure that the British people have the opportunity to say whether they wish to continue on a path that will inevitably leave the country poorer and, particularly with respect to Europe, distinctly marginalised.

Rescinding Article 50 would be mortifying for many; not to do so would be a permanent and serious mistake.



Yours sincerely



Richard Bawden