The rule of law

The is an old song that goes.... 
It’s the same the whole world over, 
It’s the poor what gets the blame, 
It’s the rich what gets the pleasure, 
Ain’t it all a F*****G shame. 

I am reminded of this every day when watching the current UK government stuff the poor and disadvantaged in every way possible. The performance of the Department of Work and Pensions has reached new lows even for the sociopath Ian Duncan Smith and his cowering, cowardly henchman Mark Hoban. They have resorted to the lowest trick in the politicians’ armoury, making a retrospective law to overturn a court ruling that they (the DWP) had broken the law. 

Of course if you are poor and you break the law you are punished, recently a disabled protester shouted at David Cameron that he had “blood on his hands” because of the work assessment policy that was finding sick and disabled people fit for work and the subsequent deaths of 100s of such people. The disabled protester was seized by police, and found guilty of public order offences and fined an amount of money she cannot possible afford to pay. 

Now politicians are elected to pass laws. When these laws are debated, amended and refined the idea is that they then get to the statue book and the politicians work is over, it is up to the justice system to ensure these rules are obeyed and punish those that do not obey them. 

But passing laws is like installing software on a PC. Sometimes new software will stop existing software from working just as some new laws will interfere with existing laws and sometimes are contradictory. It is up to the courts and judges to apply the law in a way that makes sense of the law in its entirety and this is done by considering cases brought under the new law and reaching judgements that form precedent for subsequent cases. 

However, just as you cannot install an Apple Mac app on a Windows PC, there are certain no no’s when it comes to new laws. For instance you cannot implement a new law that affects a certain group of people without making sure those that are affected know what has changed (under the new law) and what they need to do to comply with that law. If the new law has automatic sanctions for non-compliance then it is illegal to enforce these sanctions if you have not made the rules clear. 

An example of this would be the 30mph speed limit in towns and cities. Everyone who learns to drive has to pass a theory test that explains the rules about speed limits and that when you have street lights but no signs this is a 30mph zone. If the government wanted to change this to 20mph then they would have to run a publicity campaign, like the “clunk click” seat belt ads, to explain the change. 

Now the DWP and its ministers know this. Indeed the DWP costs the taxpayer £6 billion pounds a year in administration and part of that goes on expensive lawyers that are supposed to take care of these things. However when they introduced their new workfare (welfare to work) schemes they failed to explain properly to unemployed people that if they did not take up these “voluntary” unpaid work placements they would be sanctioned and lose their jobseekers allowance. Now two brave souls took the DWP to court over this and won a victory in the high court. This opened the way to all people who had refused their placements and been sanctioned to reclaim their JSA back, this would have costs the DWP £130 million. So the DWP decided to go to parliament and using the governments majority get MPs to vote for a new law that retrospectively replaced the old one to explicitly state that sanctions would apply to all people who had refused placements and stating that all sanctioned were not entitled to JSA. 

This is the same as setting up a speed trap in a 30mph zone. Waiting till all the cars went through the trap and then retrospectively changing the law so that the speed limit was 20mph at the time of the trap, and fining all the drivers that were going over 20 but less than 30. 

The original complainant has decided to take the DWP to the European Court of Human rights because she argues that this retrospective law is unfair and against basic human rights. The DWP has at taxpayers’ expense decided to hire a top QC to not only fight the ECHR case but also to launch an appeal against the original judgement. UPDATE DWP Lost!!!!

Now there are other factors to consider here. First research across the world into these workfare schemes has shown that they do not improve the chances of an unemployed person getting a job. The DWP knows this because they were the ones who commissioned the research. Second the DWP say the schemes benefit the unemployed because it gets them used to a work regime. Third these schemes provide free labour for employers that get a stream of new free workers every six weeks which means they do not have to take on any permanent paid staff. It is a subsidy for these already wealthy companies (like Tesco). Lastly it is forbidden for the employers to employ the people on the scheme when their placement ends (this is because if they did it would be admitting that they had vacancies and therefore they should have not participated in the scheme, a Catch 22 situation). 

So the DWP want to make sure unemployed people spend six weeks providing free labour for rich companies for £71 per week (when minimum wage would pay over £240) with no hope of a job at the end of it, and wasting six weeks of time when they could be looking for work , just out of spite. 

When you consider all these things it is clear that these schemes are a punishment for people who are (mostly) for no fault of their own unemployed, and the use of a retrospective law is proof of how far these disgraceful people will go to make sure the poor and disadvantaged suffer.