The Minister for Women and Equalities Liz Truss confirms her decision to select Baroness Falkner of Margravine @KishwerFalkner as Chair for the Equality and Human Rights Commission gov.uk/government/new…
The announcement does not mention any experience of equalities and human rights except sitting on the @HumanRightsCtte but this may be an oversight?
Wikipedia gives more detail - no direct human rights/equalities experience referred to but high level leadership experience, and will have useful knowledge from European Affairs role at Lib Dems + @HumanRightsCtte membership. Good to see not a Tory stooge! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishwer_F…
Also interesting and good to have a Muslim leader of the @EHRC given the criticism of it for not investigating the Conservative Party (yet) - though I know the Muslim community is complicated, would be interested to hear what @miqdaad has to say about this appointment
Hat-tip to @ShoaibMKhan - worrying article by the new @EHRC Chair from 2015 supporting repealing of the Human Rights Act and replacement with a British Bill of Rights. It's not 100% supportive (subject to details) but worrying use of "human rights lobby" prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/a-bri…
Would be interested to see is she has spoken on this issue more recently than 2015.
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It constantly amazes me how intelligent people on this platform seem so utterly sure about their view about an obviously contested and controversial topic, full understanding of which requires expertise they demonstrably don’t possess
Or maybe I’m the thick one who just CAN’T SEE WHAT’S IN FRONT OF MY VERY EYES HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GRAPH?!
Though I do get that it’s more fun to be unambiguously right
Does the Welsh Assembly have the power to do this? Does it fit within its devolved health powers to ban people from parts of England, Northern Ireland and Scotland? Genuinely unsure how bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-…
I doubt the Welsh coronavirus regulations could bind people not in Wales, so it would be something like "anyone from a Tier 3 are in England may not be in Wales". I can see how a person from England could be bound by restrictions in Wales, but to be prevented from entering?
Potential discrimination (on basis of nationality) argument, but also it sounds a lot like border powers rather than health. Does Wales control its borders (sorry, I don't know this)
Agreed - the new rules are not simpler (each tier is about 12,000 words and 30 pages) though in the medium term they may be simpler, geographically, for people to understand. Easier to know you are "Tier 1" than in some random collection of laws somewhere nobody can find...
But key point is that even the "very high" tier is hardly different to the current harshest regulations. Pubs and restaurants are hardly closing, the gatherings rules are almost exactly the same - so plainly there will need to be harsher rules soon if the govt wants them to be
One positive development is that there now seems to be a willingness by government, finally, to put these rules - and hopefully any future changes to them - to parliament for a vote. Won't be a chance to amend, and reality is they will be passed by large majority, but it's better
My overall thoughts on these: better to have three sets of regulations and then apply them to areas, rather than making new ones every time you bring in new areas. But, the idea that public and police will digest and understand these hugely complex rules is I think farcical...
And these regulations read as if, and I’m pretty sure this is what has happened, they have been drafted by an increasingly large but slightly random committee. There are so many exceptions, they become almost impossible to know or enforce...