Displaying items by tag: Law

Liberty, a leading human rights group, is urging Nottingham City Council to scrap ‘cruel’ proposals which could criminalise the area’s most vulnerable people. Liberty said the council’s proposed Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) ‘punishes charitable acts in a bid to airbrush their streets’; the proposals would ‘essentially ban homelessness’, in a move which ignores Home Office guidance. PSPOs are drawn up by local councils to prevent anti-social behaviour, deemed detrimental to the area’s quality of life. Nottingham plans to prohibit members of the public from making ‘unauthorised requests’ for money, personal items, or other donations, and would also ban obstruction of building entrances and exits. It could be a criminal offence to give out free items to someone unknown. Those in breach of the PSPO could be fined up to £100, and offenders could be prosecuted if unable to pay.

The ‘C-9’ are nine cardinals from around the world who meet four times a year to advise the Pope. At the end of their most recent meeting they announced that he had summoned senior bishops from around the world to the Vatican to discuss the protection of minors. The heads of the national bishops' conferences will meet in February 2019 to try to come to grips with a spreading sexual abuse crisis in the USA, Chile, Australia, Germany, and elsewhere. It was recently revealed that 1,670 German priests had sexually abused 3,677 minors, mostly males, over a seventy-year period. A US grand jury found 301 priests in Pennsylvania guilty of sexually abusing minors over a similar period. In August, Italian archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò accused the Pope of knowing about sexual misconduct by a US cardinal and doing nothing about it.

The Supreme Court ruled on 30 July that hospitals can now end life-sustaining care for patients without the need to seek court approval, if families and doctors are in agreement. The ruling was said to ‘clarify the law’, and avoids the need in many cases for families to come to court. Judicial approval will now not be required to withdraw life-prolonging treatments from patients with a prolonged disorder of consciousness such as being in a minimally-conscious or persistent vegetative state - if families and medical staff agree. Previously, some NHS Trusts were unsure as to whether they might find themselves liable to legal action if they went ahead with withdrawal of treatment before seeking permission. The court, led by Lady Black, ruled that to take such action was not a breach of a patient’s human rights. Many Christians believe this decision does not reflect the ‘views of the pews’. The Christian Medical Fellowship said it is never humane to end someone else's life. See

‘Gay conversion therapies’ are to be banned as part of a government 75-point plan to improve the lives of gay and transgender people. A national survey of 108,000 LGBT people suggested that 2% have undergone the practice with another 5% having been offered it. A plan costing £4.5m, has been produced in response to the survey. A national LGBT health adviser will be recruited to tackle discrimination, improve the response to hate crime and improve diversity in education institutions. While the government did not offer a definition of conversion therapy, its report said it ranges from ‘pseudo’ psychological treatments to surgical interventions and 'corrective' rape. Faith organisations were the most likely to have carried out the therapy, according to the report. The NHS does not refer people for it and disagrees with the practice.

Maqsood Bakhsh, a Christian, who has sought asylum in the UK for six years, has appealed to the Prime Minister to allow him to stay, fearing that he and his family face death if they return to Pakistan. He fled Pakistan with his wife Parveen and their sons Somer and Areebs, after Islamic extremists threatened to kill him because of his faith. The catalyst was the murder of two Christians shot outside a court, while in police custody. Pastor Rashid Emmanuel and Sajid had been accused of writing a pamphlet critical of the Prophet Muhammad. Those responsible for the murders believe Maqsood was in league with them, and will kill him and his family if they have the chance. The Home Office has repeatedly rejected their asylum applications. They have no right to appeal, but plan to launch a legal challenge.

MP Istvan Bajkai hopes homelessness will become a thing of the past if his proposed law is taken on by the government. Bajkai previously worked as prime minister Viktor Orban’s lawyer. He wants to amend the constitution to ban homeless people from living and sleeping in public spaces. He said sleeping rough shouldn’t be necessary as everyone without a home is guaranteed shelter. Support services, day centres, and night-time accommodation, are widely available. But according to a local NGO, there are 11,000 places available in temporary accommodation for 30,000 people sleeping rough. Critics say many shelters are unsuitable and lack security, and banning the homeless from public spaces would be impossible to enforce. The director of Shelter Foundation said that to solve homelessness, Orban’s government should support the development of cheap rentals in cities or offer financial support to those who cannot afford to live in them.

The Taoiseach’s comments in February when the 8th amendment referendum announcement was made were that abortions should be ‘safe, legal and rare’. In the United Kingdom abortion is not rare. The abortion law currently being proposed by Ireland's government goes even further than the already very permissive UK law. The British law allows one in every five pregnancies to end in abortion each year. An article written by the Iona Institute sets out exactly how what is on offer in Ireland is more permissive than the British law. To read the article click the ‘More’ button. The most recent statistics on abortions carried out in England and Wales are for 2016; when there were 190,406 carried out for residents and 4,810 for non-residents.

A Birmingham woman was jailed for four and a half years for duping her daughter into travelling to Pakistan and forcing her to marry a man sixteen years her senior. The judge told the mother, ‘You cruelly deceived her. She was frightened, alone, held against her will, being forced into a marriage she dreaded. You must have known her state of mind. Yet for your own purposes, you drove the marriage through.’ It is the first time a victim has given evidence against her family in a trial for this type of offence, and the first conviction for forced marriage in England. The NSPCC hope the sentence will show that young victims can come forward and be supported when they bravely report abuse suffered at the hands of their families. They reported 205 counselling sessions for children concerned about a forced marriage in 2016/2017, and Childline recorded 6,099 visits to its forced marriage online page during the same period.

Guernsey wants to introduce a law which will allow terminally ill people to end their life. The island is due to debate a ‘requête’ and vote (equivalent to a Westminster private member’s bill), which if approved could pave the way to assisted dying. The British Medical Association opposes assisted dying and supports current legal frameworks allowing compassionate and ethical care for the dying to die with dignity. Guernsey doctors must be registered with the General Medical Council in the UK in order to practise medicine on the island. The GMC states it is a criminal offence for anyone to encourage or assist a person to commit suicide. As doctors need to remain GMC members to work in Guernsey, it is difficult to know how they could do so if there was a unilateral change in legislation there.

Ashers Bakery in Northern Ireland, which was found to have discriminated by refusing to make a ‘gay cake’, had their appeal heard by the supreme court on 1 and 2 May. They challenged the 2014 ruling over their decision not to make a cake iced with the slogan ‘Support Gay Marriage’. Appeal court judges upheld the original decision in 2016. The Christian owners of the bakery argued, ‘We didn't say no because of the customer; we'd served him before, we'd serve him again. It was because of the message. But some people want the law to make us support something with which we disagree.’ Their QC David Scoffield said, ‘They have been penalised by the state for failing to create and provide a product bearing an explicit slogan “Support Gay Marriage”, to which they had an objection of conscience.’