Big Sticks and Small Carrots

Back in October 2007, Gordon Brown announced a review of the laws governing demonstrations in the area around parliament. He said:

While balancing the need for public order with the right to public dissent, I think it right – in consultation with the Metropolitan Police, Parliament, the Mayor of London, Westminster City Council and liberties groups – to change the laws that now restrict the right to demonstrate in Parliament Square.

Anyone even slightly familiar with ‘politician speak’ will have spotted that this is not much of a commitment. Nevertheless, before the “change” in the law, a public consultation was duly established and the deadline for replies is 17th January. Further information can be found courtesy of the repeal SOCPA website.

I’d like to draw your attention to the first two questions in the consultation paper. They are not, in fact, concerned with restrictions on demonstrations in the “designated area” around parliament; their scope is somewhat larger than that. Here they are:

1. The Government believes peaceful protest is a vital part of a democratic society, and that the police should have powers to manage public assemblies and processions to respond to the potential for disorder. Should the powers generally in relation to marches and assemblies be the same?
2. Do you agree that the conditions that can be imposed on assemblies and marches should be harmonised?

Has your internal alarm gone off yet? It should be wailing like a banshee.

First of all, remember that these questions relate to the whole country*, not just the designated area. Here’s a quick summary of the powers the police currently have to control marches.

Organisers must give six days advance notice to the police.

Organisers must specify “the date when it is intended to hold the procession, the time when it is intended to start it, its proposed route, and the name and address of the person (or one of the persons) proposing to organise it”.

The senior police officer, if he “reasonably believes” the march may may result in “serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community” or “reasonably believes” that “the purpose of the persons organising it is the intimidation of others with a view to compelling them not to do an act they have a right to do, or do an act they have a right not to do”, can impose wide ranging conditions on the march.

If the senior police officer “reasonably believes” that the imposition of conditions would not prevent serious public disorder, he can apply to the relevant council to prohibit a march. (In London, the application is made directly to the Home Secretary.)

The laws on assembly (two or more persons in a public place in the open air) are not quite so far reaching. Yet.

Outside the “designated area” the law does not require that the police are given six days notice of an assembly.

The senior police officer may impose limited conditions on these static demonstrations if he “reasonably believes” all that stuff as above about “serious public disorder” etc..

The authorities currently do not have the power to prohibit static demonstrations.

If I was to ask in which direction you think the government wants to move in order to “harmonise” these powers, I’d just be being facetious. A relaxation of the laws on the control of processions is clearly not what they are after. No, the sweet harmony they want to play is to introduce wide ranging new powers to control demonstrations throughout the country. If they succeed, many of the absurdities of the current SOCPA laws regarding demonstrations in the “designated area” would apply much more widely. “Harmonisation” would mean that two Amnesty International volunteers trying to raise awareness and attract new members on your local high street on a Saturday afternoon would have to give the police six days notice of their intentions.

The government probably does intend to make some small adjustments to the SOCPA restrictions. A minor relaxation of the outrageously heavy handed SOCPA regulations might just interest the media enough to distract them from the government’s sweeping new controls. “Brown Champions Freedom” will be the entirely inaccurate message the government will be hoping to sell.

All the details on the public consultation are here and you can email submissions so there’s still time to have your say. (Not much mind. The consultation closes on the 17th.) If you’ve never taken part in a public consultation, I recommend you do it now. You know, while it’s still legal for you to express your opinion at all…

* To be entirely honest, I’ve not managed to work out whether this includes Scotland. I believe it does but don’t quote me on that. At the very least, it covers England and Wales.

Nuclear power is one of those debates which brings out the vested interest groups in droves. This makes it particularly difficult to establish even the most basic facts surrounding the issue.

Take this article on CiF by former Labour MP and energy minister Brian Wilson which adopts a classic Blairite “the debate has moved on” approach to the issue. Wilson starts by constructing a straw man and, what a surprise, defeats it hands down. Well done.

What Wilson does not do is declare his own interest in the nuclear industry. He stepped down as an MP in May 2005; in October 2005, he was appointed non-executive director of AMEC Nuclear, “the UK largest private sector supplier of engineering solutions and safety consultancy services to the nuclear sector”. (Via edwardrice in the comments at CiF.)

That, of itself, doesn’t mean his opinions can be disregarded. The fact that he chose not to disclose this information in his article, however, doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in his integrity. I’m surprised that the Guardian allowed it; they’re normally reasonably good at that sort of thing.

Anyway, today the government has announced that nuclear power is, er, well, what have they announced exactly? They say that they are going to support new nuclear power plants but there are to be no public subsidies. The problem with that is that investment in nuclear power plants doesn’t appear to be economically viable at the moment. If it was, power companies would already be attempting to build them.

But they are not. They’re waiting for the government to do something. The something which gets mentioned most often is that they intend to streamline the planning process. That might make it easier to build the things but it doesn’t really seem too convincing as a way to make investment in new nuclear power an economically viable proposition. So what else?

The answer, I believe, lies in this rather more informative Guardian article which is worth reading in full. Here’s what the government could do to “encourage” new nuclear investment without providing public subsidies in the normally understood sense of the term:

The power firms insist there is no need for any subsidies because they are prepared to pay in full the cost of decommissioning reactors and the expected burial of waste…

EDF and Eon reject claims that this means they want the UK guarantees a minimum price for power, although privately both firms are pushing as hard as they can for a mechanism to come close to this.

That’d do it, certainly. That, and guarenteed minimum demand from the new plants (without that, nuclear power could be superseded by cheaper options at any future time and demand for nuclear would then fall away). Without those government interventions, the enormous up-front investment in new nuclear power stations would be very risky. If energy prices were to fall, if new cheaper technologies were discovered or large new gas reserves found, nuclear investors could be seriously out of pocket without these “encouragements”. With these “frameworks” in place to remove much of the risk, I’m sure private companies will be much more enthusiastic about new nuclear.

Strip away the smoke and mirrors and that’s what we’re talking about; significant state intervention in the market. It may not be in the form of direct public subsidies but it’ll still be the general public who effectively provide the financial guarantees so that investors can make their money while facing a minimum of risk.

And, of course, artificially high power prices would affect those least able to afford it the most. It would be, in effect, yet another regressive tax on those with low incomes.

Hutton today has gone out of his way to say that there will be no public subsidies provided as part of the “ecouragement” process. Let’s see if he also rules out government regulation on pricing and demand.

By the way, SNP say they will not allow any new plants to be built in Scotland in any event. That’d create a whole different set of problems, of course. Will Scotland take power from the national grid which has been generated by nuclear plants in England? Would that generate perfectly understandable resentment south of the border? Will the SNP be loving every minute of that resentment… But that’s another story.

I hope you had an enjoyable festive period. I did.

Before getting back to the usual political fun and games, let’s take a moment to consider the plight of Jeremy Clarkson. Ha ha! Even though I disagree with almost everything he stands for, I do find him quite entertaining. But still. Ha ha!

He has had the good grace to admit that he was wrong to claim that losing the details of 25 million people was not a big deal. And, unlike many of the 25 million people whose details were lost, he can afford to lose £500.

If I had one small suggestion, it’d be that I wish the money had been donated to Greenpeace. That’d really have got him going.