Saturday, 11 August 2018
Thursday, 9 August 2018
Monday, 30 July 2018
Wednesday, 13 June 2018
National Health Service
Ending the privatisation of the National Health Service
Jeremy Corbyn has stated that he wants to ensure that the NHS is ‘completely publicly run and publicly accountable.’ The UK’s ability to make health policy is, however, increasingly constrained by EU law. For example, the Patients’ Rights Directive 2011/24/EU (codifying earlier case law of the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice) makes detailed provision about the ability of patients to seek treatment elsewhere in the EU.
Removing the private sector from the NHS will be very difficult to reconcile with certain fundamental principles of EU law, including the freedom to provide services, EU public procurement, competition and state aid law. This is admittedly an area of considerable legal complexity, meaning that conclusions cannot be stated with complete certainty. Leaked legal advice to the Department of Health in November 2006 on this topic (when EU law was less developed) ran to 44 pages.
That legal advice suggested that private companies could have the right under EU law to sue the NHS for ‘abuse of a dominant position’ or ‘collusion’ in the single market and that GPs constitute economic ‘undertakings’, making them subject to EU competition law. It concluded that the Department of Health and the NHS will ‘continue to be exposed to the risk of investigations, possible damages actions and even, in serious cases, fines under [EU] competition law.’ It also questioned whether NHS trusts’ ‘exemption from corporation tax’ was compatible with EU law, stating that ‘the State aid rules may apply to the grant of funding and other benefits from State resources to public healthcare bodies.’
EU law constitutes a serious obstacle to the return of the NHS to public ownership. Any attempt to do so while the UK remains in the EU will be challenged in the UK and EU courts by well-funded private healthcare companies who stand to lose lucrative contracts as a result. If such challenges succeed, companies might win damages out of the NHS budget and the UK could be fined by the European Commission and Luxembourg Court for attempting to return the NHS to the public sector. This danger will only increase if the EU’s proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is agreed to.
Jeremy Corbyn has stated that he wants to ensure that the NHS is ‘completely publicly run and publicly accountable.’ The UK’s ability to make health policy is, however, increasingly constrained by EU law. For example, the Patients’ Rights Directive 2011/24/EU (codifying earlier case law of the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice) makes detailed provision about the ability of patients to seek treatment elsewhere in the EU.
Removing the private sector from the NHS will be very difficult to reconcile with certain fundamental principles of EU law, including the freedom to provide services, EU public procurement, competition and state aid law. This is admittedly an area of considerable legal complexity, meaning that conclusions cannot be stated with complete certainty. Leaked legal advice to the Department of Health in November 2006 on this topic (when EU law was less developed) ran to 44 pages.
That legal advice suggested that private companies could have the right under EU law to sue the NHS for ‘abuse of a dominant position’ or ‘collusion’ in the single market and that GPs constitute economic ‘undertakings’, making them subject to EU competition law. It concluded that the Department of Health and the NHS will ‘continue to be exposed to the risk of investigations, possible damages actions and even, in serious cases, fines under [EU] competition law.’ It also questioned whether NHS trusts’ ‘exemption from corporation tax’ was compatible with EU law, stating that ‘the State aid rules may apply to the grant of funding and other benefits from State resources to public healthcare bodies.’
EU law constitutes a serious obstacle to the return of the NHS to public ownership. Any attempt to do so while the UK remains in the EU will be challenged in the UK and EU courts by well-funded private healthcare companies who stand to lose lucrative contracts as a result. If such challenges succeed, companies might win damages out of the NHS budget and the UK could be fined by the European Commission and Luxembourg Court for attempting to return the NHS to the public sector. This danger will only increase if the EU’s proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is agreed to.
Saturday, 17 March 2018
Tuesday, 6 March 2018
Monday, 26 February 2018
Full text of Jeremy Corbyn's speech on Labour's Brexit policy
Full text of Jeremy Corbyn's speech on Labour's Brexit policy.- 26-32 minutes.
Below is the text of the speech Jeremy Corbyn has delivered in Coventry this morning about Labour policy on Brexit: Next month, the government will embark on the second and most crucial phase of negotiations to leave the European Union to set the terms of Britain’s relationship with the EU for the long-term. We are now 20 months on from the referendum that voted to leave and a year on from the triggering of Article 50. But the country is still in the dark about what this divided Conservative government actually wants out of Brexit.
They can’t agree amongst themselves about what their priorities are or what future they want for Britain after Brexit. They’ve got no shortage of soundbites and slogans of course. The Foreign Secretary says it will be “a liberal Brexit”, the Prime Minister says it will be a “red white and blue Brexit”, or on other days it’s a “bespoke economic partnership”. The Brexit Secretary at least now promises it won’t be “a Mad Max-style dystopia”, which you might think was setting the bar a little bit low. While the Trade Secretary can’t contain himself at the prospect of pushing Britain into a spiral of deregulation in rights and standards and the cabinet seems to have agreed at Chequers to leave the door open to that with their “ambitious managed divergence”, whatever that means. But the truth is we really don’t know much more about where they’re actually heading in these talks.
While workers, businesses and everyone who voted in the referendum just want to know what the government’s approach to Brexit is likely to mean for their future and the future of the country. As the Opposition, we have been trying to hold this government to account. Our message has been consistent since the vote to leave 20 months ago. We respect the result of the referendum. Our priority is to get the best deal for people’s jobs, living standards and the economy. We reject any race to the bottom in workers’ rights, environmental safeguards, consumer protections or food safety standards. And we’ve pushed the government to act to guarantee the rights of EU citizens living here and of UK citizens who have made their homes elsewhere in Europe; to ensure a transition period on the existing terms; to minimise disruption and avoid an economic cliff edge; to avoid any return to a hard border in Northern Ireland; and to guarantee Parliament a meaningful vote on the final deal.
This Conservative government has dithered and delayed. Their divisions, their incompetence and their deregulation obsession risk putting jobs and living standards at risk as we leave the EU. This is an economy that has already been damaged by eight years of Conservative austerity, where wages are still lower today than they were a decade ago, where productivity lags dangerously behind the other major economies, where the government has failed to invest and modernise, where more people are living in poverty. And where closing the deficit, that was due to be eradicated by 2015, then 2016, then 2017, then 2020 has now had to be put back to 2025. After years of Tory bluster and, the Conservatives have been found out. They have no economic plan and they have no Brexit plan.
Every so often they wheel out Boris Johnson to promise once more that they’ll cough up more money for the NHS after Brexit. But they’ve spent the last 8 years not giving more money to the NHS. Even while they’ve been able to find billions of pounds to cut taxes for the richest corporations, to cut capital gains tax for the super-rich elite and to scrap the 50% rate for the richest too, and found billions more to cut inheritance tax on the wealthiest estates and to slash the bank levy. Yet the NHS has been subjected to the longest financial squeeze in its history. This is a government that’s failed our NHS, pre-Brexit and during Brexit. And it certainly can’t be trusted with the NHS post-Brexit either. Labour will give the NHS the resources it needs, because we will raise tax on the top 5% and big business, those with the broadest shoulders to pay. Not by making up numbers and parading them on the side of a bus. And we will use funds returned from Brussels after Brexit to invest in our public services and the jobs of the future, not tax cuts for the richest.
Today, I want to set out Labour’s approach to Brexit in more detail. How we would do things differently, what our priorities are for the Brexit negotiations and the values that underpin them. The first is our overriding mission: that whatever is negotiated must put people’s jobs and living standards first. The Brexit process must not leave our people and country worse off. We are committed to building a more prosperous and a more equal Britain, in which every region benefits and no community is left behind, as we set out in our manifesto. And that is what underpins our approach to Brexit. The second is unity. Most people in our country, regardless of whether they voted leave of remain want better jobs, more investment, stronger rights and greater equality. So we will not let those who want to sow divisions drive this process. No scapegoating of migrants, no setting one generation against another and no playing off the nations of the UK. No one should be willing to sacrifice the Good Friday Agreement, the basis for 20 years of relative peace, development and respect for diversity in Northern Ireland.
The third is our global perspective. We are leaving the European Union but we are not leaving Europe. We are not throwing up protectionist barriers, closing the borders and barricading ourselves in. And we want a close and cooperative relationship with the whole of Europe after Brexit. We are internationalists. We know that our interests are bound up with millions of others across the world, whether that’s in order to tackle the huge challenge of climate change, build a more peaceful world or clamp down on the tax dodging elite, who think by bestriding the globe they can avoid paying their share for vital public services. I want to address each of these principles today because together they define Labour’s approach to Brexit the Labour Party’s values and what the next Labour government will seek to deliver in office. So many of the areas that voted to Leave are the same areas that have lost out from years of chronic under-investment.
Areas where too many people are held back by a lack of opportunities, where people feel the system is rigged against them because they can’t get a decent secure job, can’t afford to buy a home, can’t get more hours or higher pay, can’t afford to retire or aren’t able to escape the spiral of debt. Labour’s priority is to get the best Brexit deal for jobs and living standards to underpin our plans to upgrade the economy and invest in every community and region. To shift it away from the low pay, low skill, low investment economy it has become. And rebalance that investment across the whole country so that no longer will some regions get a mere one-sixth of the investment that goes to London. That is why Labour wants a Brexit for all our people. One that offers security to workers in the car industry worried about their future, hope to families struggling to pay the bills each month and opportunity to young people wanting a decent job and a home of their own.
Those are the people we are thinking of and working for. It is a different story around the away day table at Chequers. The government seems much more concerned about cutting deals with each other and for their friends and funders in the City. Labour is looking for a Brexit that puts the working people first. Leaving the EU, whenever that exit date comes, risks delivering a shock to the UK economy unless the right plans and protections are in place to allow the kind of investment and economic transformation programme that the country needs and that Labour is committed to. For 45 years our economy has become increasingly linked into the European Union.
Many of our laws and regulations are set and monitored by joint European authorities, from implementing rules on use of pesticides to assessing the levels of fluoride in our drinking water. The European Food Safety Authority plays a vital role in monitoring the substances used in manufacturing or growing our food using the latest scientific evidence to assess whether substances are likely to have harmful effects on human or animal health. While the European Chemicals Agency carries out the vital task of evaluating and authorising chemicals as safe for use. And many businesses have supply chains and production processes, interwoven throughout Europe. Take the UK car industry, which supports 169,000 manufacturing jobs, 52,000 of which are here in the West Midlands.
If we look at the example of one of Britain’s most iconic brands in this sector, the Mini, we begin to see how reliant our automotive industry is on a frictionless, interwoven supply chain. A mini will cross the Channel three times in a 2,000-mile journey before the finished car rolls off the production line. Starting in Oxford it will be shipped to France to be fitted for key components before being brought back to BMW’s Hams Hall plant in Warwickshire where it is drilled and milled into shape. Once this process is complete the mini will be sent to Munich to be fitted with its engine, before ending its journey back at the mini plant in Oxford for final assembly. If that car is to be sold on the continent then many of its components will have crossed the Channel four times. The sheer complexity of these issues demand that we are practical and serious about this next stage. I want to pay tribute to Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey, Barry Gardiner and Emily Thornberry, who are grappling with these issues. They are a serious and united team. Now you know I don’t do personal but let me simply say this: that is in some contrast to their opposite numbers.
It makes no sense for the UK to abandon EU agencies and tariff-free trading rules that have served us well, supporting our industrial sectors, protecting workers and consumers and safeguarding the environment. If that means negotiating to support individual EU agencies, rather than paying more to duplicate those agencies here then that should be an option, not something ruled out because of phoney jingoistic posturing. So we will want to remain a part of agencies like Euratom, regulating nuclear materials in energy and health sectors and programmes like Erasmus that give students opportunities to study across Europe, because they serve our interests. We are leaving the European Union but we will still be working with European partners in the economic interests of this country.
When 44% of our exports are to EU countries and 50% of our imports come from the EU, then it is in both our interests for that trade to remain tariff-free. It would damage businesses that export to Europe and the jobs that depend on those exports for there to be the additional costs of tariffs and it would damage consumers here, already failed by stagnant wages and rising housing costs. So we will remain close to the European Union, that’s obvious. Every country, whether it’s Turkey, Switzerland, or Norway that is geographically close to the EU, without being an EU member state has some sort of close relationship to the EU. Some more advantageous than others. And Britain will need a bespoke, negotiated relationship of its own. During the transition period, Labour would seek to remain in a customs union with the EU and within the single market.
That means we would abide by the existing rules of both. That is so the government, businesses and workers only have to make one adjustment, from the current situation to the final terms. Labour spelled out the need for a stable transition period last summer. Both the TUC and CBI agree. We thought the government had accepted that case but they now seem to be in disarray on the issue again. Time after time with this government, anything agreed at breakfast is being briefed against by lunch and abandoned by teatime. Disarray is, it seems, the new ‘strong and stable’. And the government’s muddle and division risk two costly adjustments for both government and businesses from the current terms to the transition terms and then again to the final terms.
Labour would seek a final deal that gives full access to European markets and maintains the benefits of the single market and the customs union as the Brexit Secretary, David Davis promised in the House of Commons, with no new impediments to trade and no reduction in rights, standards and protections. We have long argued that a customs union is a viable option for the final deal. So Labour would seek to negotiate a new comprehensive UK-EU customs union to ensure that there are no tariffs with Europe and to help avoid any need for a hard border in Northern Ireland. But we are also clear that the option of a new UK customs union with the EU would need to ensure the UK has a say in future trade deals.
A new customs arrangement would depend on Britain being able to negotiate agreement of new trade deals in our national interest. Labour would not countenance a deal that left Britain as a passive recipient of rules decided elsewhere by others. That would mean ending up as mere rule takers. In contrast the Conservative government has moved from saying it wanted trade with the EU after Brexit to be “tariff-free” to saying it wants trade to be “as tariff-free as possible”. In which sectors of the economy and industry does the government think it would be acceptable for there to be tariffs?
Like with so much else, they haven’t spelled that out. But that is the consequence of ruling out the option of a customs union, which this government has done. So I appeal to MPs of all parties, prepared to put the people’s interests before ideological fantasies, to join us in supporting the option of a new UK customs union with the EU, that would give us a say in future trade deals. Labour respects the result of the referendum and Britain is leaving the EU. But we will not support any Tory deal that would do lasting damage to jobs, rights and living standards. Some seem very keen on downgrading our trading links with Europe. But we do not believe that deals with the US or China, would be likely to compensate for a significant loss of trade with our trading neighbours in the EU, and the government’s own leaked assessments show that. Both the US and China have weaker standards and regulations that would risk dragging Britain into a race to the bottom on vital protections and rights at work. And Labour is implacably opposed to our NHS or other public services being part of any trade deal with Trump’s America or a revived TTIP-style deal with the EU, which would open the door to a flood of further privatisations. And we are not prepared to ask the British public to eat chlorinated chicken and lower the standards of British farming.
We would ensure there will be no reduction in rights, standards or protections and instead seek to extend them. A deregulatory race-to-the-bottom would damage people’s jobs and living standards. And Labour would negotiate a new and strong relationship with the single market that includes full tariff-free access and a floor under existing rights, standards and protections. That new relationship would need to ensure we can deliver our ambitious economic programme, take the essential steps to intervene, upgrade and transform our economy and build an economy for the 21st century that works for the many, not the few. Labour has set out how we would create a National Investment Bank to drive investment in every community through a network of regional development banks so that every area has an industrial strategy, based on investment in a high skill, high wage and high productivity economy And through our £500 billion National Transformation Fund we would invest in a decade-long programme of renewal so that Britain has the infrastructure that matches, if not exceeds, that of other major economies. In our transport networks, our energy markets and our digital infrastructure, too often Britain lags behind. So we would also seek to negotiate protections, clarifications or exemptions where necessary in relation to privatisation and public service competition directives state aid and procurement rules and the posted workers directive.
We cannot be held back inside or outside the EU from taking the steps we need to support cutting edge industries and local business, stop the tide of privatisation and outsourcing or from preventing employers being able to import cheap agency labour to undercut existing pay and conditions. It was alarming that after the Brexit vote there was a clear rise in xenophobic and racist attacks on our streets. The referendum campaign was divisive and some politicians on the Leave side whipped up fears and division in order to further their cause that built on the shameful vans telling immigrants to ‘Go Home’ that the then Home Secretary instructed to trundle round the country stirring up division. I remember just after the referendum result receiving a text from a young person in my constituency who had been subjected to abuse in the street for the first time and who was afraid. Our immigration system will change and freedom of movement will as a statement of fact end when we leave the European Union. But we have also said that in trade negotiations our priorities are growth, jobs and people’s living standards.
We make no apologies for putting those aims before bogus immigration targets. Labour would design our immigration policy around the needs of the economy based on fair rules and the reasonable management of migration. We would not do what this government is doing, start from rigid red lines on immigration and then work out what that means for the economy afterwards. As Diane Abbott, our Shadow Home Secretary, set out last week, “We do not begin with, ‘how do we reduce immigration?’, and to hell with the consequences. Those are Tory policies and Tory values”. Part of the reason why net migration has been relatively high in recent years is because of skills shortages in the UK labour market.
At the general election, Labour set out plans to invest in a National Education Service with free college and university training to tackle those shortages. People do feel frustrated when they are denied opportunities to re-train or improve their skills and employers instead import skilled labour from abroad. We will also restore free ESOL courses so that people who come here whether as migrants or refugees can learn English and fully participate in their communities and workplaces. We also set out how we would tighten labour market regulations and strengthen trade union rights to tackle the insecurity and exploitation of all workers. When migrant workers come to Britain, they must not be exploited or used to undercut or suppress better working conditions or higher pay. Those issues can only be tackled by stronger employment law. To stop employers being able to import cheap agency labour to undercut existing pay and conditions, collective agreements and sectoral bargaining must become the norm.
Labour stands for ‘the rate for the job’, not ‘a race to the bottom’. But let’s also be crystal clear it is not migrants that drive down wages, it is bad employers that cut pay and bad governments that allow workers to be divided and undermined, and want unions to be weak and passive. We will strengthen our employment law invest in the skills of workers in Britain so they can progress, and we will oppose all those who instead of seeking to solve problems seek to scapegoat instead. The devolution of the last Labour government completed the peace process in Northern Ireland, which we must cherish. The Good Friday Agreement was a great achievement and I pay tribute to the work done by Tony Blair, Mo Mowlam and all sides in Northern Ireland to secure that Agreement.
We must continue to support the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly and to ensure we maintain the situation of no hard border in Northern Ireland. The previous Labour government also brought powers closer to home in Scotland and Wales establishing the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. And so, Labour believes that powers over devolved policy areas currently exercised by the EU should go directly to the relevant devolved body after Brexit, so that power is closer to the people. That is the same principle that informs the regional development banks that the next Labour government will deliver. The constitution of the Labour Party includes a commitment to support the United Nations.
A promise “to secure peace, freedom, democracy, economic security and environmental protection for all” Some want to use Brexit to turn Britain in on itself, seeing everyone as a feared competitor. Others want to use Brexit to put rocket boosters under our current economic system’s insecurities and inequalities, turning Britain into a deregulated corporate tax haven with low wages, limited rights, and cut-price public services in what would be a destructive race to the bottom. Labour stands for a completely different future drawing on the best internationalist traditions of the labour movement and our country.
We want to see close and cooperative relationships with our European neighbours, outside the EU based on our values of internationalism, solidarity and equality, as well as mutual benefit and fair trade. We are proud that Britain was an original signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights in 1948 and in 1998 Labour’s Human Rights Act enshrined it in our law. So Labour will continue to work with other European allies including through the Council of Europe to ensure our country and others uphold our international obligations. We must work with other countries to advance the cause of human rights to confront the four greatest and interconnected threats facing our common humanity:
First, the growing concentration of unaccountable wealth and power in the hands of a tiny corporate elite. We must challenge that working with our European neighbours to stop those who would play one country off against another or those who hide their wealth offshore to avoid paying their dues. Second, climate change which is creating instability and fuelling conflict across the world and threatening all our futures. No matter how much we enforce them pollution stubbornly refuses to respect our borders. We can only tackle climate change, pollution and environmental degradation by working together and many of our closest allies in that struggle are in Europe.
The Green Alliance estimates that trade in low carbons good and services contributed over £42 billion to the economy in 2015. The UK low carbon and renewable energy sector was expected to increase fivefold by 2030 potentially bringing 2 million jobs and contributing more than 8% of the UK’s total output. But that needs us to maintain our standards to ensure barrier-free trade of low carbon goods. These include eco-design and energy labelling standards, greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles, the internal energy market, construction product standards, chemicals regulation and nuclear safety and safeguards. So the importance of getting our Brexit settlement right is vital in this area both in terms of Britain’s industrial role in reducing climate change and in terms of protecting jobs and industry.
Third, the unprecedented numbers of people fleeing conflict, persecution, human rights abuses, social breakdown and climate disasters. The global refugee crisis and there are 65 million refugees across the world that crisis is a challenge, much of which is on the borders of Europe and that challenge can be met by co-ordinating with our European neighbours, both to crack down on the people smugglers who put men, women and children to sea in unseaworthy vessels. And as Operation Sophia tried to rescue those from the seas around Europe as too many desperate people are drowning in pursuit of sanctuary. These are people who are simply seeking refuge from cruelty and suffering they want to make a contribution and, but for accident of birth, it could be any of us. I pay tribute too to the role of the Royal Navy for their contribution in the Mediterranean. And finally, I want to briefly address the use of unilateral military action and intervention rather than diplomacy and negotiation to resolve disputes and change governments.
Let us learn the lessons of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan and be clear that we will not take our country down the road of regime change wars again. The real answer is genuine international cooperation, which confronts the root causes of conflict, persecution and inequality, and we will continue to play a role in partnership with the EU in that effort. We live in a globalised world, the lives we lead are dependent on the work of others and our trade with those from around the world. Many of us have friends and family that are from or who live in other parts of the world. In contrast to the Prime Minister who said, “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”.
We believe in fact that we can only fully achieve what we want to as citizens of Britain by also recognising we are “citizens of the world”. I have long opposed the embedding of free market orthodoxy and the democratic deficit in the European Union, and that is why I campaigned to ‘remain and reform’ in the referendum campaign. Scepticism is healthy especially when dealing with politicians or the received wisdom of the political and media establishment, but often the term “Eurosceptic” in reality became synonymous with “anti-European”. And I am not anti-European at all, I want to see close and progressive cooperation with the whole of Europe after Brexit.
Labour is the Party of the new common sense on the economy, on public services and on Brexit. The only party which recognises the world has changed these last ten years and know we cannot continue with widening inequality deregulation of industry and privatisation of public services. We are in a country where Tory-run councils are collapsing because of cuts. Where homeless people are dying on the streets in the shadow of the Parliament. Where good jobs are being lost, because we have a government that will not get a grip on the casino economy. In or out of the European Union, we have to deal with that reality, the reality of market failure and austerity.
The free market has not worked in the banking sector. It has not worked in the water industry. It has not worked in the energy utilities. It has crashed in out-sourcing and it has failed our fragmented railways. And it has led to a labour market where abuse is rife. The European Union is not the root of all our problems and leaving it will not solve all our problems. Likewise, the EU is not the source of all enlightenment and leaving it does not inevitably spell doom for our country.
There will be some who will tell you that Brexit is a disaster for this country and some who will tell you that Brexit will create a land of milk and honey. The truth is more down to earth and it’s in our hands. Brexit is what we make of it together, the priorities and choices we make in the negotiations. This Conservative government is damaging our country and their priorities for Brexit risk increasing the damage. But I also know, what a Labour government could do for this country and that our priorities for Brexit negotiations are the right ones, to create a country that works for the many not the few.
Below is the text of the speech Jeremy Corbyn has delivered in Coventry this morning about Labour policy on Brexit: Next month, the government will embark on the second and most crucial phase of negotiations to leave the European Union to set the terms of Britain’s relationship with the EU for the long-term. We are now 20 months on from the referendum that voted to leave and a year on from the triggering of Article 50. But the country is still in the dark about what this divided Conservative government actually wants out of Brexit.
While workers, businesses and everyone who voted in the referendum just want to know what the government’s approach to Brexit is likely to mean for their future and the future of the country. As the Opposition, we have been trying to hold this government to account. Our message has been consistent since the vote to leave 20 months ago. We respect the result of the referendum. Our priority is to get the best deal for people’s jobs, living standards and the economy. We reject any race to the bottom in workers’ rights, environmental safeguards, consumer protections or food safety standards. And we’ve pushed the government to act to guarantee the rights of EU citizens living here and of UK citizens who have made their homes elsewhere in Europe; to ensure a transition period on the existing terms; to minimise disruption and avoid an economic cliff edge; to avoid any return to a hard border in Northern Ireland; and to guarantee Parliament a meaningful vote on the final deal.
This Conservative government has dithered and delayed. Their divisions, their incompetence and their deregulation obsession risk putting jobs and living standards at risk as we leave the EU. This is an economy that has already been damaged by eight years of Conservative austerity, where wages are still lower today than they were a decade ago, where productivity lags dangerously behind the other major economies, where the government has failed to invest and modernise, where more people are living in poverty. And where closing the deficit, that was due to be eradicated by 2015, then 2016, then 2017, then 2020 has now had to be put back to 2025. After years of Tory bluster and, the Conservatives have been found out. They have no economic plan and they have no Brexit plan.
Every so often they wheel out Boris Johnson to promise once more that they’ll cough up more money for the NHS after Brexit. But they’ve spent the last 8 years not giving more money to the NHS. Even while they’ve been able to find billions of pounds to cut taxes for the richest corporations, to cut capital gains tax for the super-rich elite and to scrap the 50% rate for the richest too, and found billions more to cut inheritance tax on the wealthiest estates and to slash the bank levy. Yet the NHS has been subjected to the longest financial squeeze in its history. This is a government that’s failed our NHS, pre-Brexit and during Brexit. And it certainly can’t be trusted with the NHS post-Brexit either. Labour will give the NHS the resources it needs, because we will raise tax on the top 5% and big business, those with the broadest shoulders to pay. Not by making up numbers and parading them on the side of a bus. And we will use funds returned from Brussels after Brexit to invest in our public services and the jobs of the future, not tax cuts for the richest.
Today, I want to set out Labour’s approach to Brexit in more detail. How we would do things differently, what our priorities are for the Brexit negotiations and the values that underpin them. The first is our overriding mission: that whatever is negotiated must put people’s jobs and living standards first. The Brexit process must not leave our people and country worse off. We are committed to building a more prosperous and a more equal Britain, in which every region benefits and no community is left behind, as we set out in our manifesto. And that is what underpins our approach to Brexit. The second is unity. Most people in our country, regardless of whether they voted leave of remain want better jobs, more investment, stronger rights and greater equality. So we will not let those who want to sow divisions drive this process. No scapegoating of migrants, no setting one generation against another and no playing off the nations of the UK. No one should be willing to sacrifice the Good Friday Agreement, the basis for 20 years of relative peace, development and respect for diversity in Northern Ireland.
The third is our global perspective. We are leaving the European Union but we are not leaving Europe. We are not throwing up protectionist barriers, closing the borders and barricading ourselves in. And we want a close and cooperative relationship with the whole of Europe after Brexit. We are internationalists. We know that our interests are bound up with millions of others across the world, whether that’s in order to tackle the huge challenge of climate change, build a more peaceful world or clamp down on the tax dodging elite, who think by bestriding the globe they can avoid paying their share for vital public services. I want to address each of these principles today because together they define Labour’s approach to Brexit the Labour Party’s values and what the next Labour government will seek to deliver in office. So many of the areas that voted to Leave are the same areas that have lost out from years of chronic under-investment.
Areas where too many people are held back by a lack of opportunities, where people feel the system is rigged against them because they can’t get a decent secure job, can’t afford to buy a home, can’t get more hours or higher pay, can’t afford to retire or aren’t able to escape the spiral of debt. Labour’s priority is to get the best Brexit deal for jobs and living standards to underpin our plans to upgrade the economy and invest in every community and region. To shift it away from the low pay, low skill, low investment economy it has become. And rebalance that investment across the whole country so that no longer will some regions get a mere one-sixth of the investment that goes to London. That is why Labour wants a Brexit for all our people. One that offers security to workers in the car industry worried about their future, hope to families struggling to pay the bills each month and opportunity to young people wanting a decent job and a home of their own.
Those are the people we are thinking of and working for. It is a different story around the away day table at Chequers. The government seems much more concerned about cutting deals with each other and for their friends and funders in the City. Labour is looking for a Brexit that puts the working people first. Leaving the EU, whenever that exit date comes, risks delivering a shock to the UK economy unless the right plans and protections are in place to allow the kind of investment and economic transformation programme that the country needs and that Labour is committed to. For 45 years our economy has become increasingly linked into the European Union.
Many of our laws and regulations are set and monitored by joint European authorities, from implementing rules on use of pesticides to assessing the levels of fluoride in our drinking water. The European Food Safety Authority plays a vital role in monitoring the substances used in manufacturing or growing our food using the latest scientific evidence to assess whether substances are likely to have harmful effects on human or animal health. While the European Chemicals Agency carries out the vital task of evaluating and authorising chemicals as safe for use. And many businesses have supply chains and production processes, interwoven throughout Europe. Take the UK car industry, which supports 169,000 manufacturing jobs, 52,000 of which are here in the West Midlands.
If we look at the example of one of Britain’s most iconic brands in this sector, the Mini, we begin to see how reliant our automotive industry is on a frictionless, interwoven supply chain. A mini will cross the Channel three times in a 2,000-mile journey before the finished car rolls off the production line. Starting in Oxford it will be shipped to France to be fitted for key components before being brought back to BMW’s Hams Hall plant in Warwickshire where it is drilled and milled into shape. Once this process is complete the mini will be sent to Munich to be fitted with its engine, before ending its journey back at the mini plant in Oxford for final assembly. If that car is to be sold on the continent then many of its components will have crossed the Channel four times. The sheer complexity of these issues demand that we are practical and serious about this next stage. I want to pay tribute to Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey, Barry Gardiner and Emily Thornberry, who are grappling with these issues. They are a serious and united team. Now you know I don’t do personal but let me simply say this: that is in some contrast to their opposite numbers.
It makes no sense for the UK to abandon EU agencies and tariff-free trading rules that have served us well, supporting our industrial sectors, protecting workers and consumers and safeguarding the environment. If that means negotiating to support individual EU agencies, rather than paying more to duplicate those agencies here then that should be an option, not something ruled out because of phoney jingoistic posturing. So we will want to remain a part of agencies like Euratom, regulating nuclear materials in energy and health sectors and programmes like Erasmus that give students opportunities to study across Europe, because they serve our interests. We are leaving the European Union but we will still be working with European partners in the economic interests of this country.
When 44% of our exports are to EU countries and 50% of our imports come from the EU, then it is in both our interests for that trade to remain tariff-free. It would damage businesses that export to Europe and the jobs that depend on those exports for there to be the additional costs of tariffs and it would damage consumers here, already failed by stagnant wages and rising housing costs. So we will remain close to the European Union, that’s obvious. Every country, whether it’s Turkey, Switzerland, or Norway that is geographically close to the EU, without being an EU member state has some sort of close relationship to the EU. Some more advantageous than others. And Britain will need a bespoke, negotiated relationship of its own. During the transition period, Labour would seek to remain in a customs union with the EU and within the single market.
That means we would abide by the existing rules of both. That is so the government, businesses and workers only have to make one adjustment, from the current situation to the final terms. Labour spelled out the need for a stable transition period last summer. Both the TUC and CBI agree. We thought the government had accepted that case but they now seem to be in disarray on the issue again. Time after time with this government, anything agreed at breakfast is being briefed against by lunch and abandoned by teatime. Disarray is, it seems, the new ‘strong and stable’. And the government’s muddle and division risk two costly adjustments for both government and businesses from the current terms to the transition terms and then again to the final terms.
Labour would seek a final deal that gives full access to European markets and maintains the benefits of the single market and the customs union as the Brexit Secretary, David Davis promised in the House of Commons, with no new impediments to trade and no reduction in rights, standards and protections. We have long argued that a customs union is a viable option for the final deal. So Labour would seek to negotiate a new comprehensive UK-EU customs union to ensure that there are no tariffs with Europe and to help avoid any need for a hard border in Northern Ireland. But we are also clear that the option of a new UK customs union with the EU would need to ensure the UK has a say in future trade deals.
A new customs arrangement would depend on Britain being able to negotiate agreement of new trade deals in our national interest. Labour would not countenance a deal that left Britain as a passive recipient of rules decided elsewhere by others. That would mean ending up as mere rule takers. In contrast the Conservative government has moved from saying it wanted trade with the EU after Brexit to be “tariff-free” to saying it wants trade to be “as tariff-free as possible”. In which sectors of the economy and industry does the government think it would be acceptable for there to be tariffs?
Like with so much else, they haven’t spelled that out. But that is the consequence of ruling out the option of a customs union, which this government has done. So I appeal to MPs of all parties, prepared to put the people’s interests before ideological fantasies, to join us in supporting the option of a new UK customs union with the EU, that would give us a say in future trade deals. Labour respects the result of the referendum and Britain is leaving the EU. But we will not support any Tory deal that would do lasting damage to jobs, rights and living standards. Some seem very keen on downgrading our trading links with Europe. But we do not believe that deals with the US or China, would be likely to compensate for a significant loss of trade with our trading neighbours in the EU, and the government’s own leaked assessments show that. Both the US and China have weaker standards and regulations that would risk dragging Britain into a race to the bottom on vital protections and rights at work. And Labour is implacably opposed to our NHS or other public services being part of any trade deal with Trump’s America or a revived TTIP-style deal with the EU, which would open the door to a flood of further privatisations. And we are not prepared to ask the British public to eat chlorinated chicken and lower the standards of British farming.
We would ensure there will be no reduction in rights, standards or protections and instead seek to extend them. A deregulatory race-to-the-bottom would damage people’s jobs and living standards. And Labour would negotiate a new and strong relationship with the single market that includes full tariff-free access and a floor under existing rights, standards and protections. That new relationship would need to ensure we can deliver our ambitious economic programme, take the essential steps to intervene, upgrade and transform our economy and build an economy for the 21st century that works for the many, not the few. Labour has set out how we would create a National Investment Bank to drive investment in every community through a network of regional development banks so that every area has an industrial strategy, based on investment in a high skill, high wage and high productivity economy And through our £500 billion National Transformation Fund we would invest in a decade-long programme of renewal so that Britain has the infrastructure that matches, if not exceeds, that of other major economies. In our transport networks, our energy markets and our digital infrastructure, too often Britain lags behind. So we would also seek to negotiate protections, clarifications or exemptions where necessary in relation to privatisation and public service competition directives state aid and procurement rules and the posted workers directive.
We cannot be held back inside or outside the EU from taking the steps we need to support cutting edge industries and local business, stop the tide of privatisation and outsourcing or from preventing employers being able to import cheap agency labour to undercut existing pay and conditions. It was alarming that after the Brexit vote there was a clear rise in xenophobic and racist attacks on our streets. The referendum campaign was divisive and some politicians on the Leave side whipped up fears and division in order to further their cause that built on the shameful vans telling immigrants to ‘Go Home’ that the then Home Secretary instructed to trundle round the country stirring up division. I remember just after the referendum result receiving a text from a young person in my constituency who had been subjected to abuse in the street for the first time and who was afraid. Our immigration system will change and freedom of movement will as a statement of fact end when we leave the European Union. But we have also said that in trade negotiations our priorities are growth, jobs and people’s living standards.
We make no apologies for putting those aims before bogus immigration targets. Labour would design our immigration policy around the needs of the economy based on fair rules and the reasonable management of migration. We would not do what this government is doing, start from rigid red lines on immigration and then work out what that means for the economy afterwards. As Diane Abbott, our Shadow Home Secretary, set out last week, “We do not begin with, ‘how do we reduce immigration?’, and to hell with the consequences. Those are Tory policies and Tory values”. Part of the reason why net migration has been relatively high in recent years is because of skills shortages in the UK labour market.
At the general election, Labour set out plans to invest in a National Education Service with free college and university training to tackle those shortages. People do feel frustrated when they are denied opportunities to re-train or improve their skills and employers instead import skilled labour from abroad. We will also restore free ESOL courses so that people who come here whether as migrants or refugees can learn English and fully participate in their communities and workplaces. We also set out how we would tighten labour market regulations and strengthen trade union rights to tackle the insecurity and exploitation of all workers. When migrant workers come to Britain, they must not be exploited or used to undercut or suppress better working conditions or higher pay. Those issues can only be tackled by stronger employment law. To stop employers being able to import cheap agency labour to undercut existing pay and conditions, collective agreements and sectoral bargaining must become the norm.
Labour stands for ‘the rate for the job’, not ‘a race to the bottom’. But let’s also be crystal clear it is not migrants that drive down wages, it is bad employers that cut pay and bad governments that allow workers to be divided and undermined, and want unions to be weak and passive. We will strengthen our employment law invest in the skills of workers in Britain so they can progress, and we will oppose all those who instead of seeking to solve problems seek to scapegoat instead. The devolution of the last Labour government completed the peace process in Northern Ireland, which we must cherish. The Good Friday Agreement was a great achievement and I pay tribute to the work done by Tony Blair, Mo Mowlam and all sides in Northern Ireland to secure that Agreement.
We must continue to support the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly and to ensure we maintain the situation of no hard border in Northern Ireland. The previous Labour government also brought powers closer to home in Scotland and Wales establishing the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. And so, Labour believes that powers over devolved policy areas currently exercised by the EU should go directly to the relevant devolved body after Brexit, so that power is closer to the people. That is the same principle that informs the regional development banks that the next Labour government will deliver. The constitution of the Labour Party includes a commitment to support the United Nations.
A promise “to secure peace, freedom, democracy, economic security and environmental protection for all” Some want to use Brexit to turn Britain in on itself, seeing everyone as a feared competitor. Others want to use Brexit to put rocket boosters under our current economic system’s insecurities and inequalities, turning Britain into a deregulated corporate tax haven with low wages, limited rights, and cut-price public services in what would be a destructive race to the bottom. Labour stands for a completely different future drawing on the best internationalist traditions of the labour movement and our country.
We want to see close and cooperative relationships with our European neighbours, outside the EU based on our values of internationalism, solidarity and equality, as well as mutual benefit and fair trade. We are proud that Britain was an original signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights in 1948 and in 1998 Labour’s Human Rights Act enshrined it in our law. So Labour will continue to work with other European allies including through the Council of Europe to ensure our country and others uphold our international obligations. We must work with other countries to advance the cause of human rights to confront the four greatest and interconnected threats facing our common humanity:
First, the growing concentration of unaccountable wealth and power in the hands of a tiny corporate elite. We must challenge that working with our European neighbours to stop those who would play one country off against another or those who hide their wealth offshore to avoid paying their dues. Second, climate change which is creating instability and fuelling conflict across the world and threatening all our futures. No matter how much we enforce them pollution stubbornly refuses to respect our borders. We can only tackle climate change, pollution and environmental degradation by working together and many of our closest allies in that struggle are in Europe.
The Green Alliance estimates that trade in low carbons good and services contributed over £42 billion to the economy in 2015. The UK low carbon and renewable energy sector was expected to increase fivefold by 2030 potentially bringing 2 million jobs and contributing more than 8% of the UK’s total output. But that needs us to maintain our standards to ensure barrier-free trade of low carbon goods. These include eco-design and energy labelling standards, greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles, the internal energy market, construction product standards, chemicals regulation and nuclear safety and safeguards. So the importance of getting our Brexit settlement right is vital in this area both in terms of Britain’s industrial role in reducing climate change and in terms of protecting jobs and industry.
Third, the unprecedented numbers of people fleeing conflict, persecution, human rights abuses, social breakdown and climate disasters. The global refugee crisis and there are 65 million refugees across the world that crisis is a challenge, much of which is on the borders of Europe and that challenge can be met by co-ordinating with our European neighbours, both to crack down on the people smugglers who put men, women and children to sea in unseaworthy vessels. And as Operation Sophia tried to rescue those from the seas around Europe as too many desperate people are drowning in pursuit of sanctuary. These are people who are simply seeking refuge from cruelty and suffering they want to make a contribution and, but for accident of birth, it could be any of us. I pay tribute too to the role of the Royal Navy for their contribution in the Mediterranean. And finally, I want to briefly address the use of unilateral military action and intervention rather than diplomacy and negotiation to resolve disputes and change governments.
Let us learn the lessons of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan and be clear that we will not take our country down the road of regime change wars again. The real answer is genuine international cooperation, which confronts the root causes of conflict, persecution and inequality, and we will continue to play a role in partnership with the EU in that effort. We live in a globalised world, the lives we lead are dependent on the work of others and our trade with those from around the world. Many of us have friends and family that are from or who live in other parts of the world. In contrast to the Prime Minister who said, “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”.
We believe in fact that we can only fully achieve what we want to as citizens of Britain by also recognising we are “citizens of the world”. I have long opposed the embedding of free market orthodoxy and the democratic deficit in the European Union, and that is why I campaigned to ‘remain and reform’ in the referendum campaign. Scepticism is healthy especially when dealing with politicians or the received wisdom of the political and media establishment, but often the term “Eurosceptic” in reality became synonymous with “anti-European”. And I am not anti-European at all, I want to see close and progressive cooperation with the whole of Europe after Brexit.
Labour is the Party of the new common sense on the economy, on public services and on Brexit. The only party which recognises the world has changed these last ten years and know we cannot continue with widening inequality deregulation of industry and privatisation of public services. We are in a country where Tory-run councils are collapsing because of cuts. Where homeless people are dying on the streets in the shadow of the Parliament. Where good jobs are being lost, because we have a government that will not get a grip on the casino economy. In or out of the European Union, we have to deal with that reality, the reality of market failure and austerity.
The free market has not worked in the banking sector. It has not worked in the water industry. It has not worked in the energy utilities. It has crashed in out-sourcing and it has failed our fragmented railways. And it has led to a labour market where abuse is rife. The European Union is not the root of all our problems and leaving it will not solve all our problems. Likewise, the EU is not the source of all enlightenment and leaving it does not inevitably spell doom for our country.
There will be some who will tell you that Brexit is a disaster for this country and some who will tell you that Brexit will create a land of milk and honey. The truth is more down to earth and it’s in our hands. Brexit is what we make of it together, the priorities and choices we make in the negotiations. This Conservative government is damaging our country and their priorities for Brexit risk increasing the damage. But I also know, what a Labour government could do for this country and that our priorities for Brexit negotiations are the right ones, to create a country that works for the many not the few.
Sunday, 25 February 2018
Monday, 8 January 2018
Chinese visa system
Ever fancied living in China? The government is now making it easier for foreigners to do so – but only if you’re a Nobel laureate, a scientist, entrepreneur or another ‘high-end’ expat.
The Chinese government has begun rolling out new fast-track visas for desirable “high-end talent,” the South China Morning Post reports. The plans are designed to encourage specialists in fields such as science and business to relocate to and stay in the country.
Other high-end talent include chief or deputy editors in Chinese state media, foreign coaches and players in national and provincial sports teams, postdoctoral students from world-class universities outside China, and foreigners who earn at least six times the average annual wage in China.
The new visas, which can last for five or ten years, can be approved in a matter of days – for the right candidate. Previously, foreigners living and working in China had to renew their visa every one or two years.
And, what’s more, you won’t even have to pay. Fee waivers are part of the new initiative, as are 180-day stays for a single entry and same-day visa approvals for spouses and children. China upholds a strict immigration policy and tightly controls working visas. The country is in the midst of its biggest ever influx of foreign-educated professionals as the world’s largest developing nation continues to restructure and upgrade its economy.
“We should not only make use of Chinese talent resources and market space, but also adopt a more open policy for foreign experts,” Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said in September 2017.
The Chinese government has begun rolling out new fast-track visas for desirable “high-end talent,” the South China Morning Post reports. The plans are designed to encourage specialists in fields such as science and business to relocate to and stay in the country.
Other high-end talent include chief or deputy editors in Chinese state media, foreign coaches and players in national and provincial sports teams, postdoctoral students from world-class universities outside China, and foreigners who earn at least six times the average annual wage in China.
The new visas, which can last for five or ten years, can be approved in a matter of days – for the right candidate. Previously, foreigners living and working in China had to renew their visa every one or two years.
And, what’s more, you won’t even have to pay. Fee waivers are part of the new initiative, as are 180-day stays for a single entry and same-day visa approvals for spouses and children. China upholds a strict immigration policy and tightly controls working visas. The country is in the midst of its biggest ever influx of foreign-educated professionals as the world’s largest developing nation continues to restructure and upgrade its economy.
“We should not only make use of Chinese talent resources and market space, but also adopt a more open policy for foreign experts,” Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said in September 2017.
Thursday, 14 December 2017
Immigration to Japan
It has been a decade since Liliane last saw her little girl. She fled Africa in fear for her life, leaving behind everything she knew and loved in the hope of a fresh start in Japan.
Today, she scrapes a living from dead-end jobs, and what Japanese she knows has been snatched from television shows. There is little government help for people like her: free language courses are limited, social housing is hard to find, discrimination is rife.
Yet Liliane is regarded as one of the lucky ones - she was granted refugee status in Japan, a country which refuses more than 99 percent of cases.
"It has not been easy," she tells AFP, speaking under a pseudonym.
She adds: "Here they do not pay for your studies, they do not help you to get bank loans, or give you social housing... we are left to ourselves, we have to fight alone."
Anti-refugee sentiment is rising in Europe and the United States but in Japan those seeking haven from tyranny and war have long faced daunting legal and social gauntlets.
One of the world's wealthiest countries, Japan accepted just 28 refugees in 2016 - one more than the previous year - out of the 8,193 applications reviewed by the Immigration Bureau.
Officials defend the low number, saying applicants are mainly from Asian countries seeking access to Japan solely for economic reasons.
"The number of applications from regions which generate lots of refugees, such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, is small," said Yasuhiro Hishida, spokesman for the Immigration Bureau.
Assisted by the UN, Liliane was able to claim asylum on arrival in Japan stating that her life was in danger due to tribal conflict back home. It took two years for officials to accept her as a refugee, a period during which she received assistance from the Catholic Church and charities.
But she feels the status brought few benefits. She is no closer to reuniting with her child - now a teenager, her daughter has repeatedly been denied a permit to even visit.
For Liliane, further education and a stable life, seem out of reach.
She explains: "Japan is a very difficult country for foreigners. The language is really a handicap for us. You need to do absolutely everything to try to speak in Japanese but you don't know where to find free lessons."
"Sometimes I think refugee status has no meaning," she sighs.
But for Nonnon, being awarded refugee status would at least give her a sense of belonging.
She fled military persecution in her native Burma, also known as Myanmar, 25 years ago but remains in frustrating legal limbo, accepted only on a humanitarian stay visa, which allows for residence and work but traditionally only on annual temporary permits subject to anxiety-riven renewal.
"It's like I have no nationality," said the 47-year-old, who only gave her childhood nickname.
She has tried to forge a life in Japan, she married a man from Myanmar who was also claiming asylum and they have a son and a daughter. But their children are effectively stateless - not recognised in Burma, nor as Japanese citizens.
Refugee advocates say Japan's system is too harsh.
Lawyer Shogo Watanabe is helping a woman from Burma's Kachin minority who says she risks sexual assault by soldiers fighting ethnic minority militias if she goes home.
"To me, the risk of getting raped by someone who is a member of the military is a legitimate reason to be a refugee," he said of her plight.
"But immigration officials say you need to prove that she is actually targeted by the military."
Critics also say current government policy ignores the country's need for immigrants as the population shrinks.
"Japan has kept a mindset of closing doors to foreigners as it is an island nation that until recently had ample population," said Hidenori Sakanaka, a former Justice Ministry official who heads a pro-immigration think tank.
The population is set to decline to 87 million by 2060 from 127 million today.
He added that Japan must "accept more migrants, which would make society more open to multiple cultures and... to accepting more refugees".
The first Justice Ministry survey into discrimination against foreigners, released in March, found that 30 percent said they had been on the receiving end of discriminatory remarks.
One in four of the respondents that had sought employment, believed they did not get the job because they were not Japanese.
"For us with our black skin, it is a bit difficult. Sometimes when I sit on the train, some Japanese switch seats," Liliane reveals, though she adds she has never feared for her safety, which is a major concern for asylum seekers in Europe.
She says she was overlooked for teaching work, despite her fluency in English, when employers realised she is African.
Nonnon, who currently works in a nail salon, recalls being paid less than Japanese workers for doing the same job. She contrasts her situation to that of family members who escaped to other countries.
"My relatives in America and Australia were given refugee status and they are naturalised. They can get a job, buy a house and travel overseas," she said, adding: "They can live as normal people. I want to live like a normal person."
Today, she scrapes a living from dead-end jobs, and what Japanese she knows has been snatched from television shows. There is little government help for people like her: free language courses are limited, social housing is hard to find, discrimination is rife.
Yet Liliane is regarded as one of the lucky ones - she was granted refugee status in Japan, a country which refuses more than 99 percent of cases.
"It has not been easy," she tells AFP, speaking under a pseudonym.
She adds: "Here they do not pay for your studies, they do not help you to get bank loans, or give you social housing... we are left to ourselves, we have to fight alone."
Anti-refugee sentiment is rising in Europe and the United States but in Japan those seeking haven from tyranny and war have long faced daunting legal and social gauntlets.
One of the world's wealthiest countries, Japan accepted just 28 refugees in 2016 - one more than the previous year - out of the 8,193 applications reviewed by the Immigration Bureau.
Officials defend the low number, saying applicants are mainly from Asian countries seeking access to Japan solely for economic reasons.
"The number of applications from regions which generate lots of refugees, such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, is small," said Yasuhiro Hishida, spokesman for the Immigration Bureau.
Assisted by the UN, Liliane was able to claim asylum on arrival in Japan stating that her life was in danger due to tribal conflict back home. It took two years for officials to accept her as a refugee, a period during which she received assistance from the Catholic Church and charities.
But she feels the status brought few benefits. She is no closer to reuniting with her child - now a teenager, her daughter has repeatedly been denied a permit to even visit.
For Liliane, further education and a stable life, seem out of reach.
She explains: "Japan is a very difficult country for foreigners. The language is really a handicap for us. You need to do absolutely everything to try to speak in Japanese but you don't know where to find free lessons."
"Sometimes I think refugee status has no meaning," she sighs.
But for Nonnon, being awarded refugee status would at least give her a sense of belonging.
She fled military persecution in her native Burma, also known as Myanmar, 25 years ago but remains in frustrating legal limbo, accepted only on a humanitarian stay visa, which allows for residence and work but traditionally only on annual temporary permits subject to anxiety-riven renewal.
"It's like I have no nationality," said the 47-year-old, who only gave her childhood nickname.
She has tried to forge a life in Japan, she married a man from Myanmar who was also claiming asylum and they have a son and a daughter. But their children are effectively stateless - not recognised in Burma, nor as Japanese citizens.
Refugee advocates say Japan's system is too harsh.
Lawyer Shogo Watanabe is helping a woman from Burma's Kachin minority who says she risks sexual assault by soldiers fighting ethnic minority militias if she goes home.
"To me, the risk of getting raped by someone who is a member of the military is a legitimate reason to be a refugee," he said of her plight.
"But immigration officials say you need to prove that she is actually targeted by the military."
Critics also say current government policy ignores the country's need for immigrants as the population shrinks.
"Japan has kept a mindset of closing doors to foreigners as it is an island nation that until recently had ample population," said Hidenori Sakanaka, a former Justice Ministry official who heads a pro-immigration think tank.
The population is set to decline to 87 million by 2060 from 127 million today.
He added that Japan must "accept more migrants, which would make society more open to multiple cultures and... to accepting more refugees".
The first Justice Ministry survey into discrimination against foreigners, released in March, found that 30 percent said they had been on the receiving end of discriminatory remarks.
One in four of the respondents that had sought employment, believed they did not get the job because they were not Japanese.
"For us with our black skin, it is a bit difficult. Sometimes when I sit on the train, some Japanese switch seats," Liliane reveals, though she adds she has never feared for her safety, which is a major concern for asylum seekers in Europe.
She says she was overlooked for teaching work, despite her fluency in English, when employers realised she is African.
Nonnon, who currently works in a nail salon, recalls being paid less than Japanese workers for doing the same job. She contrasts her situation to that of family members who escaped to other countries.
"My relatives in America and Australia were given refugee status and they are naturalised. They can get a job, buy a house and travel overseas," she said, adding: "They can live as normal people. I want to live like a normal person."
Monday, 31 July 2017
EU should 'undermine national homogeneity'.
21 June 2012
From the section UK Politics
The EU should "do its best to undermine" the "homogeneity" of its member states, the UN's special representative for migration has said. Peter Sutherland told peers the future prosperity of many EU states depended on them becoming multicultural.He also suggested the UK government's immigration policy had no basis in international law.
He was being quizzed by the Lords EU home affairs sub-committee which is investigating global migration. Mr Sutherland, who is non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former chairman of oil giant BP, heads the Global Forum on Migration and Development , which brings together representatives of 160 nations to share policy ideas.
He told the House of Lords committee migration was a "crucial dynamic for economic growth" in some EU nations "however difficult it may be to explain this to the citizens of those states".
'More open' An ageing or declining native population in countries like Germany or southern EU states was the "key argument and, I hesitate to the use word because people have attacked it, for the development of multicultural states", he added.
"It's impossible to consider that the degree of homogeneity which is implied by the other argument can survive because states have to become more open states, in terms of the people who inhabit them. Just as the United Kingdom has demonstrated."
The UN special representative on migration was also quizzed about what the EU should do about evidence from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that employment rates among migrants were higher in the US and Australia than EU countries. He told the committee: "The United States, or Australia and New Zealand, are migrant societies and therefore they accommodate more readily those from other backgrounds than we do ourselves, who still nurse a sense of our homogeneity and difference from others.
"And that's precisely what the European Union, in my view, should be doing its best to undermine."
Mr Sutherland recently argued, in a lecture to the London School of Economics, of which he is chairman, that there was a "shift from states selecting migrants to migrants selecting states" and the EU's ability to compete at a "global level" was at risk. In evidence to the Lords committee, he urged EU member states to work together more closely on migration policy and advocated a global approach to the issue - criticising the UK government's attempt to cut net migration from its current level to "tens of thousands" a year through visa restrictions.
British higher education chiefs want non-EU overseas students to be exempted from migration statistics and say visa restrictions brought in to help the government meet its target will damage Britain's economic competitiveness. But immigration minister Damian Green has said exempting foreign students would amount to "fiddling" the figures and the current method of counting was approved by the UN.
Committee chairman Lord Hannay, a crossbench peer and a former British ambassador to the UN, said Mr Green's claim of UN backing for including students in migration figures "frankly doesn't hold water - this is not a piece of international law". Mr Sutherland, a former Attorney General of Ireland, agreed, saying: "Absolutely not. it provides absolutely no justification at all for the position they are talking about."
He said the policy risked Britain's traditional status as "tolerant, open society" and would be "massively damaging" to its higher education sector both financially and intellectually.
"It's very important that we should not send a signal from this country, either to potential students of the highest quality, or to academic staff, that this is in some way an unsympathetic environment in which to seek visas or whatever other permissions are required... and I would be fearful that that could be a signal."
Mr Sutherland, who has attended meetings of The Bilderberg Group , a top level international networking organisation often criticised for its alleged secrecy, called on EU states to stop targeting "highly skilled" migrants, arguing that "at the most basic level individuals should have a freedom of choice" about whether to come and study or work in another country. Mr Sutherland also briefed the peers on plans for the Global Migration and Development Forum's next annual conference in Mauritius in November, adding: "The UK has been very constructively engaged in this whole process from the beginning and very supportive of me personally."
Brian Wheeler
From the section UK Politics
The EU should "do its best to undermine" the "homogeneity" of its member states, the UN's special representative for migration has said. Peter Sutherland told peers the future prosperity of many EU states depended on them becoming multicultural.He also suggested the UK government's immigration policy had no basis in international law.
He was being quizzed by the Lords EU home affairs sub-committee which is investigating global migration. Mr Sutherland, who is non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former chairman of oil giant BP, heads the Global Forum on Migration and Development , which brings together representatives of 160 nations to share policy ideas.
He told the House of Lords committee migration was a "crucial dynamic for economic growth" in some EU nations "however difficult it may be to explain this to the citizens of those states".
'More open' An ageing or declining native population in countries like Germany or southern EU states was the "key argument and, I hesitate to the use word because people have attacked it, for the development of multicultural states", he added.
"It's impossible to consider that the degree of homogeneity which is implied by the other argument can survive because states have to become more open states, in terms of the people who inhabit them. Just as the United Kingdom has demonstrated."
The UN special representative on migration was also quizzed about what the EU should do about evidence from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that employment rates among migrants were higher in the US and Australia than EU countries. He told the committee: "The United States, or Australia and New Zealand, are migrant societies and therefore they accommodate more readily those from other backgrounds than we do ourselves, who still nurse a sense of our homogeneity and difference from others.
"And that's precisely what the European Union, in my view, should be doing its best to undermine."
Mr Sutherland recently argued, in a lecture to the London School of Economics, of which he is chairman, that there was a "shift from states selecting migrants to migrants selecting states" and the EU's ability to compete at a "global level" was at risk. In evidence to the Lords committee, he urged EU member states to work together more closely on migration policy and advocated a global approach to the issue - criticising the UK government's attempt to cut net migration from its current level to "tens of thousands" a year through visa restrictions.
British higher education chiefs want non-EU overseas students to be exempted from migration statistics and say visa restrictions brought in to help the government meet its target will damage Britain's economic competitiveness. But immigration minister Damian Green has said exempting foreign students would amount to "fiddling" the figures and the current method of counting was approved by the UN.
Committee chairman Lord Hannay, a crossbench peer and a former British ambassador to the UN, said Mr Green's claim of UN backing for including students in migration figures "frankly doesn't hold water - this is not a piece of international law". Mr Sutherland, a former Attorney General of Ireland, agreed, saying: "Absolutely not. it provides absolutely no justification at all for the position they are talking about."
He said the policy risked Britain's traditional status as "tolerant, open society" and would be "massively damaging" to its higher education sector both financially and intellectually.
"It's very important that we should not send a signal from this country, either to potential students of the highest quality, or to academic staff, that this is in some way an unsympathetic environment in which to seek visas or whatever other permissions are required... and I would be fearful that that could be a signal."
Mr Sutherland, who has attended meetings of The Bilderberg Group , a top level international networking organisation often criticised for its alleged secrecy, called on EU states to stop targeting "highly skilled" migrants, arguing that "at the most basic level individuals should have a freedom of choice" about whether to come and study or work in another country. Mr Sutherland also briefed the peers on plans for the Global Migration and Development Forum's next annual conference in Mauritius in November, adding: "The UK has been very constructively engaged in this whole process from the beginning and very supportive of me personally."
Brian Wheeler
Saturday, 1 July 2017
European Union Loots Google
June 30, 2017
On June 27, the European Commission, an agency of the government of the European Union, placed a $2.71-billion fine upon Google, the American technological giant. To indicate the anti-American hostility of the Commission, it related the fine not to Google's annual sales in the E.U., but to Google's worldwide sales.
The anti-trust authorities in a number of other countries could, taking a lesson from the E.U.'s action, fine Google on the basis of its worldwide sales as well. Russia, South Korea, Turkey, and India are among the global enforcers who already have commenced their own investigations.
Google's strong market position in search is based purely upon the high quality of the search results it returns. Its crime is that it makes a better product than anybody else and is trying to profit from that fact. If a better search engine emerges, Google will lose its dominant position.
Economic Warfare against the U.S.
This decision against Google comes in the wake of other decisions by the European Commission against American technological leaders. In 2009, the European Commission looted Intel of $1.45 billion and from 2004-2008 looted Microsoft of about $2 billion. And the European Commission is just getting started. It has already announced plans to loot American technological leader Qualcomm and six major U.S. film studios.
After the looting of Intel, many observers predicted that the E.U.'s next big target would be Google. In fact, we ourselves, back in May 2009, correctly made that prediction. We knew that the E.U. would loot Google, no matter what Google did, simply because "Google is big, dominant, and American."
These record fines against Microsoft, Intel, and Google dwarf the fines that the European Commission levies against European companies for monopolistic violations. The reason for the disparity is simple. Member countries would object if their own companies were looted by the European Commission, a point once made by Wikipedia:
[S]ome analysts assert that the Commission's monopoly policy … has been "largely ineffective," because of the resistance of individual Member State governments that sought to shield their most salient national companies from legal challenges.So why does the European Commission loot American companies? The E.U.'s antitrust chief, Neelie Kroes, once bragged:
I would like to draw your attention to Intel's latest global advertising campaign which proposes Intel as the sponsors of tomorrow. Well now they are sponsors of the European taxpayers, so to say.Are Fines of Tech Leaders Economically Legitimate?
Some anti-trust prosecutions are economically legitimate. When Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890, some American deal-makers were combining all of the large competing companies in an industry so they could gain the monopoly power needed to raise the prices of their products. Breaking up such trusts was economically justified in order to reduce prices for the consumer.
But there is no economic justification for looting technological leaders in order to prevent them from profiting from the monopolies that their technological leadership earned. These companies make enormous profits, and they invest a large part of those profits into research that drives economic growth.
This observation was first noted by economist J.A. Schumpeter, whose work led to the endogenous growth theory, the dominant modern theory of long-term economic growth. Companies invest enormous amounts in research in an attempt to stay ahead of their competition and also to expand markets for their products.
Schumpeter's favorite example was the Aluminum Corporation of America. Even though its patent protection expired in 1909, it continued to engage in "cost-reducing research, in the economic development of the productive apparatus, [and] in teaching new uses for the product" (note 20, pp. 101-102). It maintained its near monopoly for decades while it simultaneously reduced aluminum prices and expanded aluminum output.
Schumpeter wrote about ALCOA way back in 1943. But the intervening years have shown again and again that he was correct. Since World War II, companies that have had technological monopolies have continued to propel economic growth through their research. These innovative companies have included AT&T, IBM, Xerox, Microsoft, Intel, and Google.
The European Commission is bleeding American technological leaders of the profits that could have been devoted to research. It is putting these companies on notice that they need to spend their effort worrying about government interference instead of researching new inventions.
Is the Prosecution of Google Legally Legitimate?
If the prosecution against Google were legitimate, Google would have been able to avoid prosecution by studying the decisions against Intel and Microsoft and avoiding their so-called "crimes." But the criminal case against Google is simply due to Google being an American technological monopoly, and there was never anything that Google could do to avoid it.
If the prosecution against Google were legitimate, the penalties would correspond with the harm done. Instead, the E.U. calibrates its loot so as to bleed its victims without killing them. That way, it can loot again in the future or force its victim into paying for "protection."
But the most important reason why the E.U.'s prosecution is illegitimate is because the E.U. lacks jurisdiction when it levies fines based upon Google's worldwide sales. If every country could levy fines of five percent upon American companies' worldwide revenues, a few taking such action could put American-based multinationals out of business.
In effect, the E.U. is claiming that Google's operations in the U.S. are subject not just to U.S. law, but to the E.U.'s laws as well. If these actions are allowed to stand, American companies will be held to "full faith and credit" to other nation's laws, making European laws the law in the United States.
There is a basic principle at stake: international law must restrict fines to harm done within the borders of the countries that impose the fines. The European Union cannot be allowed to claim jurisdiction over the entire world.
What Should the United States Do?
The Europeans are taking away future inventions from the United States. They are bleeding the American geese that would have laid American golden eggs. The American government did nothing when Microsoft and Intel were looted. This is economic warfare, but only one side is fighting!
In 2016, the United States had a $93-billion trade deficit in goods and services with the European Union, partly produced through actions like this looting. Balancing our trade deficit with Europe would create about 700,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs. At the very least, we should promulgate a retaliatory trade-balancing tariff against European Union products.
Also, we are negotiating a multi-country treaty with the Europeans called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). We need to tell the European Union that we consider fines levied on U.S. multinationals on the basis of sales outside Europe to be invalid and that such fines must be returned as a pre-condition for further negotiations.
The United States desperately needs a government that fights back against foreign looting of American companies. We protect Europe, while Europe loots us. We need to let the Europeans know that we are mad as hell and will not be taking this anymore.
Text
Friday, 30 June 2017
Our NHS.
This proposal if passed by EU Parliament (Parliament has never voted against the Commission) will allow companies to sue The NHS, with severe penalties of set at a level of not below 10% of world turnover. The proposal offers leniency for those that comply with the decision of the National Competition Authorities within a two year time-frame - The Commission will grant a thumbs up or down decision
To empower the competition authorities of the Member States to be more effective enforcers and to ensure the proper functioning of the internal market.
Companies cannot compete on their merits where there are safe havens for anti-competitive practices. They therefore have a disincentive to enter such markets and to exercise their rights of establishment and to provide goods and services there. Consumers based in Member States where there is less enforcement miss out on the benefits of effective competition enforcement against anti-competitive practices.
Article 14
Maximum amount of the fine
1. Member States shall ensure that the maximum amount of the fine a national competition authority may impose on each undertaking or association of undertakings participating in an infringement of Articles 101 or 102 TFEU should not be set at a level below 10% of its total worldwide turnover in the business year preceding the decision.
2. Where an infringement by an association of undertakings relates to the activities of its members, the maximum amount of the fine shall not be set at a level below 10 % of the sum of the total worldwide turnover of each member active on the market affected by the infringement of the association.
FINAL PROVISIONS
Article 32
Transposition
1. Member States shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive by [two year period for transposition] at the latest. They shall forthwith communicate to the Commission the text of those provisions.
When Member States adopt those provisions, they shall contain a reference to this Directive or be accompanied by such a reference on the occasion of their official publication. Member States shall determine how such reference is to be made.
2. Member States shall communicate to the Commission the text of the main provisions of national law which they adopt in the field covered by this Directive.
The complete proposal can be read here: Antitrust
To empower the competition authorities of the Member States to be more effective enforcers and to ensure the proper functioning of the internal market.
Companies cannot compete on their merits where there are safe havens for anti-competitive practices. They therefore have a disincentive to enter such markets and to exercise their rights of establishment and to provide goods and services there. Consumers based in Member States where there is less enforcement miss out on the benefits of effective competition enforcement against anti-competitive practices.
Article 14
Maximum amount of the fine
1. Member States shall ensure that the maximum amount of the fine a national competition authority may impose on each undertaking or association of undertakings participating in an infringement of Articles 101 or 102 TFEU should not be set at a level below 10% of its total worldwide turnover in the business year preceding the decision.
2. Where an infringement by an association of undertakings relates to the activities of its members, the maximum amount of the fine shall not be set at a level below 10 % of the sum of the total worldwide turnover of each member active on the market affected by the infringement of the association.
FINAL PROVISIONS
Article 32
Transposition
1. Member States shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive by [two year period for transposition] at the latest. They shall forthwith communicate to the Commission the text of those provisions.
When Member States adopt those provisions, they shall contain a reference to this Directive or be accompanied by such a reference on the occasion of their official publication. Member States shall determine how such reference is to be made.
2. Member States shall communicate to the Commission the text of the main provisions of national law which they adopt in the field covered by this Directive.
The complete proposal can be read here: Antitrust
Wednesday, 28 June 2017
Mariners' code.
In the strong and ancient code that binds seafarers, coming to the
aid of those in danger is perhaps the most fundamental imperative.
Captains and their crews are obliged to respond to distress calls and
mount rescue efforts, so long as they do not endanger themselves or
their vessel.
This tradition has, to some extent, been converted into laws. Several countries with long seafaring traditions, including Australia, Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States, may actually press criminal charges against captains who fail to render assistance.
Today, international maritime law codifies the obligation to render assistance in such instruments as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982) and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (1979). The obligation to extend aid applies without regard to the nationality, status, or circumstances of the person or people in distress. Under these rules, ship owners, ships masters, coastal nations, and flag states (the states where ships are registered) all have responsibilities for search and rescue. The Annex of the Search and Rescue Convention provides that "a situation of distress shall be notified not only to consular and diplomatic authorities but also to a competent international organ if the situation of distress pertains to refugees or displaced persons."
Safe Harbors?
While the obligation of seafarers to rescue people in peril is clear in legal documents, what happens next is murkier. The Convention on Search and Rescue mandates that a rescue is not complete until the rescued person is delivered to a place of safety. That could be the nearest suitable port, the next regular port of call, the ship's home port, a port in the rescued person's own country, or one of many other possibilities.
When refugees or asylum seekers are among those rescued at sea, however, the list of options is narrowed. A refugee must not, under international law, be forcibly returned to a country where his or her life or freedom would be endangered — or, by extension, to a country where he or she would not be protected against such return.
Allowing a refugee or asylum seeker who has been rescued at sea to disembark on one's territory triggers a specific set of obligations on the part of the authorities of the receiving state. They cannot simply send the refugees home, as they would be able to do with other travelers. The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which is the cornerstone of refugee protection, provides that "No contracting party shall expel or return ("refouler") a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of a territory where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion." As a result, many states are reluctant to accept refugees, and they are under no positive obligation to open their doors.
A Rock and a Hard Place
The intersection of maritime law and refugee law thus leaves ship owners, masters, and crews in a quandary. They must pick up refugees and asylum seekers whose lives are in danger, but no state is required to take them in.
The ship itself cannot be considered a "place of safety" -- indeed, carrying a large number of unscheduled passengers may endanger the crew and passengers themselves, owing to overcrowding, inadequate provisioning, and the tensions of life in close quarters. The inability to disembark rescued passengers in a timely fashion and return to scheduled ports of call creates a profound disincentive for the maritime industry to engage actively in search and rescue missions.
As the number of incidents of this type has increased, states have become more and more determined to deter and divert ships that might bear asylum seekers toward their shores. States have reacted slowly, and at times without good will, to the increasing numbers of would-be migrants and refugees who have met disaster at sea. The United States intercepts boats in the Pacific and the Caribbean, as do Italy and France in the Mediterranean, and Australia in the Indian Ocean. Accusations of standing by while passengers drown have been leveled at both Italian and Australian naval vessels.
U.S. authorities have justified a policy of summary return or mandatory detention of Haitian boat people on the grounds that such actions will discourage people from putting themselves at risk. Screening to detect refugees among the passengers and prevent refoulement is part of the interception procedure, although many refugee protection advocates find it inadequate.
In perhaps the most notorious interception incident, the Norwegian container ship Tampa, en route to Australia, picked up 438 people, mostly from Afghanistan, from a sinking boat in the Indian Ocean in August 2001. Australia refused to allow the ship to dock in an Australian port or to unload its passengers. Eventually, it forcibly transferred the rescued passengers first to warships and then to island possessions or neighboring states such as Nauru and Papua New Guinea for processing of their asylum claims.
In this long process of frustrated attempts to disembark the rescued passengers, the owners and agents of the Tampa incurred substantial losses in an industry where profit margins are razor-thin. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees gave the captain, crew, and owner of the Tampa its highest award for work on behalf of refugees for their principled actions in the face of such disincentives.
Conclusion
The question remains of who has responsibility for accepting asylum seekers rescued at sea, adjudicating their claims, and providing a place of safety for those who are confirmed in their need for international protection does not have a clear answer in existing law. States that refuse to relieve rescuing vessels of their unanticipated passengers not only place an unfair burden on the seafarers (who, after all, have taken the rescued people into their living quarters — their homes, in effect), but also threaten the conventions that have long upheld the system of rescue at sea.
These dilemmas call for cooperation among all the parties -- states, the shipping industry, and international organizations such as UNHCR and the International Maritime Organization -- to uphold the humanitarian practices that are an honorable part of maritime tradition. As long as there is violence and repression and people determined to escape it, asylum seekers will be found among those who encounter danger on the high seas.
Looking to the future, the kind of negotiations and arrangements that defused the crisis of rescue in the South China Sea in the 1970-1980s could be codified into more general responsibility-sharing arrangements for the protection of refugees rescued at sea. This way, the shipping industry along with the masters and crews of ships would not be required to bear alone the burdens of applying international humanitarian laws and standards.
Troubled waters.
This tradition has, to some extent, been converted into laws. Several countries with long seafaring traditions, including Australia, Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States, may actually press criminal charges against captains who fail to render assistance.
Today, international maritime law codifies the obligation to render assistance in such instruments as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982) and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (1979). The obligation to extend aid applies without regard to the nationality, status, or circumstances of the person or people in distress. Under these rules, ship owners, ships masters, coastal nations, and flag states (the states where ships are registered) all have responsibilities for search and rescue. The Annex of the Search and Rescue Convention provides that "a situation of distress shall be notified not only to consular and diplomatic authorities but also to a competent international organ if the situation of distress pertains to refugees or displaced persons."
Safe Harbors?
While the obligation of seafarers to rescue people in peril is clear in legal documents, what happens next is murkier. The Convention on Search and Rescue mandates that a rescue is not complete until the rescued person is delivered to a place of safety. That could be the nearest suitable port, the next regular port of call, the ship's home port, a port in the rescued person's own country, or one of many other possibilities.
When refugees or asylum seekers are among those rescued at sea, however, the list of options is narrowed. A refugee must not, under international law, be forcibly returned to a country where his or her life or freedom would be endangered — or, by extension, to a country where he or she would not be protected against such return.
Allowing a refugee or asylum seeker who has been rescued at sea to disembark on one's territory triggers a specific set of obligations on the part of the authorities of the receiving state. They cannot simply send the refugees home, as they would be able to do with other travelers. The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which is the cornerstone of refugee protection, provides that "No contracting party shall expel or return ("refouler") a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of a territory where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion." As a result, many states are reluctant to accept refugees, and they are under no positive obligation to open their doors.
A Rock and a Hard Place
The intersection of maritime law and refugee law thus leaves ship owners, masters, and crews in a quandary. They must pick up refugees and asylum seekers whose lives are in danger, but no state is required to take them in.
The ship itself cannot be considered a "place of safety" -- indeed, carrying a large number of unscheduled passengers may endanger the crew and passengers themselves, owing to overcrowding, inadequate provisioning, and the tensions of life in close quarters. The inability to disembark rescued passengers in a timely fashion and return to scheduled ports of call creates a profound disincentive for the maritime industry to engage actively in search and rescue missions.
As the number of incidents of this type has increased, states have become more and more determined to deter and divert ships that might bear asylum seekers toward their shores. States have reacted slowly, and at times without good will, to the increasing numbers of would-be migrants and refugees who have met disaster at sea. The United States intercepts boats in the Pacific and the Caribbean, as do Italy and France in the Mediterranean, and Australia in the Indian Ocean. Accusations of standing by while passengers drown have been leveled at both Italian and Australian naval vessels.
U.S. authorities have justified a policy of summary return or mandatory detention of Haitian boat people on the grounds that such actions will discourage people from putting themselves at risk. Screening to detect refugees among the passengers and prevent refoulement is part of the interception procedure, although many refugee protection advocates find it inadequate.
In perhaps the most notorious interception incident, the Norwegian container ship Tampa, en route to Australia, picked up 438 people, mostly from Afghanistan, from a sinking boat in the Indian Ocean in August 2001. Australia refused to allow the ship to dock in an Australian port or to unload its passengers. Eventually, it forcibly transferred the rescued passengers first to warships and then to island possessions or neighboring states such as Nauru and Papua New Guinea for processing of their asylum claims.
In this long process of frustrated attempts to disembark the rescued passengers, the owners and agents of the Tampa incurred substantial losses in an industry where profit margins are razor-thin. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees gave the captain, crew, and owner of the Tampa its highest award for work on behalf of refugees for their principled actions in the face of such disincentives.
Conclusion
The question remains of who has responsibility for accepting asylum seekers rescued at sea, adjudicating their claims, and providing a place of safety for those who are confirmed in their need for international protection does not have a clear answer in existing law. States that refuse to relieve rescuing vessels of their unanticipated passengers not only place an unfair burden on the seafarers (who, after all, have taken the rescued people into their living quarters — their homes, in effect), but also threaten the conventions that have long upheld the system of rescue at sea.
These dilemmas call for cooperation among all the parties -- states, the shipping industry, and international organizations such as UNHCR and the International Maritime Organization -- to uphold the humanitarian practices that are an honorable part of maritime tradition. As long as there is violence and repression and people determined to escape it, asylum seekers will be found among those who encounter danger on the high seas.
Looking to the future, the kind of negotiations and arrangements that defused the crisis of rescue in the South China Sea in the 1970-1980s could be codified into more general responsibility-sharing arrangements for the protection of refugees rescued at sea. This way, the shipping industry along with the masters and crews of ships would not be required to bear alone the burdens of applying international humanitarian laws and standards.
Troubled waters.
Thursday, 16 March 2017
Friday, 16 December 2016
Emperor Juncker
The EU parliament cannot formally propose any candidates for Commission membership.
It, now, has the right 'to be consulted' in the case of the appointment of the EU Commission President. Juncker was approved by the EU Parliament from a short list of 1.
The people can't sack an emperor and we can't sack Juncker.
Job security is close to absolute. The EU Parliament can only remove the entire Commission, en masse. (This the so-called 'nuclear option').
Think on that when he issues his decrees concerning worker 'flexibility'.
I need a drink.
It, now, has the right 'to be consulted' in the case of the appointment of the EU Commission President. Juncker was approved by the EU Parliament from a short list of 1.
The people can't sack an emperor and we can't sack Juncker.
Job security is close to absolute. The EU Parliament can only remove the entire Commission, en masse. (This the so-called 'nuclear option').
Think on that when he issues his decrees concerning worker 'flexibility'.
I need a drink.
Friday, 12 August 2016
Japan's demographyThe incredible shrinking country.
Japan's demographyThe incredible shrinking country
Japan’s government has issued another alarming sign
Banyan
Mar 25th 2014
A QUIET but constant ticking can be heard from the demographic time bomb that sits beneath the world’s third-largest economy. This week it made a louder tick than usual: official statistics show that the population declined last year by a record 244,000 people—roughly the population of the London borough of Hackney.
Japan's population began falling in 2004 and is now ageing faster than any other on the planet. More than 22% of Japanese are already 65 or older. A report compiled with the government’s co-operation two years ago warned that by 2060 the number of Japanese will have fallen from 127m to about 87m, of whom almost 40% will be 65 or older.
Latest updates
The government is pointedly not denying newspaper reports that ran earlier this month, claiming that it is considering a solution it has so far shunned: mass immigration. The reports say the figure being mooted is 200,000 foreigners a year. An advisory body to Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, said opening the immigration drawbridge to that number would help stabilise Japan’s population—at around 100m (from its current 126.7m).
But even then there’s a big catch. To hit that target the government would also have to raise the fertility rate from its current 1.39, one of the lowest in the world, up to 2.07. Experts say that a change on that scale would require major surgery to the country’s entire social architecture. One of the first things Japan would need to do, says Kathy Matsui, chief Japan equity strategist at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, is make it easier for mothers to work. “Evidence shows that work-forces with a higher female participation rate also have higher birth rates,” she says.
Mr Abe has invoked Ms Matsui in his quest to boost the birth rate. Progress towards bringing women into the labour force is far from assured however. The latest Gender Gap Report, compiled annually by the Davos-based World Economic Forum, ranked Japan 105 out of 136 countries, down 25 places from 2006. (South Korea—another country with a fertility crisis—does even worse, coming in at 111th place.)
The looming crisis has so alarmed Japan’s government that in 2005 it created a ministerial post to raise fertility. Last year a 20-member panel under the ministry produced a desperate wish list to reduce what it calls “deterrents” to marriage and child rearing. It included a proposal to assign gynaecologists to patients on a lifelong basis and even to provide financial support for unmarried Japanese who undertake "spouse-hunting" projects.
Immigration is being approached as a last resort. Even so the prime minister faces tough choices. The United Nations estimates that without raising its fertility rate, Japan would need to attract about 650,000 immigrants a year. There is no precedent for that level of immigration in this country, which is still a largely homogenous society.
Roughly 2% of Japan’s population is foreign. And even this figure includes large numbers of permanent residents—mostly Chinese and Koreans—who have been here for generations. Tellingly, the recent story about the government’s discussion of immigration broke in the right-wing Sankei newspaper (in Japanese), which is especially unlikely to embrace the idea of a Chinese family living on every Japanese street.
Japan’s demographic dilemma grows more urgent by the year. Last week the government passed the nation’s largest-ever budget—a mammoth $937-billion package swelled by welfare and pension spending. Japan is already weighed down by one of the world’s largest public debt burdens. With its inverted population pyramid, where will it find the tax base to repay this debt, and to care for its growing population of elderly?
The 2012 government report said that without policy change, by 2110 the number of Japanese could fall to 42.9m, ie just a third of its current population. It is plausible to think that the country could learn to live with its shrinking population. But that might mean also embracing a much diminished economic and political role in the world. Mr Abe would seem to be the last leader to accept that.
by D.M. | TOKYO
Japan’s government has issued another alarming sign
Banyan
Mar 25th 2014
A QUIET but constant ticking can be heard from the demographic time bomb that sits beneath the world’s third-largest economy. This week it made a louder tick than usual: official statistics show that the population declined last year by a record 244,000 people—roughly the population of the London borough of Hackney.
Japan's population began falling in 2004 and is now ageing faster than any other on the planet. More than 22% of Japanese are already 65 or older. A report compiled with the government’s co-operation two years ago warned that by 2060 the number of Japanese will have fallen from 127m to about 87m, of whom almost 40% will be 65 or older.
Latest updates
The government is pointedly not denying newspaper reports that ran earlier this month, claiming that it is considering a solution it has so far shunned: mass immigration. The reports say the figure being mooted is 200,000 foreigners a year. An advisory body to Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, said opening the immigration drawbridge to that number would help stabilise Japan’s population—at around 100m (from its current 126.7m).
But even then there’s a big catch. To hit that target the government would also have to raise the fertility rate from its current 1.39, one of the lowest in the world, up to 2.07. Experts say that a change on that scale would require major surgery to the country’s entire social architecture. One of the first things Japan would need to do, says Kathy Matsui, chief Japan equity strategist at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, is make it easier for mothers to work. “Evidence shows that work-forces with a higher female participation rate also have higher birth rates,” she says.
Mr Abe has invoked Ms Matsui in his quest to boost the birth rate. Progress towards bringing women into the labour force is far from assured however. The latest Gender Gap Report, compiled annually by the Davos-based World Economic Forum, ranked Japan 105 out of 136 countries, down 25 places from 2006. (South Korea—another country with a fertility crisis—does even worse, coming in at 111th place.)
The looming crisis has so alarmed Japan’s government that in 2005 it created a ministerial post to raise fertility. Last year a 20-member panel under the ministry produced a desperate wish list to reduce what it calls “deterrents” to marriage and child rearing. It included a proposal to assign gynaecologists to patients on a lifelong basis and even to provide financial support for unmarried Japanese who undertake "spouse-hunting" projects.
Immigration is being approached as a last resort. Even so the prime minister faces tough choices. The United Nations estimates that without raising its fertility rate, Japan would need to attract about 650,000 immigrants a year. There is no precedent for that level of immigration in this country, which is still a largely homogenous society.
Roughly 2% of Japan’s population is foreign. And even this figure includes large numbers of permanent residents—mostly Chinese and Koreans—who have been here for generations. Tellingly, the recent story about the government’s discussion of immigration broke in the right-wing Sankei newspaper (in Japanese), which is especially unlikely to embrace the idea of a Chinese family living on every Japanese street.
Japan’s demographic dilemma grows more urgent by the year. Last week the government passed the nation’s largest-ever budget—a mammoth $937-billion package swelled by welfare and pension spending. Japan is already weighed down by one of the world’s largest public debt burdens. With its inverted population pyramid, where will it find the tax base to repay this debt, and to care for its growing population of elderly?
The 2012 government report said that without policy change, by 2110 the number of Japanese could fall to 42.9m, ie just a third of its current population. It is plausible to think that the country could learn to live with its shrinking population. But that might mean also embracing a much diminished economic and political role in the world. Mr Abe would seem to be the last leader to accept that.
by D.M. | TOKYO
Friday, 8 July 2016
Thursday, 7 July 2016
Thunderbirds are go! Well, Gove's gone.
Thunderbirds are go! Well, Gove's gone. Brains : F.A.B. Well, that didn't go entirely to plan.
Wednesday, 6 July 2016
Blah, Blah, Tony Blair
Blah, Blah, Tony Blair,
have you any bombs?
Yes Bush, yes Sir
Three planes full;
One for Syria
And one for Iraq
And one for Afghanistan
He gives not a fuck.
have you any bombs?
Yes Bush, yes Sir
Three planes full;
One for Syria
And one for Iraq
And one for Afghanistan
He gives not a fuck.
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