Paul Flynn - Read My Day

Case for medicinal cannabis overwhelming/

 

Prejudice rich: evidence empty.

 

The UK’s 50 year drugs prohibition catastrophe of increasing drugs use, deaths plus vast costs staggers on.  The Netherland's intelligent drugs policy of decriminalization delivered a prison crisis that we envy in a chronic shortage of prisoners and closure of 19 prisons.

 

Here both main parties retreat from drug debate. They repeat counterproductive ‘tough’ policies gratifying to politicians; lethal to drug users.

 

Happily, the tide of world opinion has turned.

 

29 out of the 50 US states are supplying legal medicinal cannabis. It’s available in Canada and most EU states. I have called for MS sufferers and others denied their safe medicine of choice to break the law. Impatience is justified. That law is an ass. Civil disobedience against a bad, cruel law accelerates reforms.

 

The absurdity of denying patents the world’s most ancient medicine was exposed by the young boy, Alfie Dingley, who suffers frequent seizures when he was denied the use of a cannabis-based medicine he used in Holland. Although the issue is one of health, the Government put up a ‘law and order minister’ to justify this outrage. Do they fear that a cannabis medicine used by a young boy would kick off a crime wave?

 

 

Only Government action can help. Make it soon Prime Minister.

Shameful Mrs May? And this is what?

 

 

The PM attacked the Welsh Government as shameful. What is her view on the unnecessary anxiety she has imposed on my constituent  and many thousands of others in similar positions. 

 

The story of Steven Evans has once again cast a stark light upon the cruel welfare system. Steven from Newport lives with cerebral palsy so severe that he could not open the letters sent to him by the DWP, he also struggled to communicate with them over the telephone. 

 

last year he was sent notice of an assessment for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) three times by post. Steven unable to open the letters missed his assessment and his payments were stopped. In order to not miss any subsequent information, he asked for his correspondence to be sent via a local charity, the wonderful Disability Advice Project. 

 

Unfortunately for Steven, he came up against the incredible rigidity of the DWP system as it refused to accept that he could have an address that he lived in and an address to which he would want correspondence sent. The computer system now realising that Steven had two addresses on file then stopped his payments for his Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). During the period between his payments stopping and being re-instated, Steven racked up debts into the thousands.

 

 

Fortunately for Steven, he had support and the advice of experts at the Disability Advice Project. Many others are not so fortunate. Figures from the charity Scope reveal that 75% of all PIP appeals in Wales and the South West are granted, you can only imagine how high the figure could be if more applicants were aware of their rights. The Government must take urgent action to rectify their flawed Welfare procedures, with outsourced companies rewarding staff for the number of assessments that can be done in a day, not for the quality of those assessments. 

 

It is a system designed to force you to appeal, to jump through hoops. Designed to wear down claimants until they no longer have the strength to fight.  Designed to cut costs to the detriment of the weakest in our society. It is a system in dire need of reassessment. 

 

 

Top UK SEcurity view of Extraordinary Rendition 2014

 

The Government''s welcome volte face on Abdel Hakim Belhadj is an improvement on their view to Home Affairs Committee 2014.

 

Professor Sir David Omand: On the face of the Act, the analyst does actually have to be able to demonstrate that what they are doing in trying to pull out a needle of some wanted piece of information, say from a computer that has been associated with a terrorist, is necessary as well as proportionate. It would clearly fail the "necessary" test if the information could readily be obtained, for example, by a Security Service operation directly with the individual. For a lot of this, it is the only way you will find it, if it is on the internet.

Chair: Thank you. I think we have spent quite enough time now on looking for needles in haystacks.

Q631 Paul Flynn: In 2004, Mr Abdel Hakim Belhadj, with his pregnant wife, was abducted from Bangkok Airport, flown to Gaddafi’s Libya and tortured. In 2005, Jack Straw denied that the British Government had any involvement in renditions. In 2011, Human Rights Watch discovered documents and published them which named the British MI6 agent who they claim had boasted about this abduction, and Jack Straw has subsequently said that he was advised by MI6 on this. No one would have the knowledge of this and the truth on this without Human Rights Watch. Many other matters we would not have the truth of if it was not for whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. Do you not agree that we do need the whistleblowers, and they do convey to the public the truth of what is going on, rather than listen gullibly as we are told-as I have been and as the Chairman has been-that there was no involvement with extraordinary rendition. We were lied to. Do we not need whistleblowers?

Professor Sir David Omand: Let me say that a true whistleblower, in accepted international convention, has to exhaust his remedies. For example, Mr Snowden could have gone to his employers-I understand why he would not do that; I would not press that point. He could have gone to the inspector general, the independent figure of his organisation. I would not press that point either. He could have gone to Congress. Just imagine if Mr Snowden-flanked perhaps by the editor of The Guardian and the editor of The New York Times-had walked into the Congressional Oversight Committee and said, "The White House has kept from you and the Executive have kept from you knowledge of a massive programme of collecting data on American citizens." There would have been a huge political stink. I am quite sure President Obama would have been forced to issue the sort of statement that he issued a few weeks ago.

Paul Flynn: He has.

Professor Sir David Omand: Mr Snowden would have achieved his objective and he would not have had to steal 58,000 British top-secret documents or 1.7 million-

Paul Flynn: There is very little time, so can I just make two points?

Professor Sir David Omand-he did not do that, so in my book he is not a whistleblower.

Q632 Paul Flynn: Monsieur Dick Marty, who is a very distinguished Swiss MP, who was described by a Foreign Secretary here to me as being a madman-he was not; I know him very well. He was the person who very bravely took up this issue in Europe. Successive British politicians denied what was going on. The question is: do we not have to rely on the whistleblowers, on the Dick Martys, on the Human Rights Watch, to get the truth? Otherwise we live in ignorance, as politicians and the public. Of course they supply this service to us, surely.

Professor Sir David Omand: I believe in a free press. Under no circumstances will I want to muzzle the press. If they can perform a public service in exposing wrongdoing, let them do that. In a well-regulated democracy, you don’t have to rely on the media.

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