CentreRight

We all know that a fundamental principle of British law is that ignorance of the law is no defence. Or rather, we should all know - Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, seems to be trying to hang on to her job as one of the most senior lawyers in the land explicitly on the basis that her offence of employing an illegal immigrant was "inadvertent".

Sometimes, of course, people are punished due to breaching overly complex laws that they couldn't reasonably be expected to understand - particularly given the huge increase in legal complexity Baroness Scotland has overseen. They are normally ordinary invdividuals unversed in the law, though, rather than one of the most senior lawyers in the land who actually helped to enact the very law they have broken.

But as well as being aware of this particular law, shouldn't the Attorney General should be aware of a such a fundamental principle as ignorance being no defence?

She certainly should be - thanks to a quick search of the ever useful www.theyworkforyou.com I can confirm that she herself has said it to justify the Government's proposals at least twice in Parliamentary debates:

1. On 27th October 2003, in a debate on the Extradition Bill she rejected civil liberties concerns by telling Lord Clinton-Davis that "as he is well aware, is that ignorance of the law has never been a defence, and to recognise it as a reason for not extraditing people to another EU country is a dangerous precedent."

2. On the 21st of October 2004, in a debate on the higly dubious Civil Contingencies Bill, she told Lord Archer of Sandwell that "The noble and learned Lord knows far better than me that ignorance of the law has never been a defence in our country."

Surely the Attorney General cannot have forgotten that principle in the last five years? And if she has, surely she should be sacked from such an important legal position anyway?

...as long as they are like this one:

The government has saved £7m in the last year by making its departments greener, the Cabinet Office says.

Changes made include using double-sided printing, turning off computers at night and extending the life of PCs.

Cabinet Office minister Angela Smith said reforms had "saved enough carbon dioxide to fill almost 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools".  

£7 million is a handy saving, that taxpayers will rightly be pleased about. Of course, people are also justified in asking why it was acceptable before the Government took up its green policy crusade for computers to be left on over night to run up energy bills and for single-sided printing to be the norm. These basic measures for saving money should have been standard practice in all public bodies, never mind just in Whitehall departments.

There is another aspect to this story which is quite revealing, too. Green policies have been failing to get popular support because they normally involve large expense, and with a recession and a huge deficit that is unacceptable to most people. Indeed, the ardent anti-capitalism and anti-growth views of the core of the Green movement have actually tainted the whole issue for millions of people, leading them to assume that all environmentally friendly measures are going to cost them a fortune (for the very good reason that most proposals being put forward are indeed going to do just that).

This story takes a different tack, and has been spun to promote green policies against that background - the message is "See, being green can save money!"

The message could equally be that actually reducing public spending through simple savings can have green benefits - a message along the lines of "See, saving money can be green!" But that would never do - promoting lower spending as having good knock-on effects and, God forbid, undermining the idea that it is essential to spend more in order to save the planet, would stick in the craw of any Government Minister, and raise howls from the Big State enthusiasts among the Green movement.

That said, while yes, it should have been done years ago and yes, it is a cleverly phrased bit of propaganda, this is £7 million less for taxpayers to shell out for. That is the kind of Green I can get behind.

After the early rumblings of debate last week, the TPA/Institute of Directors report on how to save £50 billion on Friday, the TUC's dire warnings of the weekend and the crucial Sunday Times poll yesterday, it is now accepted that the battle over public spending cuts is well and truly on.

We have been working ten to the dozen over the last few days discussing, explaining and debating the 34 specific proposals we put forward for savings (you can see the rebuttal of people's criticisms here). Even Peter Mandelson has started to concede ground on the subject today, saying that the Government was willing to review any item of spending even including the beloved ID cards.

George Osborne's piece in today's Evening Standard, therefore, could and should have gone further than it did. Having rightly called on the Prime Minister to "tell the truth about cuts", his full page article then went on to only use two numbers - 2007, in reference to the year, and G20, the organisation, which hardly counts.

The Sunday Times' polling showed that 60% of the public want spending cuts. The international markets and the credit rating agencies want reassurance that a future Government will take control of the public finances with a firm hand. Even the people who disagree with one or another of the 34 proposed cuts we and the IoD laid out last week have been emailing and calling in all day to say they appreciate us bringing some honesty to the debate, and wish that politicians would stop dodging the details.

The principle that cuts are necessary has now been largely accepted - Mr Osborne and the Shadow Treasury Team must now start to tell the public exactly which difficult decisions need to be made.

Law and order has always been at or close to the top of the public's concerns. Given the continuing problems with organised gangs reaping the profits of the drug trade and the recent boom in knife and gun crime, proactive policing has rarely been more in demand.

Irrespective of the views of Home Office civil servants, quangocrats or unelected Police Authorities, the public who live at the sharp end of the crime problem know full well that what is needed is a tough focus by real police officers on catching criminals.

It beggars belief, therefore, to see some of the absurd schemes targeted at the innocent rather than the guilty that police forces are pursuing.

A couple of months ago, Northamptonshire Police introduced a tactic of shouting "Lock your doors" through a megaphone at innocent householders.

In July, PCSOs in Hove started climbing through windows into people's houses with no invitation or warning in order to lecture them about home security.

And now we learn that Police Officers in Richmond are breaking into cars that have unlocked doors or ajar windows, taking the owner's valuables and leaving them a note saying they have to come to the police station to reclaim them (and be given another lecture, naturally).

This kind of nonsense is not just a waste of taxpayers' money and police officers' time, it is genuinely hazardous to the standing and enforcement of the law. The law rests on the consent of the law-abiding majority, and even more crucially their co-operation.

The image to the right, which is used to promote the EU's African aid policies, was brought to my attention this week by a colleague who had stumbled across it whilst doing research into aid spending.

As well as being immensely patronising, and betraying the EU's love of exactly the kind of imperialism that its supporters so love to claim it counterbalances, the image is one of staggering hypocrisy. Whilst the European Union does distribute aid money, its far more notable impact on Africa is one of huge economic damage.

The Common Agricultural Policy, and the trade barriers that make it possible, do untold harm to millions of farmers who would dearly love to sell their produce to European consumers. It is sickening that while British and other European people are hit by spiralling food prices, a continent of farmers who could provide cheaper goods are effectively barred by massive tariffs from doing so.

This is one area where eurosceptics must take the EU on, and could do so to great effect. Morally, fighting against the protectionism and dumping of subidised produce into African markets that kills large numbers of people and impoverishes millions more is clearly the right thing to do. Strategically it has benefits, too.

There is a lot of manufactured tension between euroscepticism as a supposedly old-fashioned view and the new ideas of a rebranded Conservative Party. When David Cameron urged people not to “bang on about Europe”, he did so on the basis that rejecting eurosceptic politics would cast him as a moderniser.