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Another maternity scandal, this time a long-standing one which has, according to this story in the Sunday Times, been going on for ca. 50 years. Pregnant women suffering from epilepsy have been given a drug – sodium valproate – which (while effective at controlling epilepsy) is teratogenic, causing life-changing physical and neurological deformities to children. Its effects on the unborn child have been known about for some time but it continues to be prescribed. The risks were known to the…

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Feeble CON MPs haven’t the bottle to stop them The PM and Chancellor are going to brazen it out. That much is clear. An apology, a reference to all the other much more important work that needs to be done, Ukraine, a hope that MPs and voters are weary of it all, the happy coincidence that Parliament is not sitting, and so on. It is likely to work for now, even if opinion polls show a certain amount of buyer’s…

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Even the strongest supporters of jury trials accept that sometimes juries get it wrong. Or, rather, the prosecution and defence cases and/or the conduct of the trial were so poor that the jury could not help but come to the wrong (guilty) verdict. So there is nothing wrong – if you believe that a miscarriage of justice has occurred – to campaign for its overturning. If people, including MPs, had not done this – many infamous miscarriages of justice (from…

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Lawyers are very polite people. So polite in fact that it can be hard for the non-lawyer to realise when lawyers are being really quite rude, especially about other lawyers. And even more especially about Dominic Raab, who continues to miss even the low bars set for him. Such was the case recently over his plans to change the Human Rights Act, a perennial bugbear of the Tory right. Despite the endless ill-informed comments about this legislation from successive Tory…

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17 months. That’s all it took, though to judge by the outraged comments from Ministers it may as well have been 17 centuries ago, so short are their memories. What happened 17 months ago that could possibly have any relevance today? On 8 September 2020 Brandon Lewis, then Northern Ireland Secretary, announced to the House of Commons that provisions in the Internal Markets Bill on Northern Ireland customs arrangements broke “international law in a very specific and limited way“. It…

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From 1988 on young children treated for complex heart complaints at the Bristol Royal Infirmary had high death rates, higher than might be expected for such difficult surgery. Between 1986 – 1995 170 children who would likely have survived in other units, died; about 25 – 30 suffered permanent brain damage. An inquiry by Professor Ian Kennedy QC found a unit “simply not up to the task“, a result of poor leadership, a doctors’ “old boys‘” culture, secrecy and a…

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When the Stalinist horrors of Putin’s attempt to wipe out Ukraine fill our TV news every night, it is … well, if not a comfort exactly ….. at least wearily familiar to see some things never changing. The Met has got into trouble again – and, yes, over women and girls. (Did you really need to ask?) First, the High Court ruled that the Met’s decisions (all 6 of them) before the Clapham Common vigil for Sarah Everard were unlawful….

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Russia’s proposals to end the war/Special Military Operation amount to asking for Ukraine’s unconditional surrender and remaining under Russian influence thereafter. It is less the proposals which are interesting, more the fact that they have been made at all. And by Russia. The war has, so far at least, “developed not necessarily to [Russia’s] advantage“. And as Emperor Hirohito observed “the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest.” Still, it is early days and if Russia…

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