house keeper v Marstons ref Fine

[CleverClogs]

Re: Distress warrant.

My concern about the HRA content was not that it was wrong, but that there might have been a risk of the recipient(s) thinking it had come from a Free Man On Land nutter, whereupon it would be filed with letters from UKIP councillors and other crackpots.

[bluebottle]

Re: Distress warrant.

My concern about the HRA content was not that it was wrong, but that there might have been a risk of the recipient(s) thinking it had come from a Free Man On Land nutter, whereupon it would be filed with letters from UKIP councillors and other crackpots.

You have a point, Cloggy. However, MoJ/HMCTS is the one public authority in the UK that should know the HRA better than any other public authority as it is the civil courts where cases brought under the HRA are heard.

FOTL nutters tend to bang on about not contracting with a public authority, which is just plain nonsense. A lot of their claims appear to be based on a misunderstanding/misinterpretation of Common Law which causes all sorts of problems.

UKIP tends to wet itself when the words "Europe" or "European" are mentioned. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has 47 signatories, including the UK, and is International Law, which means that all signatories agree to be bound by it. Unfortunately, in the UK, we have politicians who feel they can pick and choose which pieces of International Law they are going to obey and ignore. This is probably one of the reasons the UK is hauled before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg up to 10 times each year and is considered the "Bad Boy of Europe" where human rights are concerned, even though it was the UK that drew up the Convention.

Junior officers within the MoJ/HMCTS are unlikely to have received much training about the HRA, but more senior officers and managers should have an awareness of its relevance and application to the everyday operations of MoJ/HMCTS. HMCTS's Correspondence, Complaints and Litigation Unit, based at Petty France in London, is the main hub for dealing with breaches of the law by HMCTS and its contractors. I have recently helped an LB member who was the victim of bungling by a bailiff employed by an HMCTS contractor draft a complaint to HMCTS about the threats and bullying from the bailiff company involved. It is my understanding that the complaint will be delivered to HMCTS today. Mention has been made in the complaint about the HRA, but it is to illustrate just how easy it is for the private-sector contractors to drop civil servants in the crap and land the taxpayer with litigation costs.

From conversations I have had with individual court staff, it would appear that a growing number of them are waking up to the dangers and utter folly of the private-sector performing the work of civil servants, who are accountable, and making a noise about it, much to the annoyance of certain disingenuous politicians.