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Even Lady Scotland, does not know what is happening or is trying to misinform the House of Lords, one hopes it is the former, because if it was a deliberate attempt to mislead then how are we supposed to believe anything any politician tells us.

Lady Scotland should in fact know that she gave Lord Tebbit a wrong answer she has after all overall responsibility for reform and modernisation of the Criminal Justice System, previously she was Parliamentary Secretary at the Lord Chancellor’s Department from 2001 to 2003; and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1999 to 2001.She was an Alternate UK Government Representative of the European Convention from 2002 to 2003.Patricia Scotland was called to the Bar, Middle Temple, in 1977, received Silk in 1991 and became a Bencher in 1997.

She is a member of the Bar of Antigua and the Commonwealth of Dominica; was appointed an Assistant Recorder in 1994, a Recorder in 2000 and approved to sit as a Deputy High Court Judge of the Family Division; she is a Door Tenant at Bridewell Chambers.But to be fair perhaps her other works gets in the way of keeping up to date with the latest law in this country she is also deputy to Peter Hain (Foreign Office Minister) on the Convention of Europe as well as Cabinet Office Spokesperson on Gender and Equality Issues.

Letter From Anne Palmer here

“An Interesting Vote

As a Brit my focus on the European Constitution tends to be on the referendum to be held in the UK. It currently seems as if the French referendum may provide a more interesting spectacle however.

The French Socialist Party are considering whether or not to back the treaty and there are grave warnings of the consequences of not doing so.

Dominique Strauss Kahn, former finance minister and one of the French Socialist Party’s most senior figures, has told the Financial Times and Les Echos that if the French socialists were to vote against the EU Constitution in an internal referendum next week, Europe could breakdown.

With such a major prize at stake, we should all be impatient to get into the task. I am not sure if he is right but I certainly hope so. But what are the chances.”

Continued“The Road to Euro Serfdom”>:

Britain is the only country in the world which has legislation which controls the spending of participants in a referendum.

In the North East assembly referendum there was a designated “Yes campaign” and a designated “No campaign”, the selections were made by the supposedly independent Electorial Commision. There are many questions still to be answered about the conduct of this commision during that campaign, however we will assume for the sake of argument that the Commision acted independently and in good faith and was not swayed into making the decisions it did by the government.

Each designated side in the referendum on the EU Constitution is going to be allowed to spend £5 million for a period of up to six months. The intention behind limiting the expenditure by each side is to ensure that the referendum will be fair and the result will be a fair representation of the free choice made by the British people. If each side is limited there can be no question of an unfair advantage given to either side, and one side cannot buy more air time or produce more leaflets or bombard us with TV adverts.

Now the parameters have been clearly set out, there will be, to borrow a phrase, a level playing field, we can all look forward to a free and fair referendum on the EU Constitution.

Err.. Well not quite, because we do have to include the British Government in the picture and if the NE Referendum is anything to go by the Labour Party as well and of course this is not to mention the EU itself which feels it has a duty to “inform” its citizens.

We can ignore the political parties because they should balance themselves or would if Labour and Lib-Dems were not on the same side, because they are then we can assume that the Conservative and UKIP would balance any spending done for the yes side. They would also be limited to their expenditure in any case. Always assuming the political parties have any money left after the Election.

The Government on the other hand has no cap put its own spending, it can spend as much of our money as it likes, on putting forward the argument for a “YES” vote that is until 28 days before the date of the referendum.

The Neill Committee on standards in public life stated that

“The government of the day in future referendums should, as a government, remain neutral and should not distribute at public expense literature, even purportedly ‘factual’ literature, setting out or otherwise promoting its case”.

Although the government has accepted the recommendations on capping both sides in a referendum, it has refused to accept any curbs on its own expenditure and has rejected the view of the Neil committee and has made it clear that it believes it has “a right and a duty” to promote its case using public money. Denis MacShane has said that the government plans to spend “serious money” promoting the EU Constitution.

In other EU member states there have been examples of very heavy Government spending on advertising, leading to a very one-sided debate. For example, during the 1994 referendum on EU accession in Austria, the government spent £2.4 million promoting membership. The Austrian government later acknowledged that very heavy spending had made a significant difference to the result. In Ireland, during the second Nice referendum the Government-backed “yes” side outspent the “no” side by a ratio of 20 to 1. In the British Referendum the yes side outspent the no side by 10 to 1. So we can see that the referendum will be a one sided affair with “serious money” being spent by the government to convince us of the benefits of the Constitution. On top of this the EU will also be spending even more serious money on the yes side. So, on the yes side we will see the official designated Yes Campaign, Britain in Europe, all the EU backed Monnet University professors, all the EU backed organisations, the BBC, Channel 4 if the output I have seen is anything to go by, the Government and the European Union all spending serious tax payer’s money. Set this against a possible 6 million for the no side, we will be lucky if we come out of this with less than 20 to 1 spending in favour of the yes vote and that is extremely serious money.

On top of that again if the NE Referendum is any guide we can expect each and every government minister to be ignoring the 28 day period before the referendum and campaigning in their private capacity as members of the Labour Party, that will be fine unless they also use official transport, police protection and their position in government to gain headlines, at what point does the Prime Minster become ordinary T Blair, and as such unimportant to the media. We can also expect the heavy weights in the EU to be wading in with their own form of information.

On top of all this the likely official No Campaign and the Conservatives will be giving a confused message Yes to Europe No the Constitution.

Has anyone else noticed that Javier Solana has been in the news a lot this week; was what I was going to write, but Jonathan Lockhart has beaten me to it.
Jonathan Lockhart’s Notebook:

“Just who is guiding Javier Solana?

Javier Solana has been in the news a lot recently. Mr Solana is the European Union’s ‘High Commissioner for the Common Foreign and Security Policy’, although many lazy journalists - if laziness is the explanation - have taken to referring to him as the EU’s ‘foreign minister’. That will certainly be the case officially if the EU’s statebuilders get their way.

But if his job is to represent the so-called Common Foreign and Security Policy, it presumes that there is a common policy to represent. Jack Straw, the UK’s foreign secretary (while we still have one) is in no doubt that the powers of the putative EU foreign minister are clearly defined and assures us regularly that even under the new constitution Britain will keep its veto on foreign policy.

That is not true, and here’s why.”