Straw, who served as Tony Blair’s foreign and home secretary, has endorsed a report by the ThinkLabour think-tank which says Andy Burnham must rein in judicial review and seize back powers from the courts and quangos to push through his agenda on everything from immigration to infrastructure projects.
The report, which was written by a member of Burnham’s transition team, points to how judicial reviews related to immigration have “soared” and says that legal challenges are getting in the way of removing foreign offenders.
The dog food recalled after reports of pets losing sight
A premium pet food brand has recalled all of its fresh meals following reports of suspected eye problems in dogs.
Here is everything you need to know.
What has happened?
The brand Years said owners should stop feeding its fresh meals to dogs “immediately”, and told them not to feed the meals to any other animal, or to donate or sell them. The firm runs a subscription-service delivering “personalised” gourmet meals for dogs.
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What are the eye problems?
- Years said it had 192 customers report “potential, yet unverified, eye issues” out of roughly 40,000 customers.
- The condition is known as sudden bilateral dry eye. Dry eye occurs when a dog is unable to produce tears, making their eyes very sore.
- Affected dogs may rub at their eyes, squint or be sensitive to light.
- Some experts say the condition can require lifelong management.
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How has this happened?
Years said the recall followed reports of some dogs having a potential eye reaction to buckwheat, an ingredient in its meals.
- Buckwheat was reportedly added to the meals several months ago.
- Years told customers that their subscription will be paused for an initial period of six weeks while it makes fresh meals using quinoa instead of buckwheat.
What the company said
Further independent laboratory testing around the buckwheat supply is ongoing. Years has chosen to voluntarily recall the meals as a precautionary measure, without causation having yet been proven.
Years says on its website
How AI is threatening musicians as regulations fall behind
Musicians face being “squeezed out” and “marginalised” from their industry by AI, a study from Queen’s University Belfast has warned.
What you need to know
Dr Katherine Pittalis has examined how AI is used in music-streaming platforms, online retail for concert tickets and music-related content on social media.
She says that UK music regulations lag “woefully behind” that of the EU and US in terms of transparency around malicious actors’ use of bot technologies.
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What else does the research investigate?
Pittalis’ research investigates “metric bots” – which can inflate metrics such as likes and follows on social media – as well as “artificial musicians”, which utilise deepfake technology to create an AI “influencer”.
- These phenomena are becoming ever-more sophisticated to circumvent rules on their platforms.
A closer look at the findings
- The research found evidence of scams where consumers bought high-demand concert tickets for inflated prices, only to find they never existed.
- Bots were also occasionally found to be moderating highly unregulated “buy and sell” groups on platforms like Facebook.
- Pittalis is also looking at AI-generated music, as musicians start to use AI in their production and sometimes whole songs are created with it.
The products that increased in price most since 2021
Inflation has risen by a cumulative 28 per cent since the cost-of-living crisis began, but the prices of some products have risen by much more than others according to research by AJ Bell.
Food and drink
Olive oil
A combination of poor harvests and higher energy costs mean the price of olive oil has risen by 116.3 per cent.
A staple of many people’s diets, egg prices have risen by 56.7 per cent.
Now seen by many as a luxury, takeaways and fast food are up by 38.1 per cent.
Energy and household items
Motor insurance
Factors similar to those that pushed up gas prices have seen the cost of electricity surge by 40.8 per cent.
The items that have fallen in price over five years
Sound and vision equipment has experienced the sharpest fall, at 30 per cent. Decades of technological advances have seen the price of computers also decrease, by 24.6 per cent. Motorcycles also dropped in price by 5 per cent.
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In recent years, both Conservative and Labour home secretaries have voiced frustration at the legal system being used to frustrate attempts to remove people from the country.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has vowed to “end vexatious, last-minute claims” and has promised changes to the way the European Convention of Human Rights and Modern Slavery Act are applied to make it easier to remove failed asylum seekers.
In a foreword to the ThinkLabour report, Straw claims there has been an “astonishing explosion in the practice of public law” since the 70s, covering “employment and equalities law, asylum and immigration law, human rights and all kinds of applications for judicial review in which the courts are invited to intervene to stop or delay a wide variety of decisions of public authorities”.
According to Straw, this has “undermined effective and timely decision-making in one area of public administration after another, from immigration and asylum decisions, through to major infrastructure projects”.
He goes on: “This over-obsession with procedure is now actively undermining our democracy. Little wonder that public frustration with our system of government is as high as it is.”
The solution, Straw says, is to shift “political decision-making away from the courts”, to democratic bodies like Parliament.
The ThinkLabour report was authored by Amelia Wood, who provided policy support to Burnham’s transition team.
It calls for reform of judicial review to “speed up the process” and “clarify the grounds on which judicial review can be sought and won”. “Should the government lose, we should give the courts better tools to advise on the way forward where the loss was on a procedural basis,” the report says.
The report recommends ditching all statutory requirements to consult, saying that “if policies need more feedback, let it come from elections”.
It also argues that the Government should “prioritise core delivery in public services”, rather than secondary goals such giving the NHS more ambitious net-zero targets than the rest of the public sector or mandating that new prisons should promote biodiversity.
The report welcomes recent comments by the Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster, Louise Haigh, who has criticised the procurement process as a “tick-box exercise” and said it must be refocused on jobs and skills.
ThinkLabour was previously known as Labour Together. It was highly influential with Sir Keir Starmer’s government, but rebranded in April after it was reported that it had commissioned investigators to look into journalists’ backgrounds.
At the time of the reports in February, Labour Together said it had hired PR and lobbying firm APCO Worldwide to investigate a potential hack and that the company had gone beyond what was asked of them. APCO said it would carry out a “detailed internal review of the project”.
ThinkLabour already looks set to wield influence with Burnham’s Government. The think-tank donated £22,186 to the Burnham campaign, covering much of the policy team working on transition.
A number of former staff have also joined No 10, such as ex-chief executive Alison Phillips, who is now deputy chief of staff in Downing Street, and JP Spencer, ThinkLabour’s former director of devolution policy, who is now leading much of the work on No 10 North.