Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) and Alan reid

[EphemeralDeception]

I am taking this opportunity to highlight that Alan Reid MP has just voted YES to retroactively change the law. Today he voted YES to overturn a high court verdict, penalising the UK government which was found to have illegally forced and mislead certain job seekers to work for free.

Essentially the UK govermnet has shown that they are above the law and can change an unlawfal act to become lawful, ‘ex post facto’. This is a very dangerous precedent and essentially repugnant.

This concerns everyone in the UK. In our part of the world it concerns how our member of parliament has represented constituents in Argyll and Bute.

Background:
On Thursday (14.03.13) the Court of Appeal awarded damages of between £530 and £570 to jobseekers who had been illegally forced to work for organisations such as Poundland for no pay. The three senior judges ruled that Iain Duncan Smith’s Department for Work and Pensions had been given insufficient legal information about what they were required to do, and their rights. It had essentially tricked highly qualified people such as Cait Reilly and Jamieson Wilson into working for free, in jobs that would not enhance their employment prospects. This had lead the UK Gov open to compensation claims from 225,000 participants.

Alan Reid has just voted to say that it should have legal to be forced to work for free, under false pretences against the rule of the court of appeal. Worse he has sanctioned that such cases can be overruled and the law changed retrospectively.
Put simply if the UK Gov did not like the verdict so they and Lan Reid are changing the law instead to suit themselves.

I hope viewers of this forum take such matters into consideration in all upcoming elections.

references: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publi ... known/509/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/short ... are-battle

[Hume]

Good post.

Abstaining, which I believe the vast majority of Labour MP's from Scotland did is just as bad as supporting this.

Conservative, Labour and Lib Dems - they really are three divisions of the one party.