May faces parliamentary challenge

Labour to force vote on pay cap

LONDON, June 28, (Agencies): British Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday faced her first parliamentary challenge since a disastrous election earlier this month, in a vote on whether to maintain increasingly unpopular austerity measures.

The opposition Labour Party is hoping to exploit concerns within May’s Conservative Party that voters are tiring of its seven-year spending squeeze.

The Conservatives lost their majority in the House of Commons in the June 8 election, after Labour performed better than expected with a left-wing offer of tax increases and public sector investment.

Finance Minister Philip Hammond subsequently admitted that people were “weary of the long slog”, adding that his party was “not deaf” to voters’ concerns.

The annual British Social Attitudes survey, published Wednesday by the National Centre for Social Research, found that 48 percent of people want higher taxes to pay for more public spending – the highest level in a decade.

Labour has tabled an amendment to the Queen’s Speech – the government’s legislative agenda – calling for an end to budget cuts for the police and fire service, and to years of below-inflation public sector pay rises. The vote was expected at around 1800 GMT. “You can’t have safety and security on the cheap. It is plain to see that seven years of cuts to our emergency services have made us less safe,” said party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The Conservatives should have just enough numbers to win Wednesday evening’s vote, after striking a deal to stay in office with a smaller Northern Irish party – secured with the promise of £1 billion (1.1 billion euros, $1.3 billion) in new funding for the province. The Conservatives have 317 seats in the 650 seats in parliament and would be supported by the Democratic Unionist Party’s 10 MPs.

But Labour wants to force the government to publicly defend public spending cuts, with an eye on the prospect of another election if May cannot hold on.

American War of Independence. (RTRS)

Change in abortion law:

The British Medical Association, which represents the country’s doctors, said Tuesday abortions should not be a criminal offense and called for them to be regulated in the same way as other health

Snap

The prime minister called the snap vote to strengthen her hand going into Brexit negotiations, but lost her majority, and with it, much of her authority.

“Labour is ready and waiting to form a government with the policies and the plan to build a country that works for the many, not the few,” Corbyn said.

Momentum, a left-wing, grassroots organisation that grew out of Corbyn’s bid for the Labour leadership in 2015, announced Wednesday that it was already gearing up for another election.

Outlining plans to start campaigning in marginal seats, train volunteers and establish new ways to engage voters, national organiser Emma Rees said: “We must stay on the front foot.”

In related news, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose party has 262 lawmakers, said his party would submit an amendment to May’s legislative plan in a an attempt to end cuts to the police

procedures.

An 1861 law made abortion a criminal act. The 1967 Abortion Act provided exceptions — terminations are now legal in much of Britain up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, provided two doctors sign off on them and they take place on approved premises — but abortions that are not carried out according to that bill’s conditions and fire service and to give emergency and public sector workers a pay rise

“Today will be the first vote of the new parliament, as Labour puts forward our amendment,” Corbyn said in a statement. He added that May “has no majority, no mandate and no plan for our country.”

“Labour is ready and waiting to form a government with the policies and the plan to build a country that works for the many, not the few,” Corbyn said.

Petty politics pose the biggest threat to a good divorce deal between Britain and the European Union, British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Tuesday, warning that a bad Brexit pact could harm the economic interests of both sides.

“I am confident that with the political will to put jobs and prosperity first we can achieve an early agreement on a transitional period,” Hammond said at an economic summit of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives in Berlin.

Brink

Hammond’s political career came back from the brink after Prime Minister May lost her governing majority in the June 8 election, leaving her unable to carry out a reshuffle of her top team in which he was seen as the biggest likely casualty for appearing to favour a “soft” Brexit.

British business views Hammond as one of the senior ministers keenest on preserving trade ties with the EU and less focused on curbing immigration, and in his speech he stressed how much firms in Britain and Germany relied on each other.

But he also said there was a serious risk “that somehow we allow petty politics to interfere with economic logic, and we end up with a suboptimal solution that fails to maximise our mutual benefit.”

However for many Europeans, the EU is a political project as much as an economic one, and free trade is only permissible alongside free movement of people – or uncontrolled immigration, from the British government’s perspective.

Hammond sought to smooth over these concerns, saying Britain wanted to “manage” rather than “shut down” flows of migrants from the EU, and that EU countries had “reasonable concerns” about issues such as financial regulation after Brexit.

The British government on Tuesday said it was forming an advisory group, reportedly made up of the country’s main business lobby organisations, as it negotiates its exit from the European Union.

Business Secretary Greg Clark said “the government is creating a new EU exit business advisory group to ensure business is not only heard but is influential throughout the negotiations”.

Reports said the advisory group would be made up of five bodies: the Confederation of Business Industry, manufacturers’ grouping the EEF, the British Chambers of Commerce, the Institute of Directors and the Federation of Small Businesses.

“Since the referendum I’ve held discussions with businesses, workers and local leaders across the UK and investors all around the world,” Clark added in his statement.

are criminal offenses. There is no time limit for high-risk cases.

Hundreds of doctors at the BMA’s annual conference voted Tuesday to back changing the law.

Dr John Chisholm, who chairs the body’s medical ethics committee, said there was heated debate but most members “were clear that abortion should be treated as a medical issue rather than a

criminal one.”

The BMA said decriminalization did not mean deregulation, and that abortion providers would still be regulated. (AP)

‘Allow sick baby to die’:

The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday said it concurred with a British decision to withdraw life support for a baby with a rare genetic disease.

Two weeks earlier, the Strasbourg-based ECHR issued an interim ruling, binding on the British government, that doctors should keep providing treatment for 10-month-old Charlie Gard, who suffers from a rare genetic condition and has brain damage.

That finding ran counter to rulings by British courts that the baby should be allowed to die with dignity, despite an appeal by his parents to take him to the United States for treatment for his form of mitochondrial disease.

In its final ruling on Tuesday, the Strasbourg court backed the British judges. A spokeswoman for Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, which has been treating Charlie, acknowledged his parents would find Tuesday’s news upsetting.

“Our thoughts are with Charlie’s parents on receipt of this news that we know will be very distressing for them. (AFP)