The Defence Brief

Kemi Badenoch MP Kemi Badenoch, Conservative MP for Saffron Walden and, bizarrely for an MP with just a few months experience, Conservative Party vice-chairman with responsibility for selecting candidates in the 2022 election today confessed that ten-years ago she hacked into the website of a Labour MP to make changes to that MP’s website to “say nice things about Tories”. This is a problem for two reasons so far as I can see. First, we live in a climate where allegations of underhand and barely legal election tactics are thrown about regularly, apparently with some evidence to suggest that they are more than just allegations. Do we really want people in the House of Commons and at the top of the governing party who have confessed to engaging in completely illegal behaviour to influence voters? Secondly, I mentioned that this sort of thing is illegal because it is a serious offence. It would appear likely that the MP whose website was hacked was Harriet Harman, then de...

Charlie Elphicke, the Tory MP for Dover, and officials in the Department for Health have been mooting the idea of nationwide identity checks for patients before they receive NHS treatment in the UK. On the face of it, the reasoning behind this is the scourge of “health tourism” that plagues the pages of outraged tabloid newspapers and right wing broadsheets. In April 2016, the Telegraph reported in an article entitled, “ Health tourists cost UK taxpayers £6billion in eight years ” that “Britain has lost more than £6billion in the past eight years treating foreigners from the European Union in UK hospitals” . But, what do we mean by health tourism? My definition is people who come to the UK specifically to receive medical treatment for free on the NHS. I, and I think most people, would not include a Frenchman who visits the UK and is hit by a car while here as a health tourist. If you accept that definition then the Telegraph’s claim is nonsense. Full Fact tells us t...

A few years ago the Met police spent a fortune upgrading the computer systems in all its custody suites... I say upgrading but what I really mean is introducing computers since they didn't seem to have any at all before. I don't know what has happened - and nor it seems do the police engineers - but I understand that all of the custody suite computers have been out of action (certainly at every custody suite anyone at my firm has attended) for the last week.  This is a big problem as most of the stations cannot tell who is due to answer bail to them and when they are due, which really means if you don't bother showing up then the police may not realise! These computers are all very clever but this wouldn't have happened under the old pen and paper system... then again maybe I'm just getting old; my first interview at the police station was a all day handwritten record of interview job!