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Politics and the Poundland ruling Politics and the Poundland ruling
(7 months later)
How on earth do we end up with a challenge to this awful government's attack on the welfare system (Back to work schemes broke law, court rules, 13 February) coming from a "self-described reticent and shy woman" sent to work for free at Poundland ('I'm no job snob. They made me angry', 13 February), and not "Her Majesty's opposition"? We know the Lib Dems have facilitated this deliberate Tory-inspired attack on the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, as bankers still coin it in while claiming to be "sorry", but where is the Labour party, its policy wonks and their hundreds of MPs? In the House of Commons bar?
David Reed
London		How on earth do we end up with a challenge to this awful government's attack on the welfare system (Back to work schemes broke law, court rules, 13 February) coming from a "self-described reticent and shy woman" sent to work for free at Poundland ('I'm no job snob. They made me angry', 13 February), and not "Her Majesty's opposition"? We know the Lib Dems have facilitated this deliberate Tory-inspired attack on the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, as bankers still coin it in while claiming to be "sorry", but where is the Labour party, its policy wonks and their hundreds of MPs? In the House of Commons bar?
David Reed
London
• Your third leader (In praise of… Cait Reilly, 13 February) chooses to trivialise the court of appeal's reasoning in Ms Reilly's case ("The obscure reasoning was that the welfare secretary had prescribed an insufficiently prescriptive interpretation of prescription … Or something like that"). Ten minutes' careful reading of the judgments would have enabled you to explain to your readers that the court had upheld the constitutional principle that it is parliament, not ministers, which makes the law, and that the court of appeal had fulfilled its constitutional role of stopping the secretary of state for welfare breaking the law. Parliament had authorised him to prescribe schemes for making jobseekers' allowance conditional, so long as these were first laid before parliament. The welfare secretary had introduced the scheme applied to Ms Reilly and others without doing this.• Your third leader (In praise of… Cait Reilly, 13 February) chooses to trivialise the court of appeal's reasoning in Ms Reilly's case ("The obscure reasoning was that the welfare secretary had prescribed an insufficiently prescriptive interpretation of prescription … Or something like that"). Ten minutes' careful reading of the judgments would have enabled you to explain to your readers that the court had upheld the constitutional principle that it is parliament, not ministers, which makes the law, and that the court of appeal had fulfilled its constitutional role of stopping the secretary of state for welfare breaking the law. Parliament had authorised him to prescribe schemes for making jobseekers' allowance conditional, so long as these were first laid before parliament. The welfare secretary had introduced the scheme applied to Ms Reilly and others without doing this.
Not too difficult, was it?
Stephen Sedley
Visiting professor of law, Oxford University		Not too difficult, was it?
Stephen Sedley
Visiting professor of law, Oxford University
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