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One of the provisions of the bill, sticking strictly to the one example you have given in your excellent piece, is the removal of access to legal aid for those convicted of terrorism related offences to pursue civil claims against HMGov. The dehumanising of convicted terrorists will not attract great public disapproval & those bodies/individuals who do object will have a desperate struggle to defend a vital Rule of law principle… that’s a dangerous place for a society to get to 🤷😔

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Good on the Justice Committee!

Dominic Raab’s odious Bill is looking very sickly and a good thing too.

But, as we shout to the team as a whole from off the field where Rafael, our fifteen year old grandson,

goalkeeps- whatever the then state of play- :”Play up to the final whistle!”

Strangely on looking back on many - often Law Society sponsored- campaigns it had been the ones we had been entitled to believe that a particular desired outcome had been a “given”, only for some apparently unmeritorious gambit to serve to snatch failure from the jaws of victory.

Whatever Raab’s central role in pressing for measures taking us “Back to the ‘future’”, he is of course far, far from alone in wishing for its success or something very like it. We should never underestimate even a reactionary rump of a government, its sponsors and its (potential) electorate.

We may well believe that we have right and reasoned argument on our side when confronted mere bluster and uninformed prejudice and we may well “win” every battle only to lose the “war” by permitting ourselves to believe that logic and innate decency are bound to prevail.

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