UK Attorney General fined 5000 Pounds - is this a joke?

Mr Hesford, Member of Parliament for Wirral West, said that he could not support Gordon Brown’s decision to allow Lady Scotland, the UK's Attorney General to remain in her post for breaking immigration laws which she herself helped frame.

Lady Scotland was fined £5,000 after it emerged that she had employed a Tongan housekeeper who had no right to work in the UK.

Mr Hesford said that he was standing down as a “point of honour,” and, urging Lady Scotland to “consider her position,” he added that the peer had an “old-fashioned ministerial responsibility to resign” having broken the law.

The UK Border Agency found that the peer had failed to keep copies of documentation which seemed to suggest 27-year-old Loloahi Tapui-Zivancevic, an illegal immigrant was working legally.

The resignation adds to the pressure on both Lady Scotland and the Prime Minister.
But friends of the minister said that Mr Hesford’s departure had not shaken her determination to remain in her job, and that she would not be resigning.

The Prime Minister was embarrassed after the news broke while he was taking part in a live radio phone-in.Angry callers accused Mr Brown of “looking after one of the boys or one of the girls.”

But he insisted that he would not sack the peer, saying: "If Baroness Scotland had wilfully or knowingly employed any illegal worker, then obviously she wouldn't be in her post. "I have got to accept that Baroness Scotland acted in good faith... I take this very seriously indeed, but when you look at the facts of the case, she has been misled by an employee who has given her wrong information.

full article is here:

www.telegraph.co.uk...

How can such senior government personnel get away with this? How can they expect the British people to believe such cr*p .... Brown said "when you look at the facts of the case, she has been misled by an employee who has given her wrong information."

Do they expect us to believe that employees for such senior government officials are no longer vetted by MI5 & Special Branch on grounds of National Security? How could this have happened?

I am outraged

PEACE,
RK

Calm down She didn't get away with it, she paid a fine.

Firstly it was a civil offense, therefore not a sackable offense. How can anybody imply that she should be treated differently to a member of the public, in fact it's silly to expect that.

The tories are of course looking to make an issue out of anything to gain points, and the media follows suit.

When looking at this logically, if we are to say that she should have known the law better because she's the attorney general, and therefore be punished further, then are we to assume that since the public didn't pass this law, then this makes the public now exempt from any punishment at all.

To put it simply, everyone gets treated the same regardless of their position, or knowledge of the law, otherwise it's unfair. Making mistakes is not necessarily being ignorant of the law, it's often unknowingly making a mistake or forgetting to send a document.

Anyone can make mistakes, and to be sacked from public office for life for not photocopying a document is absurd and a media witchhunt. It seems people are out to get anyone for making an honest mistake, because they wish to take their anger out on someone. Alternatively the media tells us what to think, so many tabloid readers will get angry reading the editors opinions, even when they are often blown out of proportion.

Yeah many here will just post "yes I'm angry etc etc", but are they really engaging their brains, or just regurgitating media nonsense like a talking parrot.

Anyway she may end up resigning because of the witchhunt, and not because she really deserved to lose her job.

So to summarise: Yes she broke the law, was ignorant of the fact she harboured an illegal immigrant. Yes she was punished accordingly to the law, and no that does not make someone ignorant of the law itself. Therefore it's difficult to prove she wittingly ignored the law and it's not appropriate to sack her over this issue. To happen once is a mistake, but to happen twice is probably sackable.


[edit on 23-9-2009 by john124]

reply to post by Rigel Kent

How can such senior government personnel get away with this?

She didn’t get away with it she paid the fine as dictated by the law.

The only reasoning for asking her to resign is on competence grounds but that depends on how involved she was with this person and it’s a flimsy case.

The Baroness had a duty not only to keep records of her housekeepers right to work in the UK but to also check her immigration status and satisfy herself that she was legally in the country before employing her.

Baroness Scotland is the senior law officer, she is the chief adviser on legal matters to the British Government yet she or her staff seem to have a problem deciphering something so simple as a passport visa.

My dismay is not only confounded by her incompetence but also the failure of the Special Branch or MI5 who must have also missed this. Either they missed it or they told the Attorney General about it in which case she knew about it, has lied and must therefore resign.

When such a high profile government figure employs personal staff, it is procedure for them to be vetted by SB and given clearance on grounds of security. I think some serious questions need to be asked in the house tomorrow.

PEACE,
RK

It was an oversight. An oversight that in no way affects her job. An oversight made in her personal life, not her professional life. In all honesty, if it had been any "unimportant" member of the public with a similar job, this would not be news, and I doubt they'd have been fined as much as five grand.

Or do people think she should be fired and fined millions just becuase she gave an illegal immigrant a means to support themselves rather than live on handouts?