Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive of over 1,500 titles.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
This chapter considers the current problems accessing justice, including inadequate legal aid funding, advice deserts, delays in the court system, poor funding, loss of advice centres, reduction of court buildings and court staff, and a loss of professionals undertaking legally aided work. It proposes a solution-based approach to tackle some of these problems, including consideration of the establishment of a National Legal Service to provide a properly funded system to enable early and holistic advice and dispute resolution, either through the court system or settlement options. Finally, it emphasises the importance of helping people understand their rights and the ability to enforce them. This chapter suggests that acknowledging and promoting access to justice has a social, moral and financial benefit to society as a whole.
Maximising the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) while minimising its risks has become one of the world’s greatest challenges, and will likely remain so in the coming decades. In this chapter, ‘professionalisation’ is proposed as a crucial – but, to date, largely missing – part of the regulatory response. Most proposals for the governance of AI have focused on ‘top-down’ approaches, with requirements placed on the organisations providing AI systems. Professionalisation can operate as an additional ‘bottom-up’ method of regulation, instilling a sense of shared values in the individuals creating and designing the systems. Turner and Goodman suggest that individuals who develop AI systems, either partly or solely in the course of business, should undertake harmonised training and certification, and then be required to adhere to a minimum set of standards throughout their professional careers. Professionalisation can serve as an important implementation mechanism for the principles of AI development, on which there is growing global consensus. The UK is a world leader in professional services. One reason why our lawyers, accountants and financial service providers are so well regarded is because they are all highly regulated. No country has yet proposed professionalising AI. The UK should be the first.
This chapter discusses asylum and irregular migration policy. It considers the role of that topic in the national political conversation as it has evolved under recent Conservative governments. In so doing it examines the vices of Tory government policy as regards its cavalier approach to policy making, the misuse of asylum policy for unworthy ends, and the want of good administration in consequence. The chapter does these things as a precursor to making thereafter practical suggestions for consideration by a prospective Labour administration. Those policy suggestions include a renewed commitment to international law, reform of refugee status determination, closer cooperation with the European Union on matters of mutual concern, better use of immigration powers and a return to constitutional propriety.
This book is a manifesto for change that showcases new policy ideas for the next government.
Organised by the Society of Labour Lawyers, the Labour Party’s legal think tank, the contributors inspire debate about Britain’s future, exploring a wide range of issues from access to justice to family law reform, housing, employment, EU and trade law, asylum and refugee law, immigration and citizenship, international law and constitutional reform.
As Britain may see a change in government, this book is a must-have collection of new insights into how a Labour government can renew Britain.
Extensive reform, up to and including abolition, of the House of Lords is the UK’s unfinished constitutional business. Most agree that retaining hereditary peers and bishops in the House is a hopeless anachronism, and that the whole thing should probably be done away with. However, hitherto, there has been little agreement as to what it should be replaced with. Nevertheless, the Labour Party has committed to, at some point, replace the Lords with an Assembly of the Nations and Regions and, before that, to substantively reform the existing House of Lords. We have, therefore, endeavoured to set out some options for both. Standards in public life have slipped, if not fallen on their face. Therefore, the Labour Party has also committed to overhaul the means by which standards in public life are maintained, including the creation of an Independent Ethics and Standards Commissioner, to police the Ministerial Code. Consequently, we have set out how this might be achieved, specifically in respect of the conduct of ministers and how the Ministerial Code can be strengthened.
This chapter considers the extent to which the criminal justice system is no longer fit for purpose and lacks sufficient focus on the need to prevent crime and meet the needs of those affected. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by crime, as illustrated by the pandemic of violence they suffer. Restorative justice approaches have been shown to be effective in preventing crime and meeting the needs of victims but are underused and underdeveloped in England and Wales. This chapter argues that the criminal justice system should have a statutory purpose of preventing offending. To that end, restorative approaches should be utilised and developed to address these concerns. Building on existing practices, a broader approach to restorative justice should be pioneered that includes public legal education on prevention and practical, as well as emotional, support for those affected by crime. New initiatives should prioritise women and girls in view of the particular scourge of violence they suffer. Specially trained harm reduction practitioners should be introduced to oversee these initiatives and ensure they are effective.
This chapter provides a number of recommendations to deal with the constitutional uncertainty created by the insecure nature of the UK’s devolution settlement. In doing so, it sets out a number of principles on which ought to underpin the future of the UK’s devolution settlement and the recommendations made in this chapter, which are: subsidiarity and double devolution, equivalence, coherence, and constitutional certainty and autonomy. On the basis of these principles, we make a number of recommendations to deal with the issues effecting the UK’s devolution settlement and, in turn, the governance failures those issues lead to. Particularly concerning the mechanics of future devolution, the protection of the devolution settlement, and how to ensure that devolved institutions have the resources they need.
This chapter proposes bold steps around the operation and application of environmental law which will mark a radical departure from the approach of the Conservative government. It argues that a new approach can bring major environmental benefits to ecology and climate change commitments of the UK without significant additional government expenditure. The first part of the chapter sets out a series of examples where the Conservative approach resulted in extremely poor environmental outcomes and examines how the proper enforcement of existing law can achieve significant benefits without a major increase in public spending. The second part of the chapter sets out proposals for new environmental rights which will strengthen the duties on the stewards of our natural environment and enable citizens to hold them directly to account. These additional rights include giving effect to the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment contained under the Aarhus Convention and introducing the Public Trust Doctrine, that is, the principle that the state holds certain natural assets on trust for the benefit of the general public.
There is little doubt that the Johnson/Frost deal with the European Union (EU) – the Trade and Cooperation Agreement – failed to mitigate the economic damage caused by Brexit and the accompanying creation of barriers to trade in goods and services between the UK and its neighbouring and by far its largest market. Repairing that damage, to the extent possible, is a key way in which Labour can achieve its mission for growth: and cooperation with the EU is also likely to be an important aspect of achieving its clean energy mission. This chapter sets out the legal hurdles to improving that cooperation. While ‘rejoining’ and ‘joining the single market/customs union’ are often suggested as ‘quick fixes’, the reality is that they are anything but. However, more modest but vital improvements can realistically be sought over the course of the next parliament, opening the way to steadily increasing cooperation in support of goals of economic growth, energy transition, and defence and security in an uncertain world where the UK and EU share the same objectives, are each other’s closest allies and strategic partners, and have much to gain from cooperation.
