Eurocrats above the law

According to the telegraph Euroland beaurcrats, their families, and dependents, are going to made immune from proscecution and taxation:

Although questioning of this curious Bill has been led by a tireless Eurosceptic, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, it has raised the eyebrows of even such a committed Europhile as Lord Wallace of Saltaire. He was surprised to discover that, since his wife is a director of the Robert Schuman Centre, part of the European University Institute, he will share her "immunity from domestic taxation" and other privileges, as her "dependent spouse".

The danger of this Bill, according to Lord Wallace, is that it will create "two classes of people – those of us who are subject to domestic law and pay our taxes and parking fines, and an increasing number of people who do not".

While insisting he is a "strong supporter of the further development of the European Union", he regards "the powers, privileges and status of the Commission and many of its agencies with mixed feelings", fearing that "there is a real danger of a popular backlash against the emergence of this privileged elite".

The significance of this is that, as Lord Wallace himself pointed out, there are ever more of these EU bodies whose staff enjoy privileges above national law. In response to a question from Lord Pearson, the Government itself only named 28, ranging from the European Railways Agency and the European Plant Variety Office to the European Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia, although the Foreign Office concedes that its list will have to be updated "as new bodies are added".

Luckily there is also a case going through the courts that might rid the rest of the country from revenue raising powers of parking tickets and any other penalties issued without a trial. This also has a cunning sting in the tail if the case is sucsessful and the government rushes through nwe measures to restore it's revenue stream:

If all these bodies imagine that, under the Laws judgment, they have a simple remedy – namely to rush through an Act of Parliament explicitly overruling the Bill of Rights – Mr de Crittenden has another trick up his sleeve. The Bill of Rights may have been enshrined in an Act of Parliament, but the Declaration of Rights on which it was based was a contract between the sovereign and the people. It is by that Declaration that the monarch occupies her throne and by which Parliament enjoys its power, and it cannot be repealed.

This must surely also be extendable to other areas where you are punished without trial, such as house arrest? Not that it would be a very good idea to surgest it, given the previous precedent Tony may just decide that the Declaration of Rights must go, together with parliment and, as a sop to the Labour back benches to get it through, the queen. All hail Queen Tony.