Sir Desmond Swayne TD

Sir Desmond Swayne TD

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Up -Skirting

17/06/2018 By Desmond Swayne

As an officer cadet I danced at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo in 1979. We were billeted at Redford Barracks, and we were in uniform all day. By tradition, we wore nothing under our kilts, and so we received instruction, including a demonstration, on how to sit down without giving offence.

Up-skirting is a measure of our current moral turpitude, but I find it hard to believe that there is not an existing common law provision under which it could be prosecuted.

As for Sir Christoher Chope, about whose actions on Friday I have received large correspondence, he takes the principled view that no measure should pass without being first debated.
When I was a government whip, that was also the government view, and when on duty on a Friday, it fell to me to object -whatever the merits of any particular bill- to all the bills on the list which had not been debated that day.

If I am wrong about common law, then the government can amend one of its own bills, or give its own time to debate the up-skirting bill.
I remain of the view that I expressed in this column on 24th February however, that private member’s bills are not an effective way of legislating.

Filed Under: DS Blog

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