We need a genuine Reform Charter not empty promises from fake Farage.

We cannot continue without widespread reform and equally we cannot continue to lambaste an unjust system without offering a credible alternative. As such, this white paper on sociopolitical reform is designed to provide the fundamental architecture to renovate public services and restore public confidence after a series of corruption scandals.

1. Parliamentary elections should be determined on the basis of proportional representation, guaranteeing all political parties a place in Parliament based on the share of the vote to ensure all electors are represented according to their views at a General Election. The first past the post system is entirely undemocratic and maintains the interchangeable elective dictatorship of two parties [LabCon] and does not provide genuine democratic representation in Parliament. Proportional representation will provide everyone with a voice in Parliament. The Parliamentary term should be reduced from the current five years to four years to prevent unpopular governments hanging on to power for the sake of power whilst providing no real service to the majority. This reform will render elective dictatorship completely impotent and restore some trust in the political system to ensure the best possible governance.
   
   
2. The unelected House of Lords should be abolished in its entirety. The House of Lords has no place in modern Britain, it is a legacy of the compromise following the English Civil War and the restoration of the Monarchy following the death of Oliver Cromwell. This reform will eradicate the corruption of selling peerages for financial gain, particularly to foreign-born magnates who have no real interest in the common weal of our nation state.
   
   
3. The Constitutional Monarchy should be abolished and the head of state should be the elected Prime Minister sitting in a House of Commons determined by proportional representation. However it is imperative to recognise the affection many Britons have for the Monarchy and in this context, it is proposed that a self-financed Monarchy should remain but play no part in the constitutional mechanism of the State and government of the people. The Monarch should be a figurehead representative of the British people but have no constitutional power or authority and the with abolition of the House of Lords, true democracy can be established in a country that has never had genuine democracy or representation in the House of Commons.
   
   
4. The Magistrates Courts should be scrapped in the public interest to eradicate the nepotism between the police and Magistracy. In its current form, the Magistrates Court is a foregone conclusion in which a defendant can expect no form of impartiality whatsoever and can expect to be found guilty irrespective of the evidence to prove his or her innocence. The entire legal system is screaming out for long-overdue sweeping reforms. The Magistrates Courts should be incorporated into the Crown Courts system and become a processing procedure that ensures a defendant has the right to trial by jury on election if desired. No defendant shall be sentenced for any offence other than in a Crown Court after a guilty plea entirely of his or her volition or conviction by jury. The jury system should be reduced from 12 jurors to 7 and this would ensure fair trial for anyone wanting to contest an indictment brought by the Prosecution Service and police. Majority verdicts should be dispensed with and a return to a unanimous verdict system.
   
   
5. The system of sentencing and remand prior to conviction should be overhauled to significantly reduce the prison population and alleviate the massive cost to the public purse. This would in turn prevent the police and Prosecution Service from remanding prisoners with little or no evidence and prevent miscarriages of justice and eradicate malicious prosecutions. Only the most serious offences of murder, manslaughter, rape, life-threatening witness intimidation and terrorism should be considered for remand applications to the courts. The sheer volume of prisoners incarcerated for petty offences like shoplifting should be resolved by their being no option to remand or imprison any defendant for this petty offence. The present system of sending shoplifters to prison for minor theft costs the public an inordinate sum of money compared to the loss of the shopkeeper or business. Civil cases should be encouraged against shoplifters with the County Courts having the right to place attachment to earnings or State benefits in place to recover any loss to the affected shopkeeper or business.
   
   
6. All district judges sitting in the Magistrates Courts should be promoted to the Crown Courts, should they agree to this measure, and they would deal with petty offences normally dealt with in the lower courts. Many Magistrates Courts will remain in situ for this purpose but a defendant shall have the right to trial by jury if he or she elects this measure. Scrapping half of the Magistrates Courts will reduce the financial burden to the public and prevent miscarriages of justice that have to be rectified at the Crown Courts on appeal at considerable cost to the public. Combined courts are the way forward to improve efficiency, justice and to reduce the financial burden.
   
   
7. Membership of the Freemasons or any secret organisation committed to influencing the legal framework of the nation, should become illegal and its members face remedial action in the criminal and/or civil courts to ensure trial rigging is eradicated entirely, particularly in the Magistrates Courts, where Freemasonry operates to its greatest effect. Membership of the Freemasons should be punished by criminal and/or civil means according to the decision-making process of the Prosecution Service. Centuries of corruption and nepotism would be eradicated by this banning order instituted by a minor Act of Parliament in the public interest.
   
   
8. The Criminal Cases Review Commission should be scrapped on the grounds that its necessity would be removed by the reform of the entire criminal justice system, particularly the right to trial by jury and automatic retrial on a minority jury vote. The ruling of the Court of Appeal shall be final in all criminal cases and the number of cases going to the highest level of appeal would be reduced significantly by these sweeping reforms.
   
   
9. The prison system should undergo a sweeping reform of all of its services with the key emphasis being on restoring discipline and encouraging widespread rehabilitation of offenders. The prison population would be reduced in significant numbers by the sweeping reforms in this document, particularly with regard to minor offences, which will no longer be subject to the tariff of imprisonment, this being replaced with community service orders and fines automatically collected by attachment to earnings and/or State benefits. The emphasis in the prison system should be on education and it should be compulsory for all prisoners to undertake tuition in the basic areas of mathematics and English language courses. This would encourage their sense of self-worth and productive usefulness to the nation on release from prison to ensure employment opportunities are open to them to prevent reoffending. It would be preferable for prisons to introduce military style discipline and prison officers should be recruited from those retiring or resigning from the armed forces, providing they have an exemplary conduct record. In general, the prison system would benefit everyone involved in the experience and healthcare improved. Whilst prisoners feel neglected and tarnished by their crimes, they will have no inspiration to reform their conduct and become productive citizens again.
   
   
10. It is proposed that prisoners are sent to prisons that reflect the nature of their crimes. For example, murderers should be housed together in a prison that caters entirely for the specific nature of their crimes and they should not be mixed with the general prison population. Likewise, non-violent offenders should serve their sentences in an establishment engineered to deal with non-violent offences. The cost of reducing the prison population would enable the prison service to appropriate funds towards rehabilitation measures. Any prison not meeting the rehabilitation targets would be subject to immediate operational control by the Inspectorate of Prisons to ensure targets are met in a timely fashion. The entire prison regime needs to be overhauled and any prison officer found guilty of supplying illegal merchandise, including mobile phones to prisoners by accepting bribes, shall be liable to a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. This should be implemented to act as a dire deterrent to any prison officer tempted to flaunt the rules or break the law. The internal prison disciplinary system should be overseen by the police on the recommendation of a prison governor, who should be accountable to the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office and Parliament at all times. In the first instance, senior NCOs from the army should be used to construct the new system of discipline and obedience. With the prison population reduced, the strain on prison officers overrun with work demands would be reduced and this would enable officers to give prisoners more time to assist with rehabilitation.
    
    
11. The ‘Independent’ Office for Police Conduct should be abolished and replaced with a Police Standards Authority to restore public trust in the police service. The PSA would be responsible for all complaints against the police by members of the public and these would be investigated thoroughly. The current system used by the IOPC would be scrapped and no former police officer allowed to work for the PSA or play any part in the investigation of a complaint against a police officer. The IOPC currently has around 80% former police officers working as ‘investigators’ and their only role is to whitewash complaints against police officers. The jobs for the boys and nepotism routine would end with the abolition of the IOPC and the PSA would be comprised of paid and voluntary members of staff, drawn from the professions and lay people alike in equal numbers. It is proposed that a panel of three members of the PSA would make a unanimous ruling on all police complaints based on the evidence. The police would play no part in the investigation of its officers and would act only to hand over evidence requested by the PSA. Likewise, a police officer found guilty of misconduct by the PSA would have no right of appeal to a ‘Professional Standards Directorate’ run by the police. The ruling of the PSA would be final and if this entails criminal charges, a file passed to the Prosecution Service to make a charging decision. In most cases however, the PSA would have the power to order disciplinary measures against guilty officers and these would be carried out by the police service under the supervision of a senior PSA investigator. This essential reform would restore public trust and faith in the police service and encourage civil cooperation with the police to prevent and detect crime. Prison sentences for corrupt police officers would be increased to act as deterrent. In turn, all police officers currently serving who have criminal records of any description would be dismissed with immediate effect.
    
    
12. DNA samples retained by the police service where the person arrested has not been charged should be destroyed under the supervision of the PSA. But DNA samples obtained during the course of an investigation that leads to unsuccessful case in the criminal courts should be retained automatically but the acquitted defendant should have the right to appeal this decision to the PSA and that organisation would make the final ruling on DNA retention in all cases. There should be no right of appeal to the civil or criminal courts on this matter to reduce the burden of cases appearing before the courts. The objective is to streamline the legal system, reduce reoffending and alleviate the cost to the public purse.
    
    
13. The post of Police and Crime Commissioner should be scrapped to eradicate the current nepotism between political parties and like-minded senior police officers. All regional police forces in England and Wales should be merged into a National Police Service wearing the same uniform under a central command at New Scotland Yard in London. The Commissioner of the Metropolis should be the most senior police officer in the nation and he or she chosen by the Home Secretary based entirely on merit from a pool of senior officers across the regions. No senior officer with past personal, professional, or political connections to the Home Secretary should be allowed to apply for this position. The most senior rank required to apply for the post of Commissioner should be the newly created position of ‘assistant commissioner’. The current position of chief constable should be abolished and with it the ACPO organisation would also disappear. The police would at all times be under the supervision of the Home Office, the PSA and Parliament and membership of the Freemasons illegal. Nonetheless, police officers should be allowed to join any political party of their inclination without this affecting their performance of police duties but the emphasis would always be on policing not politics. The police service should be depoliticised and will bear no resemblance to the largely politicised and corrupt police ‘service’ created by Tony Blair and the New Labour regime during 1997-2010. This reform would engender greater police efficiency in the public interest and restore public trust and civil cooperation between the police and the communities they serve.
    
    
14. Parliament should enact a law guaranteeing freedom of speech to all British citizens and people should have the right to express whatever opinion they hold without fear of criminal prosecution and repression by Parliament. Anyone facing criminal charges for alleged abuse of freedom of speech should stand trial before a jury only and a single judge at a Crown Court. This does not extend to people inciting terrorism and illegal means and they should be subject to criminal prosecution in the same manner that exists currently but a greater evidence test would have to be met by the Prosecution Service. If for example, a man incites members of the public to plant a bomb or overthrow Parliament by use of force outside the democratic framework, this would be regarded as terrorism and result in immediate arrest and detention at a specialist Category A prison catering for terror offences, both on conviction and remand awaiting trial in the criminal courts. The current system of terrorism prevention orders would be revoked and immediate remand to custody preferred. No prisoner convicted of terror offences or suspected of commission of terrorism of any description should have the right to confidential Rule 39 correspondence and the intelligence services should be allowed to plant covert surveillance devices in prison cells, should a Crown Court judge grant a warrant to authorise this measure.
    
    
15. Secret trials would be dispensed with in the public interest to engender greater public trust and transparency in the legal system. Intelligence and police officers would retain the right apply for special measures but this would cover only certain sections of a criminal trial on the grounds of terrorism or espionage and a new secrecy test implemented to ensure this measure meets with the highest standards of secrecy. Only a senior Crown Court judge should hear cases of this nature and there would be no right to judicial review at the initial stage. The reformed jury system would enable a defendant to seek retrial if the jury verdict is not unanimous. If a defendant is convicted by a unanimous jury verdict, the right of appeal to the Court of Appeal would still apply and the special measures issue considered again by the Court of Appeal judges. At present the police and CPS are abusing special measures applications to conceal all manner of dirty tricks and illegal actions by police officers, namely perjury and perverting the course of justice. Transparency is the key to eradicating the business of police officers and CPS lawyers presenting falsified ‘evidence’ to a court and for which they should face criminal trial if it is proved evidence has been fabricated.
    
    
16. Absolute privilege for solicitors and barristers should be abolished to prevent them from making character assassination attacks on a defendant, then reported as ‘fact’ in the media, thus causing serious defamation to the defendant, particularly where he or she is acquitted by a jury. Lawyers would only be allowed to make allegations against a defendant where there is supporting evidence of an incontrovertible nature. For example, in a rape case, a defending lawyer should not have the right to accuse the victim of being “a sleazy woman with loose morals” if there is no evidence to support this assertion. Likewise, the prosecution lawyer would not be able to engage in wholesale character assassination attacks on a defendant based on opinion or hearsay or the malicious motives of police officers. Scrapping absolute privilege would protect everyone involved in the criminal justice system, defendants, victims, lawyers, police officers and judges. Lawyers and police officers who fabricate allegations against defendants in a criminal trial, should be subject to prosecution on the grounds of perjury and/or perverting the course of justice and lawyers would have no protection under absolute privilege, unless the lawyer believed the evidence presented to him or her was credible and authentic. This vital reform would eradicate the vast majority of miscarriage of justice cases and thus reduce the burden on the legal system and resulting cost to the public purse. Common Purpose ‘training’ courses should be scrapped and no one promoted on the basis of having attended Marxist brainwashing courses.
    
    I do not claim that the foregoing reform proposals are either perfect or will appeal to everyone but I do argue we need to offer a credible alternative to the current corrupt system. And without a detailed manifesto as it were, what argument do we have, we are rudderless without an alternative. This is why I have proposed the said reforms and do so from extensive political and legal experience in the criminal and civil courts. I am not the beacon or the oracle, I merely offer ideas for change and others should do the same. I welcome ideas from other people and it is something we need to work on together.