Last week the coroner in the Gareth Williams case delivered a damning verdict, highly critical both of the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism branch and MI6

Dr Fiona Wilcox levelled excoriating criticism at Williams’s employers at MI6 who failed to report him missing for seven days when he did not turn up for work. It took Williams’s sister, not his workmates, to call the alarm. Wilcox detailed what can only be interpreted as incompetence or callousness by his employers in respect of one of their young high fliers. And these are the very people who are supposed to be looking out for us. Read the full story

Announcing two new consultations in the Commons last week – on radical proposals to strengthen community sentences and improve the Probation Service – justice secretary Ken Clarke said: “The Government’s goal is to reform sentences in the community and probation services so that they are able to both punish and reform offenders much more effectively.” Read the full story

The Backbench Business Committee meets every week to consider requests for debates from any backbench Members of Parliament on any subject. The motion selected for debate on Tuesday concerned assisted suicide.

The proposed motion welcomed the Director of Public Prosecution’s Policy to Prosecutors in Respect of Cases of Encouraging or Assisting Suicide, which was published in February 2010. The policy identifies sixteen public interest factors in favour of prosecution. These include: Read the full story

The ninth day of line-by-line consideration of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment bill at Committee stage in the House of Lords last week, which was midwife to the birth of Jane’s Law, might also lead to Clare’s Law.

Baroness Gale moved an amendment to the bill which would insert a new clause providing for ‘disclosure of information about convictions etc. of violent abusers to members of the public’. As with Jane’s Law, the amendment results from shocking events. Read the full story

There was rare consensus between the government and the opposition at the start of the ninth day of line-by-line consideration of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment bill at Committee stage in the House of Lords last week.

The occasion was an amendment to the bill, proposed by Lord Beecham, to insert a clause allowing the ‘right to appeal bail decisions’. The government had also put down a similar amendment. Lord Beecham said: “This amendment and the government amendment arise from the brutal murder of Jane Clough, a 26 year- old nurse and mother of a baby daughter, by the partner with whom Read the full story

On Tuesday the government unveiled sweeping changes to the libel laws aimed at protecting freedom of speech and bringing an end to so-called ‘libel tourism’ from abroad. The declared aim is to bring libel law up to date, striking a balance between protecting people’s right to free speech – including Read the full story

“Today accident victims are given the impression that they may be entitled to handsome rewards just for making a claim regardless of any personal responsibility – adding to a real sense that we live in an increasingly litigious society…Britain’s ‘compensation culture’ is fuelled by media stories about Read the full story

Black people are 26 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police in England and Wales. The figures relate to stop and searches under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which was introduced to deal with football hooligans and the threat of serious violence. It allows police to search anyone in a designated area without specific grounds for suspicion. Read the full story

Bribery and corruption, as a subject, is much in the air at the moment with the current focus on betting scams in cricket and other sports. So it is perhaps appropriate that legislation is set for a radical change when the Bribery Act 2010, which received Royal Assent in April as one of the last pieces of business by the previous government, comes into force on 1 October. Read the full story

One of the more surprising pledges in the Coalition programme for government was to extend anonymity in rape cases to defendants. Such a move would turn the clock back to 1976, when the Sexual Offences Act introduced anonymity for those accused of rape. That provision was repealed in 1988. Shortly after Read the full story