The Tories

[Margaret Pilkington]

No surprise there then Steve.

[cmonstanley]

Originally Posted by Wynonie Harris

One story that the semi-literate Jock won't be telling you about:

Margaret Hodge's family company pays just 0.01pc tax on £2.1bn of business generated in the UK - Telegraph

Hypocrisy pure and simple.

this is wrong whichever political persuation she claims to be but the plebbs always get the blame for the countries ills

[cashman]

Originally Posted by cmonstanley

this is wrong whichever political persuation she claims to be but the plebbs always get the blame for the countries ills

True n its also true yeh will never ever be the one to highlight owt like this, FACT. just a weak comment when someone else does. Yeh have no idea at all how much yer helping the torys.

[cmonstanley]

The real news: Jeremy Hunt is up to no good with the NHS | Deborah Orr | Politics | The Guardian read this, this is what jeremy hunt is doing.goodbye to the nhs.people get your head out of the sand

[cashman]

Theres probably only you wi yer head in the sand,or up yer ass even. Most people are well aware of whats happening wi the N.H.S. Its you not aware of the damage yer doing to yer beloved party, n yeh have been told many times. Thats a head in sand.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Let me see....... isn't the Guardian a labour partisan?
So regardless(no pun intended) of how any other party were doing, it would feel honour bound to slate the results.
People keep telling you that you do the party you support no favours by posting the links to this kind of story.......it is all so 'sucks yah boo'.......childish in the extreme.
Have you nothing better to occupy your time with????

[MargaretR]

I chuckled when I read this

Benefits reform under threat after IT glitch - UK Politics - UK - The Independent

The cost of designing the computer system for Universal Credit is spiraling out of control.

I recall that the computer programme for the Child Support Agency was a disaster too - and led to the abolition of the agency.

So all who feel threatened by Universal Credit, take heart - it might not take effect. Pity the poor sods in Manchester and Cheshire who will have to be experimented on by 'pilot schemes' until they realise that the costs outweigh the gains.

[cmonstanley]

nice one lol

[Margaret Pilkington]

Probably a bit like the expensive(but useless) computer system that the labour government commissioned for the NHS...it swallowed money which could have been used better by paying for nurses to care for patients...or better still not buying into the PFI con trick.
You don't mention those.

[Wynonie Harris]

The last Labour government was estimated to have wasted £26bn in botched IT projects, which included the national programme for the NHS and the fiasco over the national identity card scheme. Mr Cameron – when in opposition – promised a move away from big IT projects.

£26 billion...that's a lot of money. Funny, C'mon, I don't remember you highlighting this when the party you so slavishly support were in power.

[cmonstanley]

what about the water utility private firms that dont pay any tax sold off by the tories on the cheap to their mates at least when they were nationalised the money came straight back to the public purse.

[Wynonie Harris]

Originally Posted by cmonstanley

what about the water utility private firms that dont pay any tax sold off by the tories on the cheap to their mates at least when they were nationalised the money came straight back to the public purse.

Now let's think, when were they privatised? In the Thatcher era I believe. So why didn't the party that you so slavishly support bring them back into public ownership during their 13 years in power?

And talking of selling things off on the cheap, isn't that what your strange, gurning fellow countryman do with our gold reserves when he was PM?

[Wynonie Harris]

By the way I'm not expecting an answer to this one because you never do engage in reasoned debate, do you? You just jump onto the next garbled rant and copy and paste from some article you haven't read properly anyway.

[cmonstanley]

one person,tony blair, gordon brown was in support of re-nationalising britains infrastructure but the murdoch and other media empires brainwashed the easily led british public and stitched him up.hopefully they will follow through with this Labour backs calls to return railway network to public control | Politics | The Observer

Re-nationalise Britain's Infrastructure | Campaigns by You only 130 signatures popular politics was the only way to go when murdoch was in control
Renegotiating Previous Governments' Privatisation Deals: The 1997 Uk Windfall Tax On Utilities And International Law", By THOMAS W. WAELDE
1) Ex-Post Change of Privatisation Deals: The UK Windfalls Levy Project
Governments everywhere have the propensity to revoke deals made by their predecessors - if these deals look ex-post good to the other party. They usually do not revoke deals which have turned out to be dismal failures. Privatisation falls under that category: Either the price paid by purchasers/investors looks, ex post, too good - thus providing an easy argument for revoking such deals; or it looks not good and the purchasers/investors overpaid and governments will tend to leave such deals alone. A normal seller will rarely be able to extract a higher price for an asset sold if the assets turns out to be more profitable than expected, but governments have the sovereign power of taxation at their hand to re-make deals made earlier, usually by a previous government. General public opinion will usually be very sympathetic since "fat cats" are seen to need skinning. The ex-ante situation with its attendant uncertainty and risk - which usually explains whatever price was paid - is no longer in people's mind That there was a risk and that the risk may not have materialised is not in the public mind.
In the old days, right-wing governments sometimes privatised and left-wing governments often re-nationalised. They had to pay compensation - under national law for nationals, usually more, under international law obligations protecting foreign investment, to foreigners. There was much debate on nationalisation and compensation - with Third-World radicals in the bygone days of the 1970s formulating innovative concepts of "excessive profits" to reduce compensation, but the prevailing consensus at this time, expressed in about 1200 bilateral investment treaties and the main modern multilateral investment treaties - the North-American Free Trade Agreement, the 1994 Energy Charter Treaty - is that nationalisation requires full, prompt and effective compensation.
But privatisation of former public-service companies, often before and sometimes after in monopoly form, leads to a more sophisticated ball game: The value of the asset depends very much on the regulation of the industry, since regulators can increase the value or decrease it depending on the ceiling they set for prices and other conditions of service and competition. In addition, taxes will increase or lower the value of such assets, in particular if such taxes are not uniformly imposed throughout a nation, but aimed in particular at the privatised and regulated utility companies. Investment in privatised utilities therefore leads to a very particular form of political risk - the risk that regulatory conditions change and special taxes are imposed, all measures within the sovereign powers of the state. The normal forms of protection against political risk - investment insurance, stabilisation clauses, international investment treaties and international arbitration clauses - have not yet caught up with ts emergence of new forms of political risk.
The now emerging UK windfall tax is a case in point. It is in our view not limited purely to the contemporary UK situation, but illustrates a structural situation which can, and is likely to be repeated wherever utilities are privatised, then regulated and exposed to special industry taxes. Usually, it will be a new government composed of parties hitherto opposed to privatisation which will be able to combine its previous opposition and the values therein articulated with the ever present need of governments for new revenue to finance its political popularity objectives. In this paper, we will survey shortly the possible responses by international law, mainly principles and practice of international investment protection, to situations which have now arisen in the world privatisation laboratory which is the UK and which are likely to arise in the many countries which currently copy the UK privatisation model, once new governments come to power. The UK situation is of particular interest since in the absee of constutional, federal or judicial constraints the prevailing concept of parliamentary supremacy means that any legal recourse can only be had from external sources of law.
2) The Effect of International Law on Government and Business Practice
International law does not work like normal national law: It does not rely on national judges, police and bailiffs. It rather acts like a social code of rules the breach of which affects a state's reputation, makes it more difficult for such state to do normal business with other states and companies. States found in breach of international law - by consensus of the international law community and international conferences, by arbitral tribunals and sometimes, on the basis of voluntary submission, by the International Court of Justice - rarely comply, but rather protest their sovereignty, the bias of the rest-of-the-world against them. However, after agitation and excitement has worn out, there is usually an attempt by the state and its elites responsible for dealing with the world to come back into the fold. International law then becomes effective by much quieter, face-saving diplomacy and on in-depth inspection one will often find that international law is ultimately and in effect complied with.
This is why it is important to examine the rules that may be applicable and their way of being raised, adjudicated and enforced. Unfortunately for the lay observer, these rules are rarely clear. They are usually a combination of quite open-ended standards and criteria which will only acquire a definitive scope and meaning as they are debated and applied in the particular case. Also, international law needs a plaintiff to become effective. Usually, these were the home states of affected investors. Increasingly, private parties, mainly companies, have become entitled to litigate before non-national tribunals against the offending state. This is not without risk: It requires large resources of money and executive attention. Suing a state also means getting exposed to the risk of being blacklisted and sanctioned in manifest and subcutaneous ways at the disposal of the regulating, permitting, awarding and taxing state machinery. International law therefore very much plays a low-profile role in negotiationbetween a state political and bureaucratic machinery keen on avoiding political embarassment and loss of face and affected investors worried over the state's ability to penalise private companies foolhardy enough to challenge the state. Its effect will consist in providing a set of standards in such negotiations. Whatever the UK Chancellor's public views, we can be certain that he and his team pay very much attention in drafting the current windfall tax rules in order to avoid being exposed as delinquent under international law.
3) The European Convention on Human Rights
The first legal instrument to think of in the current UK context is the European Convention on Human Rights. It allows not only foreign investors, but also British companies to raise a complaint before the Strasburg-based European Commission and Court of Human Rights (not to be confused with the Luxemburg-based European Court of Justice, the judicial organ of the European Communities). In the absence of a UK constitution, the Convention operates so far as a quasi-constitutional constraint of last resort in the UK. The First Protocol, Art. 1 of the Convention guarantees the "peaceful enjoyment of possessions", subject to public interest, with reference to international law and subject to regulation of property for the public interestand to "secure the payment of taxes". The Convention witnesses the strong pro-state and social philosophies prevailing after World War II. It provides wide latitude to the state for regulating property, for exercising political judgment and, as the decades of jurisprudence sw, protects only the core of property interests against arbitrary, abusive and discriminatory state measures. Several cases indicate that taxation is in fact covered by this provision; no case has dealt with, so far, with a situation such as the post-privatisation special-industry tax trying to recoup a part of the profit that arose as a result of favourable developments in and outside the privatised industries. An analysis of extensive case law demonstrates that the protection is rather granted against abusive measures of tax enforcement than against the exercise of tax powers as such. The Convention and its origin are deeply anchored in attitudes where state tax powers are considered to be at the core of sovereignty, with minimal acceptance by states of international law constraints in this field. One would need to show an "excessive burden" or a "fundamental interference" with a financial position.
Under such rules, one would have to show a very severe and disproportionate interference with economic assets. Current indications for the windfall levy are that there would be a significant, one-off payment, but not a tax that might drive some utilities to bankruptcy or closure. If the windfall levy could be seen to discriminate against foreign and national investors, the ECHR institutions are more likely to take a critical look at the levy than if they were imposed with as much equality as possible and with the intention and effect to avoid protectionism and maintain a level playing field. Similarly, while tax retroactivity has not yet been a situation before the ECHR institutions, it might well lead to a more severe judgment. Under the law of the European Community and its underlying constitutional principles, retroactive legislation is only authorised to a limited extent if legitimate expectations are protected. While EC law does not pertain directly to the UK tax measures envisaged or to the Europe Convention on Human Rights, legislation with retroactive effect is seen as abhorrent to most (in particular Continental) lawyers. A windfalls tax which is directly - or indirectly - retroactive and thus is imposed on tax-payers without the possibility of adjusting their behaviour to a tax imposed, might not fare well in the balancing test which the ECHR institutions are likely to employ.
To sum up: The very pro-state nature of the First Protocol of the ECHR protecting property makes a challenge of the windfalls tax an uphill battle. Nevertheless, there are standards - discrimination, retroactivity, protection of legitimate expectations - which might result in the balancing test to come out against the tax. One would have to look very carefully if there will be a retroactive effect element in the final tax proposal; also, indications that the previous government induced investors with credible promises of stability might reinforce the "legitimate expectations" of investors to be weighed against the very explicitly recognised powers of the state to regulate and tax property. There is also the off-chance possibility that the currently prevailing philosophy of open markets requiring extensive protection of property against state interference and taxation - as more explicitly recognised in modern investment treaties - might lead to a modernised interpretation of this rather old convention. Ithat case, the breach of promises and the imposition of a tax discriminating between a particular, privatised industry and the general business taxes applicable, in other words the attempt to renegotiate a deal ex-post, after the investors have sunk their monies, could result in the balancing test under the ECHR to come out against the windfall tax. But this is in our view not a very probable outcome. Finally, it should be noted that while the ECHR protects member state nationals (including UK companies and citizens), it does not apply to US companies and nationals. The US purchasers of UK energy companies can not rely on this Convention since the US is not a member.
4) European Community Law
The EC quasi-constitutional rules restraining application of retroactive law are not directly applicable to UK taxation. What is applicable is directly effective EC law prohibiting discrimination between UK and EC nationals (inclusive companies) under Art. 7 and 52, state aids (Art. 92-94) of the EC Treaty. These rules can be raised by private investors and companies before a UK court which would have to submit questions of relevant EC law to the European Court of Justice. Similarly, the European Commission would have powers to investigate breaches of EC law, with ultimate jurisdiction for the European Court of Justice in Luxemburg. There is a prohibition on tax discrimination in Art. 95 of the EC Treaty, but this prohibition only applies to "products" from other member states, and not to investment by member states nationals. The legal opinions prepared by Labour and Conservative party counsel take, predictably, two routes: The - easy - Labour Party position is that there is no evidence that the windfl tax would discriminate against investors from other member states (both shareholders in the privatised utilities and corporate purchasers, e.g. Lyonnaise des Eaux). Similarly, their argument is that there has not been a case where a tax on a specialised industry has been considered as a "state aids" for those parts of an industry not taxed requiring consent by the European Commission. The Conservative Party's counsel's argument needed to be much more imaginative: They had to argue that while such cases may not have arisen, one could not exclude that the windfall tax levy would result in discrimination against EC investors forbidden under the EC Treaty; their main argument was that it was very difficult to draft a non-discriminatory tax in the first place so anything that would come out would be likely to be discriminatory in some fashion. For applying the state aids' prohibition, they suggested that not taxing a segment of the industry would in fact be the same as providing a subsidy to this industry seent increasing, in effect, its competitive position vis-a-vis its taxed competitors.
Both arguments do not lack imagination and some persuasion, but they are not utterly convincing. First, it would be difficult to see why the Commission services and the European Court of Justice would want to extend the state aids concept to a new situation where tax-raising, and partly re-working a privatisation deal, are the main motivating forces, and not strengthening the competitive position of domestic industry vis-a-vis foreign competitors. In fact, non-UK utilities not subject to the windfall tax will benefit since their UK rivals ability to expand internationally will be curtailed by the UK tax. The UK tax, rather than helping UK utilities in European or international competition, will rather obstruct their competitive strategies abroad, and may even weaken them in domestic UK take-over games. Non-UK investors may benefit from tax credit or tax deductiblity provisions at home in ways not open to purely UK-based companies and investors so that the UK tax may in fact benefit the relative competite position, rather than negatively discriminate, against European companies. If the tax were structured so as to hit in particular hard at European investors in the UK, while benefiting UK investors (e.g. Mercury or some already earlier private and not privatised water utilities), then the argument of discrimination, and perhaps even state aids, would have some strength. But the tax seems to be motivated and likely to be structured not for protectionist, but primarily for revenue-raising reasons.
While the final form of the windfall tax needs to be evaluated carefully, we do not see a high probability that state aids or discrimination charges could be effectively raised against the proposed tax.
GATT/WTO
The Conservative Party's counsel has raised the prospect of GATT/WTO procedures - presumably brought by the home state of a foreign utility company the UK subsidiary of which is subject to the proposed windfall tax. It is hard, though, to develop this line of attack effectively: GATT/WTO deals with trade. No indication has so far surfaced that the windfall levy would obstruct trade of, say, electricity (e.g. Electricite de France) or gas (e.g. Statoil) and impose discriminatory taxes on such trade (forbidden under GATT and Art. 95 of the EC Treaty). It is meant to take money away from the privatised utilities and thereby reduce the value of the shares of shareholders (with the stock market already having factored in the windfall levy in the current stock market price). Trade is thereby not affected; to the contrary, if the UK utilities were placed in a financially weaker position, this would make it more difficult for them to resist import competition and to build up an export position in other Europeacountries. The GATT/WTO reference is too far-fetched.
5) Customary and Treaty-based International Law
The most potent challenge, in our view, could be based on customary and Treaty-based international law. Customary international law on nationalisation and other squeezes on foreign investment was challenged in the 1970s by the Third World. However, the collapse of Communism and the re-orientation of global economic attitudes towards open and competitive markets and liberalisation of foreign investment conditions - spearheaded very much by Great Britain - has led to a substantial enhancement of the concepts of investment protection. Customary international law, though, would not give a right to challenge the windfall tax to UK nationals, but exclusively to foreign investors, mainly the US and some European utilities and private investors who invested heavily in the Thatcher-led privatisation of the UK utility industry, trusting that privatisation, the newly established regulatory framework and economic buoyancy would lead to financial results beyond those envisaged when the price for privatisation assets w set - a high-risk investment gamble that paid off with many, but not all UK privatisations and which has led in other privatisation cases to unfavourable results. Customary international law, though, needs a proper plaintiff: Private investors can in the main not challenge a UK windfall tax directly since they have no access to the International Court of Justice (ICJ - The Hague) which acts exclusively as a court for voluntary submission of disputes between states. We understand that there may be the possibility for the US to bring a claim against the UK for a breach of international investment rules against US investors in privatised UK utilities.
But does customary international law include a prohibition against measures such as the envisaged windfall tax?
In a first round of analysis, there would not be much strength in such claim: Customary international law protects against nationalisation and confiscation without full, prompt and effective compensation. A re-nationalisation of the privatised utilities would therefore be perfectly legal - provided full compensation were paid (with considerable difficulties in determining compensation). But the UK government intends to impose a much less intrusive measure through its windfall tax. It would leave proprietary title intact, and so far no evidence has surfaced that such a tax would be tantamount to expropriation. There is the concept of "confiscatory taxation" and "creeping expropriation": In essence, taxation which is so extensive as to be equal to confiscation, taxation which more or less taxes away the economic value of the asset at issue is seen as "tantamount" to expropriation. The idea is that a state can not circumvent the nationalisation/ compensation rule by depleting the economic value of an asset ile leaving title and the formal trappings of legal ownership intact. The US-Iran claims tribunal decisions have clarified that a state action - even if formally only of a regulatory character and not a formal "taking" away of the proprietary title - can amount to confiscation entailing the obligation to pay full compensation.
Modern views - including by the British Judge at the Int'l Court of Justice, Rosalyn Higgins or the German Chancellor's former adviser and Professor at Bonn, Rudolf Dolzer - emphasise that taxation can be considered as a measure equal to nationalisation if it is particularly intensive, arbitrary or discriminatory or if agreements made with investors are then in effect ex-post and unilaterally revoked by the succeeding government. One interesting case with the European Court of Human Rights - the Greek Stran Refineries case of 1994 - contains an element of a retroactive cancellation of a government contract which, combined with other elements of arbitrariness and government behaviour against legitimate expectations, led to substantial damages. It is here that one can not exclude that a challenge of the UK windfall tax may have some chance of success: While the windfall tax is unlikely to destroy the economic asset value altogether, there may be elements - retroactive cancellation of the privatisation deals de by the prior government - that could cause an international tribunal to modernise the conventional principles of international investment law and find for the affected investors. The argument would probably be that if a full-fledged nationalisation requires full compensation to be acceptable, then governments can not bypass this principle by taking a part of the value by special ad-hoc taxation without paying a pro-rata, proportionate share of compensation. Also, the principle of proportionality - equally recognised in the European Convention on Human Rights, EC law and international law - may suggest that the energy policies pursued by the UK government may be achieved in a less damaging way by change in the regulatory regime than by the blunt tool of a special ad-hoc industry tax.
To sum up the position of international customary law: There is a classical view according to which taxation forms the core of sovereign powers and can not be constrained by international obligation. A modern view, however, emphasises less the formal action of government than the economic and financial effect achieved. Here, taxation, particularly if depriving an investor of the economic value of his asset or if aimed at revoking a previous agreement resulting in legitimate expectations, can be seen as the equivalent of nationalisation. Foreign - not national - investors could, under the sponsorship of their home governments, claim compensation equal to the value of the special tax.
A key question in this context is if there was some sort of agreement between the government and the foreign investors. While British law tends to take a very restrictive view on the legal force of agreements with governments purporting to bind future governments - based on the notion of Parliamentary supremacy - international lawyers are likely to give much more weight to such agreements. There are arbitration cases before the World Bank's ICSID tribunal, where even Ministerial declarations, governmental investment prospectuses and similar promotional literature were held to have led to an agreement between government and investor. An international tribunal would therefore scrutinise closely the promotional literature used during the British privatisation campaigns to see if there was an identifiable "agreement" which would make a subsequent special industry windfall levy inconsistent.
This interpretation is not as far-fetched as it may seem on first glance: The current windfall levy is not the first case of its kind. In 1974/75, the then Labour government first intended to nationalise the largely US-owned offshore oil industry. When faced in informal consultations with the US government with reference to the International Court of Justice and international law requirements of full compensation, it decided to back-pedal and use the somewhat softer option of somewhat coercive renegotiation (sale of participation to the then established British National Oil Company) and institution of a new tax - the Petroleum Revenue Tax (PRT). While there is not much analysis and little historical record available so far, it does seem that US representations based on international law concepts induced the British government to institute a less intrusive measure than was originally planned.
But there is not only customary international law, arguable in intergovernmental diplomatic discussions and before the International Court of Justice, to rely on. All learned commentators so far have ignored that Britain signed in 1994 - with 48 other countries and the European Communities - the Energy Charter Treaty in Lisbon. This Treaty includes the so far most comprehensive, far-reaching and innovative regime for protecting foreign investment in the energy sector. The Treaty was - for US energy investors in the UK very regrettably - not signed by the US, but by the EC countries. EC-originating investment in the UK energy sector (i.e. not water or telecommunications) is therefore protected under this Treaty. The Treaty is at the moment ignored by the learned commentators because it is not yet fully effective since the required number of 30 ratifications has not yet been reached (likely to happen in 1997). But an unusual and innovative provision (Art. 45 (1)) makes it provisionally effective as per siature if not inconsistent with national law. We consider that there is nothing in UK law which would keep a UK government from committing itself - validly under international law - to assume the investment guarantees of the Energy Charter Treaty in favour of foreign investors. If this view is accepted - and the judges would not be H.M. judges, but international arbitrators in an independent setting - then the Treaty would be fully applicable to the windfall tax on energy companies owned by foreign investors.
6) What is the protection afforded by the 1994 Energy Charter Treaty?
Not surprising given the sovereignty-focus of most governments, taxation (on capital and income presumably covering the windfall tax) is largely - but not fully - excluded from the Treaty's scope (Art. 21) - except for an explicit reference to "confiscatory taxation" (Art. 21 - 13). It would be up to the arbitrators to determine at which level of intensity and scope a tax becomes "confiscatory". The windfall levy does not seem to take away the full economic value of the assets at issue; however, its character of being, at least in intention and target, retroactive, its special-industry character intended to effectively ex-post re-determine unilaterally the sales price of UK privatisations and, possibly, its contravention of - possible - promises made by H.M. government during the privatisation campaigns does lend itself to argument that such tax would be tantamount to expropriation, in particlar with the view in mind that full-scale nationalisation requires full-fledged compensation and that such rule shod not be undermined by the circuitous tax route. There are, naturally, arguments to the contrary, namely that investors who bought UK energy shares knew - or should have known - that the UK government could not commit its successors and that the vociferous opposition of the then opposition Labour Party constituted a political risk that might materialise in the future.
A second argument (apparent now that the windfalls tax is known) is that the tax is actually not a "tax on capital/income", but rather on value appreciation. If this is so, then other provisions of the ECT (Art. 10), in particular compliance of commitments entered with investors and non-discrimination are applicable. Why it seems harder to make a case for non-discrimination, it seems easier to make a case that in essence a commitment - the sale at a specific price - is breached and changed retroactively.
Whatever the legal merit of this argument - likely to be advocated by opponents of the tax and to be criticised by its supporters - the fact is that the Energy Charter Treaty provides (Art. 26) for a direct right of aggrieved foreign (member state) investors to litigate against the defendant government before an international arbitral tribunal, where traditional notions of Parliamentary supremacy are likely to have less weight than the values of international trade and commerce, namely sanctity of property and contract.
7) Conclusions: Managing the Post-Privatisation Political Risk
Our discussion has identified the considerable political risk faced by a foreign investor when buying into privatisation when and if the privatised assets turn out to be profitable. It is easy to construct the "excess profit" notion when the risk that was present during the privatisation process is ignored and when only subsequent developments, and not the risk nor failures in other cases of such investment are taken into account. Behind investment into privatisation is often a quite narrow perspective - fuelled by the promotors and advisers of such deals - which downplays the considerable political risk. In modern energy privatisation, the risk is in subsequent changes of regulatory regimes and in the use of taxation to re-define unilaterally the original deal. Traditional international law is not equipped to deal with these risks since its focus was exclusively the issue of nationalisation and compensation. But modern concepts of international law have evolved to cover under the quite open-ended conct of "creeping expropriation" many more economic assets against a much more diverse form of state intervention. These concepts are likely to evolve further, in particular as indicated by the innovative direct investor-state arbitration (without prior arbitral agreement) of the 1994 Energy Charter Treaty.
But whatever the status of the still - and as a rule belatedly - evolving international law, privatisation investors would do well to pay more attention to methods of managing such risk. Some are legal: Obtaining clear legal guarantees, enforceable before international tribunals, against unilateral future changes of deals made with governments; shifting the burden of regulatory and special-tax risk on local partners who may be more suitable for assuming such risk (ideally a state company - but its halcyon days have gone). The UK windfall tax will undoubtedly contribute to new methods of political risk management aimed at dealing with this particular and possibly in the future not unpopular device of partially re-writing the terms of privatisation. A particular device would be the extensive use of "stabilisation" clauses and specific investment agreements, subject to international arbitration, to secure a foreign investor against subsequent abrogation of its rights - simultaneously a method whereby a currengovernment can impose a lasting commitment on its successor, a thought that is quite inconsistent with the traditional UK notion of "Parliamentary Supremacy". One wonders if the 1994 Energy Charter Treaty was not a device for many governments to create a lasting international commitment binding its successors, even if not always agreeable to its international business deals.

[cmonstanley]

and this is tory britain Army veteran Mark Mullins and wife Helen 'driven to suicide by poverty' | Mail Online