Regulation: What is there not to like?

Research and Reports in Forensic Medical Science

Environmental law should aim for sustainability, but New Zealand’s approach to the problem of climate change falls short of the mark. Through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, New Zealand has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels. The nation has two principal relevant environmental statutes: the Resource Management Act 1991 and the Climate Change Response Act 2002. In 2004, the government amended the former to explicitly refer to climate change, but removed consideration of greenhouse gas emissions from council decision-making. In 2008, the government amended the latter to create New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme. Despite these statutes, New Zealand’s emissions have increased by over a quarter since 1990. In November 2008, New Zealanders elected a new government, which promptly announced that the Emissions Trading Scheme would be put on hold and the Resource Management Act reviewed. Thus, uncertainty surrounds both New Zealand’s regulatory and economic approaches to the problem of climate change. Moreover, the government created a special select committee to review the Emissions Trading Scheme, and included scientific consideration of climate change in its terms of reference. This essay is a critique of New Zealand’s climate change policy, based upon the principle of sustainability. First, it discusses the problem of climate change. Second, it suggests that the solution is sustainability. Third, it assesses whether New Zealand’s law meets the sustainability objective, in principle or practice, by assessing the international legal commitments and national legal approaches taken. Finally, it considers the possible outcomes of both review processes. Ultimately, it concludes that the best approach to take is to strengthen both the Emissions Trading Scheme and Resource Management Act, applying both regulatory and economic approaches to the problem of climate change.

The Big 4 global accounting firms are not passive in their interpretation and application of accounting. They actively influence the practice of accounting and its integrity, quality and reliability. The 2008 global financial crisis has also been a global audit failure, and raised a lot of questions about audit culture and effectiveness and the sincerity of the Big 4’s claimed independence. Research has been lagging behind in exposing this power and influence because of the significant challenges of obtaining objective evidence about the Big 4’s conduct, ethics and audit quality. Their inner workings, strategies and practices are often an impenetrable opaque box. Arnold (2009) and Cooper and Robson (2006) call for research on their active role in the processes of ‘financialisation’ of the global economy and the power and influence they wield in the finance industry. In this study, we examine the performance and relationships of KPMG in the audits and advisory work for HBOS, one of the UK’s largest Banks and most serious failures in recent history. Seven years after the event, KPMG have successfully managed to fend off any regulatory investigation of their conduct. The theoretical framework adopted here draws from the literature on audit quality, independence and ethical and cultural transformation. Access to a key early whistle-blower and previously confidential documents, and the detailed interviews, press reports, primary documents and interrogation by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards are pieced together forensically to unearth the ways in which KPMG influenced and endorsed the accounting, management, regulation and governance of HBOS. The evidence shows the significant role played by KPMG in endorsing the risk-taking at HBOS. The findings reveal the depth and range of the conflicts of interest, the reach of KPMG’s alumni networks, political and regulatory influence, and the methods by which it covered up its failure and successfully avoided investigation. Unravelled in this study is a pro-active and strategic process of ‘regulatory risk management’ by these audit institutions – the key ingredients of this policy are unravelled in this study for the first time. Far from mitigating risk, the research shows how their practices increased risk to society for which a huge multi-billion pound price has already been paid just in this one case.

EU standards development has been governed by a new Regulation since 1 January 2013. A raft of measures opens up new opportunities for trade unions to get more involved in the work of European standardization bodies. In line with a steadily-growing world trend, standards bodies will also see their remit extending to the vast sphere of services. Will European trade unions be up to the challenges these changes will bring? Will they mobilise commitment and find the skills to take part in what is basically highly technical work? How do they avoid dissipating their energies and set up checks and balances in response to the steady stream of standards, a growing number of which impact on work organization? It is too soon to tell. This report sets out only to give a broad brush picture of the issues in the evolving job of standards development by sketching in the historical background to the current debate and hearing what involved representatives of the labour and business communities have to say.

Policing and Society: An International Journal of Research and Policy. Available Online. ISSN 1043-9463 (Print), 1477-2728 (Online) doi: 10.1080/10439463.2014.895347 , 2015

The London Riots of August 2011 were notable for the prominence of CCTV images of offenders in news and social media, as well as in investigation, prosecution and conviction. The Metropolitan Police Service relied on specialist units that had in fact been established in the five years prior to the riots, which had been tasked with acting systematically upon CCTV image evidence: a procedural approach deemed so effective it had been termed the ‘Third Forensics’. This article discusses the significance of this claim and its implications for the justice system. The use of images in the investigations of the riots was highly effective, suggesting claims for substantially improved impact in investigation and prosecution are valid, and earlier scepticism regarding both utility and surveillance society agendas in public area CCTV studies was justified. Systematic procedural use of CCTV footage is not new, however, as demonstrated following riots in Vancouver, Canada, and earlier in Bradford, UK. Furthermore, identification in the ‘Third Forensics’ is eyewitness recognition, not scientifically or technologically comparable to fingerprints or DNA. The article suggests this difference affects risks of prejudice and miscarriages of justice, and the ‘profiling’ of individuals and social categories images appear to represent. The article concludes that while forensic investigation of CCTV images may not meet scientific criteria of a third forensic discipline, it does define a nascent development in police investigation where improvements in procedure have combined with proliferating CCTV systems and social media. This has led to a novel set of circumstances, which raises a number of unexplored issues of such significance that ‘Third Forensics’ is a suitable term to use to define them.

Addiction through the Ages: a review of the development of concepts and ideas about addiction in European countries since the nineteenth century and the role of international organisations in the process, 2015

The aim of this sub-project was to analyse the alcohol question and its responses through a series of international anti-alcohol conferences from 1885 onwards. How did they view the alcohol problem and its causes; what were the consequences for the individual and the society as a whole; and which solutions merited discussion? The conferences before the First World War can be seen as an arrangement for the modern state where the temperance movement placed itself in the service of the state and at the same time demanded that it be given some responsibility for the future development of society. These were years when the nation acted as a point of reference in several questions that were chafing within the modern project: population qualities and the condition of future generations, the notion of citizenship, industrial strength and competitiveness, the role and the strength of the state. The first inter-war conferences enjoyed an optimistic and internationalist atmosphere, added to by American prohibition, which had given the temperance movement plenty to be hopeful about. But when the 1920s turned to the 1930s, the conferences were transformed into arenas for national solutions and into outright propaganda pieces. The responses to the alcohol problem debated in the inter-war conferences built on a combination of scientifically masked ideological conviction and ideologically inspired passion for science. Several themes from the early part of the twentieth century also dominated the post-war conferences: much of the presented research could easily fall into categories such as control, treatment and prevention; women and youth (who still hold positions as extraordinary but frequently discussed problem groups); and traffic and working life. All these themes are recurrent arenas for the formulation of alcohol and drug problems. But sociological and psychological perspectives are more common now, epidemiological research has grown steadily, the drug problem is ever present and a comprehensive addiction concept has opened up for topics beyond substance misuse.

Forensic Science International, 2018

Forensic science policy has been the subject of a series of judicial and parliamentary enquiries in the United Kingdom in recent decades. Forensic science research has been a recurrent theme in their reports, which have included recommendations for research into the economics of forensic service provision; for the development of expertise and centres of excellence; and for research to establish the validity of the forensic sciences. These recommendations reflect similar concerns expressed internationally—particularly in the United States. In the United Kingdom, however, the Forensic Science Service recently enjoyed a near monopoly in research, and limited research funding and activity in the Universities was exacerbated by the lack of visibility of forensic science in government audits of research quality. This study used established methods in evidence-based policy and research quality evaluation to analyse the range, quantity and quality of research submitted to the two most recent audits – RAE 2008 and REF 2014. Strengths and weaknesses in the methods used are discussed, and the findings analysed in relation to wider research policy issues in forensic science. The study concludes that consolidating forensic science as a peer-science in the academy is essential in order to establish a virtuous circle that will sustain research in the discipline—and address wider policy and socio-economic questions that persistently trouble the field.

Science & Justice

Science & Justice, 2015