Personal budgets in adult social care: the fact and the fiction of the Care Act 2014

ABSTRACT

Personal budgets have been heavily promoted in government policy in England as a means of increasing the personalisation of public services, particularly in the field of adult social care. The Care Act 2014 for the first time creates a statutory requirement for personal budgets to be allocated to all individuals using state funded social care. This article examines how a particular rhetoric has developed in social care policy around personal budgets, which draws freely on the language of the disabled people’s movement and suggests that grassroots ideas are the central purpose for the introduction of personal budgets into policy. It considers whether the promises made in policy are embedded in the 2014 Act and finds that there is a mismatch between claims in social care policy on the one hand and the model of personal budgets created by the 2014 Act on the other. It concludes that the policy rhetoric around personal budgets directly appropriates the language and ideas of the disabled people’s movement while promoting a wholly distinct agenda of public sector marketisation.     

关于我国工伤救济请求权竞合的立法检讨与完善

工伤救济已发展成为社会化法律责任制度,但从本源上说仍是广义民事侵权的一种,因而工伤受害人的民事救济会涉及工伤保险待遇与人身损害赔偿两种请求权的竞合。我国目前相关法律存在立法空白,而国务院的个别工伤行政法规与最高人民法院的人损赔偿司法解释却又存在矛盾与冲突,司法实践中缺乏统一法律依据,导致裁判结果不一致。对此应当通过完善工伤救济制度、区别对待的立法方式解决工伤救济请求权的竞合问题,以全面实现保障与救济工伤受害人合法权益的目的。     

陕甘宁边区的民主选举原则小议

陕甘宁边区的政权依据新形式下的民主选举原则,既保证了无产阶级在各级政府中的地位,又广泛地吸收了各抗日阶级、阶层的代表到政权机关中去,从而体现了抗日民众当家作主的权利。这种民主选举原则在陕甘宁边区,以及其他抗日民主区域得到实施和发展,成为激发广大人民抗日积极性和创造性的动力,坚持和扩大民族革命战争无穷力量的源泉。今天,仍不失为我们应遵循的民主选举原则。     

Strategic coalition voting: Evidence from New Zealand

Whereas the classic literature on strategic voting has focused on the dilemma faced by voters who prefer a candidate for whom they expect has little chance of winning a seat, we consider the dilemma faced by voters in PR systems who do not expect their preferred party to be in government. We develop hypotheses relating to strategic voting over multi-party governments that we test using the New Zealand Election Study (NZES) campaign study of 2002. We find evidence that expectations play a role in structuring vote choice. While there is clear evidence of wishful thinking there is also evidence that voters respond to expectations about government formation. These expectations may mobilize voters and lead them to defect from their first preference.     

人身伤害重新鉴定的困惑与出路

刑事诉讼法和司法解释对人身伤害重新鉴定立法位置安排的不当和程序设计的缺失,遭到了鉴定实践的抗争,默默演变为不断重复鉴定的制造源。因此,应当完善人身伤害重新鉴定的启动程序,经过文证审查的过滤,建构专家委员会的终结性复核鉴定制度,并通过诉讼程序消解鉴定障碍,达到公正选择适用重新鉴定程序规则的目的。     

China's new regulatory regime tailored for the sharing economy: The case of Uber under Chinese local government regulation in comparison to the EU,US, and the UK

Although Uber's arrival in China has resulted in disruptive competition for incumbent taxi companies, it offers an attractive alternative in China's supply-demand-imbalanced urban passenger transport system. China's regulatory regime for Uber has evolved in three stages: from the regulatory vacuum prior to 2015 to its official legalization in 2015–2016, and the enactment of numerous local regulations in 2016, with specific and more demanding requirements for Uber. This policy is a part of the Chinese approach to the gradual liberalization of the urban passenger transport market. Policymakers should consider ‘fair competition’ as the guiding principle to balance the interests of sharing firms and incumbent service providers, as well as between different sharing firms. The core value of this principle lies in the benefits it provides for consumers and the way it engenders a pro-competitive market environment. The labor protection arrangements for sharing firms’ laborers should be more flexible and diversified. In order to recognize whether an Uber-Driver is an employee or independent contractor, a new standard taking into account a range of factors should be established through collective negotiations between the participants of the sharing economy, and dialogues between members of the judiciary, academics, and the policymakers. Further, consumer protection law and personal data protection provisions should apply when sharing firms misuse their distinctive algorithmic management model to compete unfairly to the detriment of consumers and other users. Ex ante regulatory measures designed to protect the personal data of users should be introduced for deployment in the context of the sharing economy. When enforcing these rules, a balance should be struck ensuring free data flow that is essential to sharing firms’ innovation and competition, and the need to ensure the level of data security required to underpin a well-functioning sharing society.     

From fragile to smart consumers: Shifting paradigm for the digital era

The use of digital technologies, functioning thanks to data processing, has been conquering many sectors of the world economy and it is possible that, in the near future, only a few markets will still be excluded from this industrial revolution. Therefore, even if one chose unreasonably to disregard the many innovations that the digital economy has brought about, its development seems quite inexorable, although it is true that this new stage in human progress raises some concerns. In particular, many worry about the millions of passive and powerless digital consumers who, facing a few huge and influential companies without any education or awareness, could succumb and find themselves poorer, victimized, and manipulated. The paper proposes to react to this state of affairs without further fueling the fear of the digital revolution and without the thought that regulation can be used only as a shield to protect fragile digital consumers. Rather, by taking inspiration from some regulatory actions undertaken by the European Union, the paper bears in mind that regulation can be used as a sword in the hands of consumers to finally assign them a lead role in digital markets. New rules to empower consumers and to make them take autonomous and independent decisions as to the management of their personal data as well as to the merits of digital firms can be envisaged. After all, one of the cultural roots of Western societies is that every individual should be enabled to be faber ipsius fortunae.     

Bioinformatics and genetic privacy: The impact of the Personal Data Protection Act 2010

Bioinformatics refers to the practise of creation and management of genetic data using computational and statistical techniques. In Malaysia, data obtained from genomic studies, particularly for the purpose of disease identification produces a tremendous amount of information related to molecular biology. These data are created from DNA samples obtained from diagnostic and research purposes in genomic research institutes in Malaysia. As these data are processed, stored, managed and profiled using computer applications, an issue arises as to whether the principles of personal data privacy would be applicable to these activities. This paper commences with an illustration of the salient features of the Personal Data Protection Act 2010. The second part analyses the impact of the newly passed Personal Data Protection Act 2010 on the collection of DNA sample, the processing of data obtained from it and the profiling of such data. The third part of the paper considers whether the various personal data protection principles are applicable to the act of DNA profiling and the creation of bioinformatics.     

The Expenses Scandal and the Politics of Electoral Reform

The scandal over MPs' expenses that erupted in 2009 was followed by a surge in discussion of electoral reform. A range of reforms to Westminster's existing electoral system are now high on the political agenda. This article examines the extent and the nature of the scandal's impact on the electoral reform debate and draws out comparative implications for the sorts of conditions that can force politicians to accept electoral reforms that they do not want. It finds that the expenses scandal significantly changed debate about some electoral reform topics, but not about others. It proposes three factors likely to increase the impact of scandal in sparking reform: that the scandal is seen as harming ordinary people in their daily lives; that reforms can readily be understood as likely to mitigate the sources of scandal; and that those reforms do not seriously harm politicians' own perceived interests.     

从“身份”到“场所”——属人法连结点的历史与发展

属人法连结点的发展大约经历了三个历史阶段:古罗马至19世纪是住所地主义形成时期;19世纪至20世纪中叶是国籍原则与住所地主义的并存时期;20世纪中叶至今是属人法连结点的新发展时期。其中,第二个历史阶段的起点并非是国内学界所公认的1804年《法国民法典》,而应是后来的孟西尼学说。国籍原则衰退后,住所的缺陷也逐渐显现出来。在第三个历史阶段,惯常居所替代了住所,成为属人法连结点在当代的新发展。