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I do not believe that this is a matter which should be the subject of the criminal law in which we were expecting the police to remove these items of apparel from women who choose for religious or cultural reasons to wear them
Jack Straw: No ban on burkas in Britain Feb 10, 2010
Everybody who has been made aware of these unfolding events, of course, is surprised by the nature of the raid, and I certainly understand the concern of my parliamentary colleagues
Straw: Smith acted properly in leak case Dec 01, 2008
As soon as I heard about the course at HMP Whitemoor, I instructed that it must be immediately canceled
Inmates miss out on prison comedy class Nov 21, 2008
There's no question that the 10-pence tax has affected some people, not as many as the newspapers suggest, but those who it has affected it has affected adversely
Straw: Labor can overcome local defeats May 03, 2008
They see these young women, white girls who are vulnerable, some of them in (social) care ... who they think are easy meat
MP: Some Pakistanis target 'easy meat' Jan 08, 2011
John Whitaker Straw (born 3 August 1946) is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Blackburn since 1979. He served as Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 and Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons from 2006 to 2007 under Tony Blair. From 2007-2010 he was the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and the Secretary of State for Justice, appointed as part of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's first Cabinet. Straw is one of only three people to have served in Cabinet continuously from 1997 to 2010 (the others being Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling).
When the Labour Party lost power in May 2010, he briefly became the Shadow Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and the Shadow Deputy Prime Minister, but stood down from the frontbench after the Labour Party elected a new Shadow Cabinet.
Straw was born in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, England; one of his great-grandfathers was a German Jewish immigrant. Straw was brought up at Loughton, Essex by his mother, Joan Sylvia Gilbey on a council estate after his father Walter Arthur Whitaker Straw, an insurance salesman and the son of Arthur Whitaker Straw, left the family and condemned them to poverty. He was educated at Staples Road School, Loughton, and then boarded at Brentwood School, at that time a direct grant grammar school with largely LEA supported pupils, (where he was already expressing political ambitions and took the name "Jack", allegedly after the 14th century peasant leader Jack Straw—although "Jack" is a common diminutive of "John") and read law at the University of Leeds. While he was at Brentwood he opted out of the compulsory CCF (combined cadet force) on conscientious grounds.