A New Bill for Civil Liberties

Watch out for a new bill to sweep away in a single repeal act all the pernicious laws against civil liberties introduced by New Labour in the last 13 years. The Con-Dem coalition could be a rare fluke which would enable such a bill, something a Lib-Lab coalition or a Conservative minority government would not have even considered, let alone passed.

Henry Porter writes in the Observer:

The Queen’s speech, now being drafted, will establish a Freedom or Great Repeal bill – the title has not yet been chosen – as a major part of the coalition’s legislative programme. All the areas detailed in the agreement between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, such as the abolition of ID cards and the children’s database (ContactPoint database??), the further regulation of CCTV and the restoration of right to protest will be in it. Measures that weren’t in the published agreement will reassert the right to silence and protect people against the huge number of new powers of entry into the home allowed by Labour.

Separate from this will be a complete review of terror legislation that will assess 28-day detention, control orders, section 44 stop and search powers, the harassment of photographers, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, and its amendments, which sanctioned 650 agencies and local authorities to carry out undercover surveillance operations on, for example, people suspected of making dubious school applications for their children, eel fishermen in Poole harbour, punt operators in Cambridge, depressed police officers and malingering council workers.

The strategy is to keep debate on the terror laws apart from the Freedom Act, which in one fell swoop will repeal all the anti-libertarian laws that have accumulated on the statute book in what was described to me as “an absolutely comprehensive fashion”. The government does not want discussion of terror laws to obstruct the swift repeal of Labour’s attack on liberty in other areas.

Clearly, this all has to be watched very closely indeed – a lot has yet to be decided and there will be pressures from the civil servants, police, GCHQ and MI5 on such things as internet surveillance and phone intercepts. European plans for data collection and surveillance are a particular worry. But the essential point is that this exciting turn of events would not have been possible under a Labour-Lib Dem coalition or a Conservative minority government. It is a rare stroke of luck for the interests of liberty that the coalition allows the prime minister, David Cameron, to embrace this Lib Dem policy with open arms and ignore the reservations of the law-and-order nuts on his right.