The Coalition Programme for Civil Liberties

A couple of days back the new Conservative-LibDem government published its programme for government. The most important section for me was, of course, that on civil liberties. Here’s what the document had to say on that issues along with my comments:

We will be strong in defence of freedom. The Government believes that the British state has become too authoritarian, and that over the past decade it has abused and eroded fundamental human freedoms and historic civil liberties. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power, in keeping with Britain’s tradition of freedom and fairness.

• We will implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion.

A good position statement which contrasts strongly with Blair’s attempts to “redefine” freedom for the 21st century and New Labour’s constant use of fear to justify authoritarian measures.

• We will introduce a Freedom Bill.

Sounds good but we need to see the detail. The problem with any Freedom Bill or Bill of Rights is not what goes in but what’s left out.

•We will scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register and the ContactPoint database, and halt the next generation of biometric passports.

The best news and essential for civil liberties. They also need to go one step further and actually repeal the Identity Cards Act 2006. A note about passports: international agreements only require a digitised version of your photo, Labour tried to use passports as an excuse for collecting other biometrics such as fingerprints.

•We will outlaw the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.

An excellent start but not quite enough. There are many ways schools can apply pressure to get parents to “consent” to kiddyprinting: “If you don’t consent to Jimmy being fingerprinted he won’t be able to use the library or attend after school club”. Kiddyprinting is evil: it indoctrinates kids into believing that biometric surveillance is the natural order of things. Requiring consent isn’t enough, kiddyprinting needs to be made illegal.

•We will extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.

Sounds good, let’s see the details.

•We will adopt the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.

Excellent. The Scottish system doesn’t generally allow the retention of DNA from innocent people (there are some exceptions). The coalition could still go further as the GeneWatch article explains.

•We will protect historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury.

Another good start that needs more detail. Hopefully we’ll also see no further moves towards summary justice (eg on the spot fines) and no further reversals of the burden of proof.

•We will restore rights to non-violent protest.
•We will review libel laws to protect freedom of speech.

Again good high level goals.

•We will introduce safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.

Not good enough. New Labour made much of the “safeguards” it provided with every piece of new legislation. These “safeguards” then proved next to useless or were watered down (remember the history of RIPA). If safeguards are needed to protect innocent people against legislation then it’s bad legislation.

•We will further regulate CCTV.

About time, however “regulate” sounds a bit tame. When it comes to protecting civil liberties we need strong legislation with teeth, not industry codes of conduct and self-regulation.

•We will end the storage of internet and email records without good reason.

Presumably this means scrapping New Labours plans for ISP communications retention under the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), which is an essential no-brainer. Will the new government go further and legislate against such long term data retention? And how will they respond to EU Directive 2006/24/EC which requires email header retention?

We will introduce a new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.

Presumably this is an extra review stage for legislation, which would be welcome but not spectacular. We really need a change of culture so that governments of all colours see criminalisation a last resort rather than a first choice.

We will establish a Commission to investigate the creation of a British Bill of Rights that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in British law, and protects and extends British liberties. We will seek to promote a better understanding of the true scope of these obligations and liberties.

This is simply a political fudge – the Tories want to scrap the Human Rights Act, the LibDems to keep it. So they set up a Commission to avoid making a decision.

However there are a couple of notable omissions. There’s no mention of #phnat, protecting photographers or removing blanket police stop and search powers. I would have liked to see a commitment to remove Section 44 of the Terrorism Act.

There was also no reference to the Digital Economy Act with its provisions to censor the web and remove net access from people without requiring criminal level burden of proof. In fact, outwith this document, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said the new government will not repeal the Act.

So overall I give the coalition’s plans on civil liberties 7, maybe 8 out of 10; there’s lots of good stuff there but more detail is needed and there are a couple of major omissions.

Of course this is still just a plan, we’ll have to wait and see how much actually comes to pass. The biggest threat to the plan is, as usual, “Events dear boy, events”.